Waterparks and worship

After yesterday's misunderstandings in the morning, it was time to see if we could find something fun to do. So with guidebooks and maps, we decided to explore Margit Island, a large island in the middle of the Danube between Buda and Pest that you can walk to from the Margit bridge. It turns out that this vast island park is pretty walkable from our apartment - it took us about 15 minutes to get to. Once there, we were looking for the Palatinus Strand, a huge string of 7 large and beautiful swimming pools, including a wave pool, water slides, hot thermal pool, kids pool, and a lazy river pool, among others. We found it, and even discovered Hungarian cotton candy, spoken in the universal language of sugar. Needless to say, Abi was happy about it.
We stayed several hours and enjoyed the afternoon with hundreds of our closest Hungarian friends, and other tourists from lots of other places. There is a large end-of-summer festival happening on the other large island, Obuda Island this weekend, with many many bands playing - I found out too late that The National played tonight at 6pm. Missed a good opportunity there.

Our Sunday (today) was also spent well. In the morning, we attended St. Columba's Scottish Presbyterian Church, an English-speaking congregation about a 20-minute walk from our apartment. It felt like the right thing to do to walk to church on a hot August Sunday morning. Almost the same distance as our house is from church in Grand Rapids, but more to see in between. Though we did miss picking up the Dekkers part way to church. The folks at St. Columba's were very welcoming, and our worship with them was meaningful. We stayed afterward for coffee/tea, and then lunch - an Ethiopian meal prepared by some members of the church - delicious. After walking home, everyone felt like resting except me, so I went off exploring in new neighborhoods on foot, about 3 miles and an hour and a half of urban hiking later, I boarded a subway and landed back home in about 8 minutes.

I love this city's public transportation system - it is phenomenal. Easy to understand, readily available, pretty affordable.

In the evening, we tried out another church experience. Invited by our friend Gyorgyi, a student here who visited Calvin this past January for the Interim term, we went to Golgota - a Calvary Chapel congregation at 7pm, for a concert. Turns out Gyorgyi couldn't make it, and our family experienced our first Hungarian church rock concert experience by ourselves. It was good music, but essentially beyond our comprehension in more than just the language. So after a good while, we slipped out, and came home to play some games back in the apartment before the kids went to bed. Another good day. We are all looking forward to welcoming our 18 Calvin students this coming Friday morning.