i say goodbye, but you say hello.

This past weekend, my mother exhorted me to write a post about some of the cultural quirks that I have noticed. These are a few things that came to mind off the top of my head.

(1) The practice of eating foods that I would classify as "dessert" as an entree. For example, doughnut-esque fried bread with jam. For lunch. Not that I'm complaining.

(2) Local hospital policy requires that I bring with me slippers when I go to visit patients. I change out of my shoes in the lobby and put on a pair of slippers before continuing to the floors. I assume this is for the cleanliness of the floors, but I'm still confused as to why changing shoes is a higher priority than washing hands.

(3) Since the weather has turned chilly, it is now common for people to live in a single room of the house which they heat by a lit stove burner left to burn around the clock.

(4) There are a lot of factors to keep in mind when looking for the right words to greet someone: age, gender, and level of familiarity. To complicate things, the cut-off between "Good Morning" and "Good Day" hits several hours earlier than I expect. There are also particular expressions for someone who is sick, who is eating, as well as for people of a common faith. Often two or more will be strung together in a phenomenon I call "the run-on greeting." For example, someone who greets me as I eat breakfast in the church kitchen would probably say, "Blessings and Peace. Good morning. Enjoy your meal." I find this a little confusing.

(5) Also on the subject of greetings, the informal greeting, "Szia," is used for both hello and goodbye. The same rules apply for the English "Hello," which has also been adopted in the Hungarian vernacular. This produces a befuddling but highly enjoyable situation in which people not unfrequently say, "Hello" as a way of saying goodbye.