Budapest Semesters in Mathematics.

I apologize for the length of my first entry. This entry will be shorter, I'm sure.

I am spending a semester in Budapest, Hungary, for the purpose of studying mathematics. I am one of about 70 undergrad math students from America and Canada on the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics (BSM) program. This program takes us to Budapest because many of the most important twentieth-century mathematicians are from Hungary—most famously, Paul Erdős. The program is hosted by a university in Budapest. If you're interested, you can read all about BSM on their website.

From what I've heard, the combinatorics and graph theory here are among the best in the world. The BSM professors are Hungarian, but they will teach in English. We don't choose classes until two weeks into the semester; before that point, we just try out different classes and see what we like the most. For those of you that care, I am thinking of taking: combinatorics, functional analysis, geometry, graph theory, and mathematical logic.

There is also a class called Conjecture and Proof, in which we just get miscellaneous, insanely difficult math problems to work on. I've heard lots of good things about it, but I've also heard lots of scary things. Apparently a lot of people drop the class before halfway, because it gets too hard. I may end up taking this class, but it's more likely that I'll just sit in on it and do whatever problems I feel like doing. Mostly I just don't want it to take away from my enjoyment of other classes or of life.

All this stuff is really exciting to me. I can't wait to start the math. However, before then, I am taking a two-week intensive Hungarian-language course. In my next entry, I will talk about the Hungarian language and my experiences with learning about it.