Epiphany...

As the new outbounds find out what country they will be exchanging to for 2011-2012 as are all excited and bouncing around about how excited they are and they ask tons and tons of questions I can't help but feel like an old person er... I'm not really sure how to say that. They ask the same questions I asked, they are just as excited and curious as I was, etc etc. It is the same thing I went through a year ago.

I had an epiphany today while on the Hév. I was thinking about how there was no way I was in any way shape or form prepared for what I was currently doing. That is to say taking a train home, well, where my luggage and passport resides (I still need a week or 2 before I can call it home I think...) by myself, in a foreign country. I admit to being afraid of my own shadow at times. And yet, this seemed like a perfectly normal action... going back to my flat..er my host parents who I met 2 days ago's flat. I also realized that looking back on the hours upon hours of orientation, question asking, and books (so many books) on trying to figure out what my year abroad was going to be like. What school, people, houses, everything really was going to be like... there was no point in it. You really do just live and learn while you're on exchange. Dare I say one becomes wiser? Seasoned, sarcastic, blunt? We are filled with knowledge. But because we take it in stride, we live and we learn. We fall, we get back up. We laugh at our previous naive-ity, we pride ourselves in the knowledge of a previously foreign and terrifying language. We grow and bloom into ambassadors. We now have the ability to laugh at tourists, roll our eyes at our parents attempts to speak Hungarian over skype. I can go into a cafe or store and people speak to me in Hungarian and I can easily respond whereas a few months ago I would give a few feeble attempts at trying to tell the clerk what I wanted to which they would roll their eyes and start speaking English. I definitely take pride in the fact that that no longer happens. We become exchange students rather than foreigners if that makes sense. I look back on my blog and see how naive I was. And I'll probably look back on this in a few months and think the same thing. This exchange is all about adaptations,change,and learning to become part of a new society. I think if there is one piece of advice I can give all new exchange students is to not worry about what your new life is going to be like. Throw out all expectations, go in with a positive attitude, a fresh slate, and new mind. Because once you get here, you really do have a clean slate. sok szerencsét.