Twelve Black Code Monkeys

When I came back from the USSR, I was faced with having to find a job since I was at that point done with college. As luck would have it, the organization that I went through for my study abroad, CIEE, was losing a program assistant for their Eastern European and Russian Summer programs and I was in the right place at the right time. I started working there in January of 1990 and by the spring on 1991 I was able to convince them to at least in part sponsor a trip to some of the program sites. Basically, I wanted to visit my sister who was at that time studying abroad for a semester in Scotland, and somehow I came up with the brilliant proposal to CIEE that if they paid for my airfare over to Eastern Europe and I paid the rest, I could take over a video camera, shoot some footage of the programs for promotional purposes, and I would also get a more intimate understanding of the programs by being at the sites. Amazingly enough, they went for the idea and were generous enough to pay for all my airfare. The video I took was probably not the best quality and I tried to get a friend to edit it, but it never happened. They never asked for the video, so probably it they were not expecting anything much anyway.

So, my first stop was Hungary – Budapest to be specific. I remember getting to visit the university the students held classes in and riding on some trams, but I was only there a few days, and apparently I did not get to do much that was memorable. I remember seeing some McDonalds and maybe Burger Kings on the way to the train station and was taken aback by how westernized the country seemed just a couple years after the iron curtain had come down. I can’t imagine what it looks like now! I wish I had had a longer stay so that I could have gotten a better look at the place and a better feel for the culture, etc. The resident director for CIEE’s program escorted me and perhaps this was part of the problem. Either she just was not a very good escort or it would have been more helpful if I had tried to explore more on my own.