My first month in Hungary
Unbelieveable how the time goes by. I’ve been in Hungary for over a month now and so much has happend. But let’s start from the beginning 🙂
The first few weeks were really difficult for me. I was very homesick and I hadn’t really made any friends yet, which meant I often felt alone. But as I got to know more and more people and made friends, I really started to enjoy my days here. It was still nice and warm in October, which meant I explored a lot of the city and did a lot of activities outside.
My teaching experience started in the second week. I had a lot of respect for it and was also unsure how the students would react to me. But fortunately all my fears were in vain. The students were all very happy about me and are (mostly) very motivated to work with me. I really enjoy working with the young people and it’s interesting for me to see the students from a different perspective, since I’ve always been a student myself 🙂
I also have a German conversation club with adults every Thursday evening in the Méliusz Juhász Péter library. I was really very nervous before the first conversation club, as it takes more to convince adults than children or young people. But that was also better than expected. The adults have welcomed me very warmly and we discuss various topics such as travel, culture, hobbies and many more every week.
Well that’s it for the description of my work. Let’s come to the highlight of my first month here in Hungary: the On-Arrival training.
In the first month of the ESC stay in Hungary, all current volunteers meet in Visegrád to attend workshops and trainings together.
Apart from the fact that the On-Arrival training is held in a wellness hotel from Monday to Friday, you get to know an incredible number of different people from all over the world. We had people from Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Turkey, Bangladesh and many more. On the first day everything was a bit strange because we didn’t fully understand the workshops and the people were all new. But already on the second day we grew together as a group and did great things together. I really made new friends and we kind of extended our stay and spent the week in Budapest as a group of four. If I had told my former (really shy) self that I would be spending a weekend in Budapest with almost strangers, I would never have believed myself, but the experience was truly incredible.
In summary, I can say that I have already learned a lot in my first month in Hungary. I had a lot of hurdles that I overcame, I grew through the challenges, met a lot of great people and I also got to know myself better. I’m really looking forward to the next three months and I’m excited to see what highlights I’ll experience in the near future.
Lisa
ESC Volunteers 