Inspired by some of the work I’m doing at my new gig where we are an all https shop, I took the $15 plunge and bought a ssl certificate this morning for HarmsBoone.org.
Now, whenever you browse this site you can do so with the comfort of knowing that all the communication between you and this site is private, secure, and authentic. I’ll be doing the same for the other HarmsBoone sites, and for International Underground in the coming weeks, but decided to get the flagship, the oldest and, honestly, most trafficked of our sites locked down and secure first. The next step will be going through the site and making sure that all images and script files linked on our blog posts are also done with https so you know that those are coming through uncontaminated, too.
And that’s about it.
The biggest thing you can do as a user is remember to type https when linking to any website. The worst case scenario is the site hasn’t configured it and you fall back to an insecure connection. For the most part, though, you’ll be sending your friends and family to secure, trustworthy locations on the Internet.
After a long disznóvágás day, the blood sausage is ready.
On a Friday in late autumn, I walked into my ninth grade bilingual classroom to find an interesting query scrawled across the blackboard. “What is disznóvágás in English?” My command of basic Hungarian pronunciation was still rough around the edges, and as I read the sentence aloud, I mangled the word. I waited for the students to have a good laugh at my expense before I could get a chance to ask, “What exactly is a disznóvágás?” As they explained it to me the first time, I gathered that it was a pig slaughter, but little more. Continue reading “A Legfinomabb Magyar Étel”
Due to a potent combination of distraction and procrastination, here is part two of a short series on the Hungarian language, belatedly posted and slightly aged. Interested in reading part one? You’re in luck.
Who knows how far we'll get with the infamously elusive Hungarian language, but when June comes around, the goal is to at least be able to honestly say we tried.
Not speaking Korean in Korea was easy compared to not speaking Hungarian in Hungary. Korea’s population is remarkably homogenous and there was no mistaking me for a compatriot. As a result, I was rarely forced to speak Korean and, I’m a bit sheepish to admit, coasted by on “Annyeong haseyo” and “gamsahamnida”. One look and the cat was out of the bag that I wasn’t Korean, and thankfully kind Koreans often came to the rescue with English. Suffice it to say the language expectations of foreigners were low.
Yet now I find myself in Hungary, a land of fellow light haired, light eyed people, and the plug on my neon sign blinking, “Foreigner, please talk slowly or stick to charades” has been yanked from the wall. Now when I walk into a store, people don’t treat me like a toddling three year old. Of all the nerve, they treat me like an adult. Continue reading “Ruminations on the Hungarian Language: Take Two”
That's salt and pepper to you, or pronounced something like "show aysh borsh" to you.
With a storm of graduate school admission deadlines approaching, I’ve been a patchy blogger at best. Forgive me for posting pieces months late (including the apologetic preface that follows). Over the past couple of weeks I have had lots of time, and reason, to ponder the Hungarian language, specifically my inability to express myself in it. Between lack of Internet and the exhaustion of miming in as many ways as I can think of, “Please don’t bite others,” to first graders, among other tiring demands of teaching, I’m a bit behind on updating the blog. This first post was written in my first couple of days in Kaposvár. Even since then, my survival Hungarian has improved. Still, the message on biting and how we should only do it to our food and not our friends has yet to reach at least one member of the first grade. All in good time.
Making my way past the supermarket’s overflowing crates of pale green paprikas and stacked tubs of sauerkraut, I found one phrase sliding through my mind again and again, like a slideshow with a solitary picture: “Nem beszélek magyarul.” I don’t speak Hungarian. Continue reading “Nem Beszélek Magyarul: Ruminations on the Hungarian Language”
A post inspired by our friends at Just a Rough Draft, where they blog about creative concoctions and exotic foods they encounter from around the world, we turn this week to a recipe made from scratch. Continue reading “Linden Honey Baguette”
