Euler's Theorem Thursday

Hello everyone! The gals from 957 are back at it with one final blog post :(. If you've forgotten who we are, we are pictured above, and from right to left, we are Carly, Annie and Emma!

Today we had an excellent Thursday in Budapest! The sky was clear and the temperature was 40 degrees, which was a HEAT WAVE!

We had class with Bruce and learned Euler's Theorem! Do you know how many times 77 goes into 2^10000??? Because we doooooo!!!! 

During our lunch break, we got some homework done at a lovely Italian sandwich shop have still yet to learn the name of, and Michael drew some fabulous things on the chalkboard to keep us entertained!

Our afternoon guest speaker was Fazekas Gergely, who taught us all about Hungarian music throughout history! We heard several pieces throughout the years. Did you know a famous Hungarian musician's music was featured in an episode of Tom and Jerry?? Here's a link to the scene :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKZgi06fVsk

After class Emma and Carly headed to the Fishermen's Bastion to see some beautiful sunset and nighttime views!

Meanwhile, Annie was off at our Hungarian friend Anna's house, working on a singing project! Each student on the trip gets to participate in one final Hungarian project, a song, a poem or a video! The song group worked hard on their song, which they will perform for everyone next Tuesday!

Later in the evening, Carly and Emma headed off to a delicious Pad Thai restaurant for dinner, and went skating in the southern part of Pest. (Carly is so bad and Emma is so good). 

We hope everyone is having a fantastic January, and we can't wait to come home in less than a week and share all of our amazing memories!

Love, 

Carly, Annie and Emma

Euler’s ϕ function, Math Art, and Hungarian Cuisine

Today started out, as per usual, with a math class in the morning. We proved the Multiplicative Theorem we learned yesterday and learned about Euler’s ϕ function, we even discovered and easy formula for the otherwise very unintuitive function.  After lunch, however, we had a guest speaker come in to give a brief math lecture. His name was Mik Laczkovich and he gave a lecture on Farey’s series and what is revealed through the series, which is a pretty interesting thing about fractions.

After the guest lecture, our class took a field trip to the Vasarely Museum! As our class pondered the museum, we looked at each piece closely and learned about the work of Victor Vasarely.  Some of our favorite pieces are shown below!

While we walked through the exhibit, some of us decided to create some art ourselves. Below are pictures of the work that me and my friend synneva made! (mine is on the right, hers is on the left). 

And at the end of the trip, we all got the chance to play a quick game of whack-a-mole!

After visiting the museum, we took a short walk to a nearby restaurant where we ate dinner as a group. On the way we passed by an interesting fountain.

Unfortunately, there was some confusion over the orders and some people had to wait a while before their food arrived. Speaking from personal experience, it was worth the wait and I had some of the best chicken I’ve ever had. Bruce had to leave early, but we were able to find our way back on our own.

From your favorite people in room 361,

Michael, Aaron, and Eric

Challenges, Cream Cake, and Corollaries

Sziasztok from room 753!

Today was quite an adventure with double math, cream slices, and yummy Mediterranean food... but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

First at McDaniel College, we learned about Wilsons' Theorem, "x2+ 1" Theorem, Arithmetic Functions, and Multiplicative Functions! During class today we discussed how if f is multiplicative and a1, a2,..., an are pairwise relatively prime, then f(a1 * a2 * a3 * ... * a4) = f(a1) * f(a2) * ... * f(an). But, since we have been doing so much work, we decided to leave this proof up to the reader. If you're up for a mathematical challenge, respond in the comments below! :)

During the much appreciated lunch break, Missy went to a the Goat Header and saw some adorable dogs while eating tomato soup! Meanwhile, the rest of us packed a lunch so we could get a jump start on the homework. 

After double the math, Abigail, Lauren, and Ella headed to the Buda side of Budapest to look at the views and try the highly recommended cream cake from Ruszwurm Confectionary. Our math skills definitely came in handy while cutting slices of cake into fourths! 

(The Cream Cake is in the back right of the screen)

After exploring some quaint shops on the Buda side (and practicing our Hungarian), we headed back to the hotel to finish up our math homework. Ready for dinner, we jumped on a bus to Hummusbar - a delicious Mediterranean restaurant with amazing homemade mint tea.

Now we're back in the hotel working on homework and looking forward to a good night sleep before our "szuper" math day tomorrow... but you'll have to tune in again tomorrow to see why it will be extra "szuper"!

Best, 

Abigail, Ella, Missy, & Lauren

Monday, Monday, Monday!!!

Sziasztok!

This morning we woke up ready for another full day of math and adventures here in Budapest! Although class started thirty minutes early, Audrey got up early and headed to breakfast at STICKA cafe, while the rest of us ate our usual hotel breakfast before heading over to class.

Bruce taught us Fermat's Theorem and some other slick tricks of congruency (despite getting hopelessly lost in a proof). We finished with our lecture and worksheet around 11:30, giving us a full hour and fifteen minutes until our guided tour in Parliament (but more on that later)! Synneva found Ficak Bisztró, where a group of us had a delicious variety of sandwiches, lemonades, and coffees.

After lunch, we headed over to Parliament. Getting into the main part of the building meant going through an airport-style security area and receiving an earpiece/headset in order to hear our guide. On the tour, explored the northern wing of the (totally symmetrical) parliament building. Our humorous guide showed us the 96 steps of the main staircase, the crown jewels, one of the legislative chambers, and many rooms in-between.

When the tour of Parliament finished, we met up with our trusty Hungarian guide (and Synneva's biggest inspiration), Emese. We had planned on trying our hand at painting street art, but our intended teacher got sick—tune in next week for our own art! Instead, Emese showed us many examples of street art and explained the history of the Jewish quarter of Budapest. We rounded off the adventure by warming up in a cafe and chatting together as a group. Emese gave us many great recommendations about places to visit in the second half of our month here!

From there, Haley and Audrey went to Aldi's, then Audrey headed to the parliamentary library while Amy took a wonderful walk and watched the sunset over the Danube and Synneva chatted and wandered back to the hotel.

For dinner, Synneva and Haley went with a group to Pad Thai Wok Bar (a huge favorite of ours!), Amy got a sandwich and milkshake at a great place right across the street from the hotel, and Audrey found a new favorite restaurant called Sao before grabbing a chimney cake on the way back to the hotel.

After a long day of math and street art and walks, each settled down for the evening to do homework, enjoy the sauna, and write a blog post for you all! And we are done.

- Audrey, Haley, Amy, and Synneva

Back to Budapest

Hello again from the crew in 453!

Today was our last day in Bratislava concluding our post-midterm weekend trip. While both in Bratislava, the roomies were split into two groups over the weekend with Josh and Tim with one group and Ethan and Anders with another. Ethan and Anders ate breakfast at a pancake restaurant with some delicious crepe-like food.

With the other group, Tim and Josh ate breakfast/lunch (we got a rather late start) at a cafe in old town Bratislava. They both had spaghetti carbonara and while it is not a traditional breakfast food it was just the right amount of food to hold us over for the train ride back to Budapest. After breakfast, Anders and Ethan spent more time exploring the city and walked to the Grassalkovich Palace, where the president lives. They also stopped at very unique blue church and walked through all the parks along the way. Eventually, (it felt like a long time due to the poor weather) they made it to the train station for the 2:00 pm train back to Budapest. 

With the late start to the day and the relaxed brunch atmosphere at the cafe, Tim and Josh lost track of time and scrambled to make it to the train station on time (But we still made sure to get candy for the ride back!). Everyone enjoyed a comfortable train ride back to Budapest either napping or chatting with our classmates. Upon arriving back in Budapest, everyone took some time to unpack and reset for the next week of math. The guys went to the same barbecue joint featured in last weeks blog because, as mentioned many times by Josh and Tim, they have the best pulled pork sandwiches and lemonade of all time. Anders and Ethan then went back to finish the homework they had been putting off until this point, while Josh and Tim went to the Ferris wheel with a couple other classmates. The views were incredible and we snagged this "wholesome" roomie pic.

After this, we stopped by an ice cream and chimney cake shop and enjoyed this excellent combination of sweets feeling very content and ready for another week in Budapest. 

Meanwhile, enjoy more pictures from our weekend. 

Sziasztok!

A Day in Vienna!

Hi guys! Meredith, Emma & Hannah reporting today from Vienna, Austria!

We got up bright and early this morning for a 7:45 am departure from our Airbnb, joined by our friends Lauren, Abigail, Ella, Amy, and Missy! Our first stop was a grocery store called Lidl, where we grabbed some pastries & fruit for breakfast.

After taking some time to navigate public transit, we found our way to the center of the city, where we spent our day. Once in the city, we wandered around for a while, taking pictures, admiring the sights & searching for coffee. Here are some of the highlights:

We vicariously climbed an escalator to get a bird's eye view of the city, and we snapped the photo above next to a massive statue! 

Pictured above is the Vienna State Opera House! It was a beautiful sight; we all wished we could've gone in! (It was unfortunately locked)

We saw some beautiful horses pulling carriages around the city!

For lunch we ate at a cafe called Aida, and with our meals we were given ketchup in toothpaste-like bottles...?? We finished lunch with some yummy cake, and made our way back outside. 

After lunch and more wandering, we went to the Natural History Museum, where we spent over 2 hours learning about dinosaurs, various land and aquatic species, and many beautiful rocks and geodes! The picture above is from the outside of the museum. 

Today was rather cold; it snowed most of the day, but we Oles know to handle ourselves in the snow... #olescanoleswill!! 

We walked around a lot more and saw many other beautiful buildings & cathedrals-- there are just too many pictures to include! 

After the museum, we ate dinner at an Austrian restaurant, and navigated our way through public transit again back to the Airbnb. We are all exhausted, but we had a wonderful day exploring the city of Vienna; we encourage all of you to travel here!