Metro trails and puppy dog tails

It's my third week here? What? When did that happen? All the days are blending together, so I'm a little confused when people remind me that in just over a week I'm heading back to the states. It's close enough that Im already making plans for my first few days back. Family, friends, vet, dogs, horse. It's gonna be busy but I'm excited. In case you haven't noticed, I always hit the ground running. I'll sleep when Im dead, right?
Just to prove that there's no rest for the weary, I woke up early today to attend the World Dog Show, here in Budapest. One of our Sammelweis professors is a judge, so he gave us all tickets. It was NOT what I expected. When I've seen them on the tv, dog shows are always quiet and pristine. This was like chaos. There were 6 buildings with different classes going on in each one and a ton of vendors selling everything a canine could ever want. The classes themselves reminded me of a horse show. The handlers were rushing to groom their pets and rushing to pin their hair back before running up to the class gate at the last second. All the dogs pranced around while the judge examined every minuet detail of their movement and appearance, and them he picked his favorites. Also surprising was the sheer volume of dogs. In addition to the hundreds of perfectly preened show dogs, it seems like almost everyone brought their family pet along. I promise I tried to restrain myself but I just had to pet some of them. I asked their owners, of course, but they were so fluffy! I just couldn't resist.
Melissa and I wandered around for hours in search of a collar for Parker and a toy or collar for Ava. Neither of us had planned to get souvenirs for our pets, but I can't even explain how infectious that atmosphere was. The choice was either to get a toy or to leave there with a puppy, so I picked the choice that wouldn't cause my mother to want to murder me. So, we circled around all the vendors and ended up with a nice leather collar for her dog and a chewy giraffe for mine.
After that we watched a few exhibitions that were kind of reminiscent of a dog talent show. It would have been nice to know what the announcer was saying, but the dogs and their owners were incredible regardless. They were jumping around and doing all sorts of fancy tricks, but those dogs looked so happy! They were grinning from ear to ear and were obviously incredibly devoted to their owners. It was the most exciting event to watch!
I will comment that there were little to no golden retrievers or Labradors. It struck me as rather odd given how common those breeds are in the US, but I'm not a dog expert, so I have no idea if those breeds are popular here. There were spaniels galore and plenty of chihuahuas but a serious lack of goldens. I have at least 100 pictures of all the random breeds, especially the little fluffy ones and the massive several hundred pound dogs.
Alright, what happened next is supposed to be a secret between Melissa and myself, but regrettably, I feel like its a story that needs to be told. Ready for the this? You won't be surprised at all, but a few of you may face palm.

We got lost. Really lost. Sorry, was that too anticlimactic? Let me clarify. We got lost in 'downtown', where there's no English anywhere, both of us are directionally challenged and neither can read a map with any accuracy. Lets ignore the fact that my boyfriend is a GIS major and has spent the past 4 years trying to give me crash courses in reading maps. Here's the story. We thought we were smart and would get off the train at a stop that we recognized instead of trying to transfer to the other metro line. Well this is  big city, so when we got off at Astoria, all the buildings looked familiar, so we couldn't tell which direction to go in. Smart decision? Get back on the metro and take the red line to Deak fer tere to transfer to the blue lune. Our decision? Pick a direction and take the bus a stop up. Well, as it turns out, we picked the wrong direction and, upon getting off the bus, turned into those stereotypical tourist who opened up a map, frantically trying to find the street we were on, and, bad decision number two, instead of standing in one place until we figured out the map thing, WE STARTED WALKING. And we weren't even smart enough to stay on the gigantic main road. We started walking down side streets. We spent over an hour walking without any sense of direction until we ended up next to the Elizabeth Bridge and less than half a mile from our staring point. At that point, we booked it to the metro station and hopped on the red line and transferred to the blue line. The guy at Cafe Torino made us the most incredible penne and we were ravenous by the time we finally made it home, so I think we would have scarfed down anything and everything he put in front of us. (I also had my second round of coffee for the day).
So following that adventure, I'm sure no one would be surprised to here that I went back to my bed and promptly fell asleep for over two hours. Now, normally I'm a light sleeper, but I fell asleep with the lights on, music blasting, and various classmates wandering in and out of my room. It was a great nap to say the least.
My amazing sleep was interrupted around 445 by my roommates asking if I wanted to go back to city park with them. The desire to explore and get some fresh air overpowered my need for sleep (and I did not want to get lost navigating myself to dinner), so I joined the excursion. As it turns out, today wasn't just any day in the park, there was a festival of some sort going on, so there was plenty of stuff to look at and enjoy. And, go figure, I managed to find a horse in the park. He was a beautiful bay that a local brought with her pony for people to ride around the grassy area. Now, don't worry, my roommates threatened me within an inch of my life if I actually got in the saddle, but I got to hug him and get my horsey fix for the day.

Now, despite the aforementioned nap, I'm dead tired and would very much like to curl up and go to sleep, so this post will end here, but tomorrow is a chill day so I'll try to fill in the details then.
Love,
Bedtime in Budapest