Living local

I absolutely love farmer's markets.

There's something lush about so much fresh produce assembled together in one place.

I think my first experience of a farmer's market was in Bellingham, when I was a student at Western Washington University. (Isn't that sad? That my first experience with a farmer's market was when I was in college? Yeah, I agree. It's very sad.) But it wasn't exactly a farmer's market -- it was a Saturday market, so there were a lot of non-farmer venders. The most memorable stands were Holmquist Hazelnut orchards, and somebody with honey. That's mostly what I bought -- nuts and honey. Those were high ticket items, and I was on a pretty restricted budget, so it was a big indulgence to go.

When we moved to Eugene, Oregon in 1998 they had a Saturday market, too. It was extravagant and very enjoyable -- all kinds of craft venders, a performance stage, lots of food options. Oh yes -- and flamboyant tie dye clothing. There was a beautiful farmers section, but it comprised only about a quarter of the total market. They did have highly memorable melons - watermelon and cantaloupe so sweet... I salivate at the memory. It was still a treat to go, rather than a regular occurrence -- something that we did when family or friends were visiting, or to take advantage of some specific, hard-to-find item (like local melons.)

In Seattle it's possible to find a farmer's market somewhere in the city almost every day, but no guarantee how close. The one that's closest to us is about a 20 minute drive, and it's on Wednesdays, so I don't go often. And it's still a special deal. I go to a farmer's market in Seattle to buy queso fresco from Samish Bay Cheese, and I used to get bulk ground beef for a good price. But...not so much any more -- so again, I don't go often, and when I do, I go for only one or two specialty items.

When we arrived in Szeged I asked my local host if there was some kind of farmer's market, and he said -- oh yes, there's one over by the bus station -- about a ten minute walk from where you live. It's open every day, he said, from early in the morning until early afternoon! Every day? I thought. How is that possible?

Well, it's possible. I guess it's possible because this is where people shop. It really is a farmer's market, too. It's almost all produce, eggs, honey, nuts -- stuff like that. It's huge. And almost all grown locally. (A few venders are probably from stores, since I occasionally see things like avocados and lemons.) But apparently it's open from 4am until 3pm. I'm not likely to go at 4am, but it was already very busy at 8am when I arrived today -- even though it had just rained.

The big difference between the farmer's markets in Seattle and the one here is that I can actually afford to buy the food! Everything is reasonably priced. (Of course, some of that has to do with the significant difference in the cost of living, but still.) I feel like the proverbial kid in the candy store. There's mounds of grapes, vast piles of peppers, cucumbers stacked like lumber, mounds of melons, boxes of garlics and onions, provocative bags of walnuts and beans, mysterious fronds of fresh herbs... I want to buy All The Things!!!

There's also some things there that I don't know what they are, or I know what they are but haven't tried them before, which is always fun. Last week I tried celery root for the first time. This week I bought another one -- I'm making soup tomorrow!

Of course I'm limited by (1) what I can carry on my bike, (2) what we can fit in our small fridge, and (3) what we can reasonably eat before it goes bad. That's my bike there, with the bright blue kid seat on it. (It's also the only one with a bike helmet -- most people don't wear them here.) Many bikes (including mine) have baskets on the front; others have them on sides, or they pile stuff on the rack on the back. I had a backpack as well as my basket, so that helped.

I had around $15 on me this morning, and I spent most of it, but I got quite a haul: a butternut squash, a bunch of beets, two leeks, about a kilo of baby potatoes, about 4 kilos of Mutsu apples, a pile of cucumbers, a celery root, fresh sweet corn, and a watermelon. We bought a watermelon from the same lady last week, and we ate the whole thing in one day. It was an amazing watermelon. I wished that I could carry two watermelons home, but I was already a little unsure I could handle what I had. And I didn't even buy any beans, walnuts, cantaloupe, pears... But here's my gorgeous loot from the day. And there's always tomorrow!...

First days of school

Most years I'm scrambling to get my syllabi done in mid-August, then I'm in faculty meetings and orientations, and I barely get to track my children's first days of school. This year was a little different. Of course we're in Szeged, but it was also different because we all had the first day of school on the same day. This never happens at home. At home Ronan goes in preschool a couple of weeks before my own school begins so that I have a little time to prepare for my classes. Then Tristan usually starts a week after I do. This year was also different because we have all kind of had two "first" days of school.

The official first day of school for all of us was September 3rd. I woke up, showered -- all normal stuff -- and then realised there was a thunderstorm going on. I got the boys up, made pancakes for a special treat, and got us all out of the door by 7:30am. Ronan declined to be photographed for his first day, so here's Tristan wearing his formal school clothes -- it's not a uniform, but I guess everyone wears a white top and black bottoms for special days at school.

Tristan knew which tram to take, and had his pass (Multi Pass!) and ID. I had arranged to take Ronan to his kindergarten by bicycle, and apparently the weather was testing my resolve. (I was told later that in Hungary they say that when the children have to go back to school they all cry, so the weather cries, too -- so I guess the rain was normal and expected!) Luckily, by the time we left the thunder had stopped, and it was just lightly raining. Still. I remembered a lot of things about bike commuting that I hadn't thought about in a long time. (I think the last time I bike commuted was around 11 years ago...) For example: remember to use your flasher lights when it's raining, even during the daytime; also: buses are scary, even when you're in a bike lane.

To my surprise, Ronan wiped his eyes a few times, but didn't cry when I left him at school. (Yay!
That's the first time ever!) I biked back home, quickly changed my clothes, then walked to the immigration office. I'd received a letter from them the previous Friday (right after returning from Balatonlelle, incidentally) that there was some problem with my biometric data (?) and I needed to come in within 5 days to get it taken care of. This wouldn't have been a big deal, except that their office is only open Tuesday through Thursday, and I was scheduled to be in Budapest Tuesday through Friday afternoon for Fulbright training. After some panicking, my wonderful colleagues in Chemistry called the immigration office and arranged for me to come in at 9am on Monday morning.

So I got to the office a few minutes early, the guards let me in, and then I was told that no, it was impossible, I had to come back during their normal office hours. I meekly said that we had called on Friday and talked to someone, and she said it was OK, so they said they'd talk to her. They came back in a bit to say that no, that person hadn't authorized me to come in on Monday, but that they were going to help me out anyway. I said thank you, and waited.

It turned out that there had been some entry errors in the system, and somebody hadn't written my mother's maiden name correctly, so they needed me there to verify what was correct. I mentally agonised that maybe I wasn't spelling my mother's middle name correctly, but I just went for it anyway. Then they took my picture and fingerprints again, and I was all set. Apparently they have already approved my residence permit (yay!), they just needed the updated information so they could issue the card -- so I should have that in 2-3 weeks. (Very big yay!)

So this was all before 9:30am. At that point, I took myself into my office and worked on school stuff. Since I wasn't going to be around the rest of the week because we had Fulbright orientation in Budapest, we arranged not to start classes on Monday. Also, it's apparently normal for the graduate classes here not to start until mid-September, even though the official start of classes is September 3rd. So I had a luxuriously undisturbed three hours or so (first in AGES) of preparing class materials and uploading them to the course software. If you're scratching your head about why that was so pleasant, you probably don't have young children.

Tristan only had a half-day at his school, so I rolled home around 1pm and debriefed with him - he'd had a good day. His head teacher asked me to call, so I did and we made some plans. I picked up Ronan around 3pm, and we finished packing and caught the 4:45pm train to Budapest. So that was our first first day of school. The Fulbright orientation was great. Lots of useful information, and plenty of fun, too. Here we are on a brief stop at Buda castle (you can see Pest behind us.) (Hey look: a photo with all three of us in it for a change!)

Fast forward a week and we were ready for our next first day of school -- this time for real. Tristan had a full day of classes, Ronan had a full day at kindergarten, and I got to teach my first class with my PhD students. All went well for the boys, and I'm so pleased because Tristan really likes some of his classes (and he didn't have any complaints about the others.) He was joyful about his English teacher, enjoyed his art class immensely, and loved the fact that his PE class is really a dance class. I love that he's happy. I also love that art and music are normal parts of the curriculum here. I love that PE isn't confined to team sports. Why wouldn't we want to do dance in a PE class? It means I'm also going to look into dance classes for him to take outside of school, though -- here and at home -- since he actually enjoys it.

My class went well, too. Teaching writing/communication skills is definitely a very different animal than teaching chemistry, though! It's going to be a learning curve for me as well as for my students. But I'm really excited and having fun with it. And I shared two quotes on writing from amazing USA authors they probably hadn't heard of before -- Ta-Nehisi Coates and Terry Tempest Williams. I'm also using Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird) and Joshua Schimel (Writing Science) to give tips on writing and science writing, respectively. I figure that introducing science students to non-standard USA authors is probably part of my mission.

Since I'm not a fast blog writer, it's now Friday, and I can report that we had a few bumps this week, too. My classes all went well, but I think that the Master's students got scared -- we went from a fully enrolled class (the max is 20, since it's a writing course) with one or two waiting to get in, to only having 11 students attend yesterday. I tried to be as nice and reassuring as possible, so I hope they'll tell their friends that I'm not scary, and that they'll be successful in my class. On the other hand, I went from 11 students enrolled in my PhD class on Monday to approximately 17 or 18 who are interested in attending (again, maxed at 20) -- and one or two may appear. We'll see. So I'm trying to be optimistic about enrolment.

Other bumps included my bike breaking down yesterday on the way to take Ronan to kindergarten. Nothing serious -- the chain just kept falling off. So we improvised. Luckily there's a lot of busses, and I already knew which ones go near his kindergarten. Also luckily there's a really great bike repair guy that I already knew, too, so repairs are underway. But that definitely interrupts one's plans for a day. It meant I got to school about an hour later than I'd hoped to get there, which made me a little stressed for my class. But all's well that end's well, right? I taught a good lesson, and got everything done that had to be done.

Practical applications of intermolecular forces

So we just got back from a stay at Balatonlelle, a small town on the south side of Lake Balaton. For those who haven't heard of it, Lake Balaton is locally known as the "inland sea", although it is a freshwater lake, because it's quite large. It's about 77 km long, with an average width of about 10 km. It's also amazingly shallow -- average depth is apparently around 10 feet, if you can believe Wikipedia. Our own experience supports this (but of course 3 days playing on a beach isn't exactly empirical) -- we could go at least a couple hundred yards and still touch the bottom. I guess the shallow shoreline is really common on the south side of the lake.

The first day we arrived fairly late, and I'd been up late the night before, so we didn't do much. That night and into the morning it rained and was fairly cold. It was incredible! I hadn't felt cool in a long time. I actually wanted my sweatshirt on!

But the day after that we got to play at the beach. It had been quite a long time since I'd played at the beach. The first day I don't really remember what we built. I wasn't really very into it. I was still having a hard time remembering how to play on a beach. Does that sound pathetic? Well, it kind of is. But I also think it's really common for adults. We don't get much practice with this playing after we become adults. Even adults who are regularly involved in athletics don't necessarily do unstructured play. Sometimes even when we're parents this happens -- rather than playing with our kids we talk to other adults, or do things on our phones, or read a book, or whatever. No judging here - sometimes it's what you gotta do to stay sane. Anyway, the water was warm, and the kids were having fun. I was feeling paranoid about what to do with my purse, which meant I was having less fun, and carrying my purse everywhere. Even with a shoulder strap, that can cramp one's style. (Purses and things like that are another bane on the life of an adult. But I think I may already have mentioned that in my previous post!)

Anyway, I think the most notable thing we did the first day was rent kayaks for an hour. I was a little skeptical, because Ronan is four, and I wasn't sure he could sit in a boat for that long. To my surprise, Ronan was really into it! We paddled around, looked at birds, and picked up floating plant debris. That's probably when I started to get into it.

So on the second day I was much more ready to engage with the sand. It also helped that Tristan started working with another kid who was already working with a pretty impressive sand construction, and then Ronan and I started working nearby. Eventually the two constructions merged. We made a lake, and then the lake was allowed to overflow and threaten the pyramid (like you do.) But Tristan and his friend were clever, so the pyramid stayed up. We didn't mind.

We arranged to meet this cool kid the next day, too, but we got there a bit earlier than they did, so we started building volcanos. Now it's been a while since I played on a sandy beach, but I don't remember ever being able to build up something made of sand and then have the water stay in it. What I remember is that you dig a lake (see above), and then you keep dumping water in it, and the water stays in the lake for about 2 seconds and then drains out -- so you never really accumulate any significant amount of water, unless you've arranged to have your lake's bottom be below the water table. That was not our experience this time.

I'm not sure I really why I thought it was going to work when I started building a volcano, but that didn't stop me. It sounded like a fun idea in my head, so I just started building it, and it was fun. And then Tristan built a town below the volcano so that we could try to demolish it with the "lava" flow. (So were we doing construction or destruction?) I built the sides up and up and up, and then we filled it with water. It was probably 4 or 5 gallons of water that we put into this volcano. Incredibly, the water stayed in it. Well, we didn't wait for hours, but long enough to fill it, then take some pictures, and then Ronan was stomping the side of it and letting the water flow out. And then we did it again. And again. And again. We had some blow-outs where the sand was too wet. I got better at repairing the hole from the flow, and started to feel like a sand engineer. The insides of the volcano became smoother and more even. I was pretty impressed.

Eventually we built 3 volcanos, and had them all wreaking destruction on the poor town. Check out all that water staying in those volcanos! It was pretty incredible. By the end of the day we had built and filled 5 volcanos, but we were pretty tired by that point -- we'd been at the beach for about 8 hours by then, so we only had them destroy things one time, and we had a blow-out at the last minute, so I don't have photos. But still -- I kind of can't believe I could get that much water to stay in what was effectively piles of sand.

So why did it work? Here's where intermolecular forces come in. This is a slight attraction that some particles have for each other. It's kind of like when you rub pins on a magnet and they sort of stick to each other. For a while. Until the bottom ones start to fall off, or you blow on it a little bit. It turns out that a lot of things (like water and sand) are a little like really wimpy magnets. (Except it's not a magnetic force -- it's an electrical one. But we don't really have a good mental picture for what that would be like, so I'm comparing it to magnets. OK?) The particles are slightly attracted to each other, so they stick to each other a little bit. Not very much, but a little. And if you mess around a bunch, then they stop sticking and fall apart. So this is why you get clumps of sand, and this is why mud sticks to your shoes, and it's also why it takes a lot of energy to boil water.

In this case, I think it mostly had to do with the particle sizes of the sand. The sand at Balatonlelle included some extremely fine particles -- it was kind of dusty. This meant that the water was pretty silty and cloudy on the first day because of the storm the previous day - lots of these tiny particles were still suspended in the water, and hadn't settled out yet. Most of the beaches I've played on don't have that super fine dustiness to the sand. The super fine particles allowed for more interactions between the sand particles and the water (and the sand particles and the water, etc. etc.) -- which meant that the sand held together better, even when I filled its inside with water. I just made sure that there was enough sand piled together that it didn't become saturated with water right away. With the extra fine particles around, that made the water-sand "glue" even more effective than it otherwise would have been. It was a pretty awesome experience. Next time you go play on the beach you can check out what the sand there is like and let me know!