My first month in a nutshell since I came back to Hungary

I left Belgium on the 19th of December. I was crying on the airport of Charleroi before the takeoff and I was crying on the airport of Budapest when my plane landed. It was so hard to realize that my one year long journey has ended and I won’t be coming back to Belgium after the holidays.

The first two weeks were really calm and pleasant with my family. They were glad to have me back and I was happy to spend some time with them. I love Christmas time and I was happy to offer my carefully selected and wrapped presents to my loved ones. But as the days passed and Christmas time was over, I had to come back to reality, which was harder than I thought.

Before I went to Belgium, I wanted to finish my driver licence. But sadly due to the lack of time and because of the Hungarian bureaucracy I only finished the theory part and I couldn’t start the actual driving. So it was always my plan to come back to Hungary to finish my licence after the EVS. I guess I never thought about that it could be otherwise. I wasn’t thinking about staying in Belgium longer than my EVS lasted. But when I came back, I felt like the ground has been pulled from under me once again and I have to restart my life from scratch. I don’t want to exaggerate but I really felt like besides my family and a few friends, I have absolutely nothing here.

I think the worst part was moving in with my mom again. I was used to be on my own since I moved to Budapest for my university studies. Since five years, I was independent, making enough money to provide for myself, doing things the way I thought it’s the best for me and not taking any orders or advice from anybody if I didn’t wanted to. We had lots of fights with my mom at the beginning, but after a while we managed to make compromises. I am not saying that it’s easy for neither of us, but we both know that this is just a temporary state.

Anyway, I didn’t give myself the luxury of drowning in self-pity for a long time. I knew what I want to do with my life this year, so I made myself a “to do list”. This keeps me motivated and reminds me of my goals. First of all I had to do some paperwork because of the insurance and the driver licence. Sadly in Hungary nothing goes easily, even for a piece of paper you have to go to several offices and wait at least one or two weeks. So needless to say that I still havn’t started driving yet, but at least I already have an instructor who is willing to teach me as soon as I will have paper proof of my theoretical knowledge.

Meanwhile I started to look for a job. Not because I want to build my career in Hungary, but I don’t want to sit in my room all day long and I could really use some money as well. My parents were quite sceptical about my chances since my hometown is quite small and there are not many job offers especially not in January. But miraculously after sending my CV to a few places, I got three job interviews the first Monday of the month. I was pretty confident with nothing to lose, so I convinced all three employers that I am the one they want. I accepted the offer which seemed the best, so I’ve been working since one week now. I can’t say I’m not having second thoughts about my choice, still it’s better than nothing.

But my long term plans are taking me far away from Hungary again. I really enjoyed helping other people and learning French, so I decided that I want to continue both. I started to search for a project in the south of France and I am hoping that my efforts will pay off in the near future. I’m trying to stay optimistic no matter what, because I know that there are opportunities out there waiting for me to find them.