Where Am I?

Any day where I don't get to ask myself this question repeatedly is a boring day in my life.

It's hallowe'en, and I had the bright idea to go to Debrecen. My friend Brigitte lives there and her family doesn't like her traveling by herself, but they're fine if she wants to invite friends over. That, and I was promised a big party.

At about ten o'clock this morning, I got on the train in Dabas and went to Budapest. No incident there. I even managed to get my tickets for the train to Debrecen and back with the help of a note written in Hungarian by anya.

After only a small amount of confusion, I got on the train to Debrecen. I have my laptop so I got some writing done and wrote my entry for the Rotex Roundeup. , which is essentially a little blurb from each of the exchange students from my district saying how things are going. I should point out that I'm a little peeved about this because it's due tomorrow and they only reminded us of it yesterday. 

Anyways, the train stopped in Szolnok. And it didn't start. Everyone got off and someone even gestured at me to get off but I didn't really know what was going on. I can only assume that the train broke down because all of its passengers, myself included, were moved onto buses. I ended up in a window seat, my backpack and coat at my feet and my suitcase on my lap, next to an old woman who spoke a little English.

The bus stopped. Where, I'm still not sure, but we all got onto another train that I was told would take me to Debrecen.

If you're hoping for a happy ending to this story, you'll have to wait. The train just left mystery town and I'm heading to Debrecen. The girl next to me told me that I'm in the right place though, and that we should be there in about an hour. 

To be honest, I don't care anymore. I have the worst luck with public transportation. I just always think it's funny, because anya told me she was a little afraid for me before I left. She said she'd feel the same for any of her kids, which I just thought was sweet, not a bad omen. Now, through no fault of my own, I'm going to be arriving in Debrecen an hour later than I had planned.

I'll post the exciting conclusion later, when I actually know where I am and have met up with Brigitte and Haley and Tatyana and Axel.

Moira Ann

Karaustria

Bad pun, I know, but it was right there. Anyways, as you may remember, I was in Austria this past weekend with the other exchange students. It was fantastic. 

Felipe and I hopped on the train to Budapest at 9:16 Friday morning. As soon as everyone on the train found out we were exchange students, they became very curious about us and asked us about ouselves until they got off the train. Of course, they didn't speak a word of English between them, which made communicating a challenge. We did well enough, or, I should say, Felipe did well enough since he tended to dominate the conversation. It's not that he understood any more than I did, or knows much more Hungarian than I do, he just tends to be a bit more outgoing than me, and I'm convinced that Hungarian men are more sexist than they give themselves credit for. I got the feeling that I was being shunted aside for most of the conversation. Oh well, it's not really important.

We got to Budapest in good time and met up fairly quickly with the others. I saw Axel first, and Getti, then we met up with Katrina and Haley and Kate and Andres and Calvin at the Starbucks. God I've missed Starbucks. It seems odd considering how rarely I drank Starbucks coffee before but I think I just miss American coffee in general.

At noon, we all met at the MacDonalds in the mall next to the train station and it wasn't long before we'd piled in the bus and were on our way.

It was a couple of hours to the Austrian border and another hour or so to Vienna where we would be spending the night in a youth hostel. Given my sole experience in a hostel was a disgusting, abandoned shack that called itself a hostel in Cancun, Mexico when I was nine, I was surprised at how nice this place was. We only stopped there long enough to drop our things and get changed before we went back out to the opera house. The show that night: Kiss Me, Kate. I'd seen the play before, when South Kamloops Secondary had performed it at the Sagebrush Theatre. This was something completely different. For starters, it was in German. It was also done entirely in neon colours, which seems an odd palette for a show about a Shakespearean play, and I wish I could say that they pulled it off but I'm not sure they did. Either way, I'd forgotten my glasses so it didn't make much difference what colours they were using. I couldn't see much and I didn't know what they were saying.

After the play we went out for dinner. It was about ten o'clock at night at this point and all of us were starving. They'd given us each a packaged sandwich at the hostel but they'd, shockingly, been somewhat less than satisfying. I'd told the organizers of the trip that I was a vegetarian, mostly just because I'm getting a bit sick of meat. It's all we eat in Hungary, and it's tasty, but for the past two years I've gotten very used to living without it. It's been one of the hardest things to adjust to. That, and the Hungarians, again shockingly, eat a lot of Hungarian food. I probably should have seen this coming but I had expected a bit more variety. In Canada all we eat is food from other countries, it never occurred to me that my host family wouldn't eat curry or tacos or Chinese food or chili.

That being said, the food in Austria was a nice change. It was delicious, filling, and didn't make me feel as though I'd just eaten a cup of lard. 

We didn't get in that night until very late. It was at the earliest two in the morning when we got to sleep and they got us up at seven the next day. We strolled through Vienna for a while, taking in the city, before heading to lunch with the exchange students who were in Austria, two of which are from my district back home. - Edit: I should mention the fact that we also visited this giant old church (which was fantastic and beautiful and haunting and amazing) and we toured parliament, where I may have taken a highlighter out of one of the parliaments member's desk. To be fair, he really should have locked his desk, and I wanted my souvenir to be unique. Somehow I forgot about these things when I was writing this the first time... - I pitied the restaurant that took us on, since there were over a hundred of us altogether. The food was, again, amazing.

After lunch we headed to Schönnbrunn a.k.a the Imperial palace of Austria. It was interesting. There was so much history in the palace-turned-museum. And if the palace was nice, it was nothing compared to the gardens. We were there for a few hours and I didn't get to explore them nearly as much as I would have liked. From the palace to the far end was probably a kilometre long, with a flat stretch of paths and flower beds ending in a pond with a giant statue before turning into a steep incline up. At the top of the hill was another building from which you could see the whole city. It was perfect.

After this, we got back on the bus and went back to Hungary. It was only an hour's drive to Sopron, a small town on the border between Austria and Hungary. We didn't get to see much of it, unfortunately. We went to dinner that night at this cozy little restaurant where I, being vegetarian, was served the hungarian staple of deep fried things that should never be deep fried, with cheese sauce. This included deep fried cheese, broccoli, cauliflower, and mushrooms (spoiler alert! They fed me the exact same thing for lunch the next day). And who said being vegetarian was a healthier option?

We got in to our next hostel at about 10 pm and curfew was at midnight. It was fairly annoyingly obvious that they just didn't want us getting into trouble, which to some was extremely irritating. I understood they're reasoning behind it, there were four chaperones, three of whom were under the age of 21. I understood the need to be strict, but no one likes being treated like they've already done something wrong when they haven't.

The early curfew aside, I had fun. We hung out, chatted, generally just did what we'd all wanted to do in the first place an spent more time with each other.

The next day we were supposed to go to some kind of museum or something, but that didn't work out so instead we waited outside in the cold for an hour and then went and got lunch. After lunch we went back to Budapest and from there I came back to Dabas.

It was an excellent trip, and it taught me something, which is important, I guess. I learned that no matter how much I complain about Hungary, or about the people here, or the food, or whatever (I like complaining), I came to right place. Or at the very least, Austria isn't the right place. It was beautiful and the food was amazing, but it lacked something. Budapest has this undeniable character, this bold sense of knowing exactly what it is, even if what it is is a jumbled, confusing mess of eras andarchtecture and technology. Vienna didn't have that for me.

The other thing I learned was how nice it is to be with other exchange students. Before I came here, everyone was always saying how I should try to limit my time with other exchange students and ath e time that made sense. I should be immersing myself in the culture, not spending time with people from my own culture. What I couldn't predict was how hard that would be to do because, at the end of the day, exchange students are the only ones who truly understand exactly what other exchange students are going through. No one else, not friends and family back home, not friends here can begin to grasp how it feels. I'd know, before I came here, I was like them. I remember talking to the exchange students who were at my school and thinking how exciting it must be for them. Homesickness was, at the time, a real possibility, something that was bound to happen, but it could be conquered. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, no matter how much you try tounderstand  how hard something is for someone, you don't really get it until you've been through the same thing yourself. That's why this weekend was so important, I guess. It gave all of us a chance to talk to people who not only speak the same language as us (which is much more important than you'd think), but also know exactly how we're feeling. It makes me feel even worse for Felipe. At least the people here speak English to an extent, even if it isn't always easy to communicate. But I could count the amount of people I've met here who speak Portuguese on one hand.

Anyways, it's nice to know that I have real friends here, even if they're scattered across the country. Hopefully I get to see them again soon. 

Yesterday, I went to karate for the first time in almost a year. Or maybe it's been over a year. I don't remember. It's been a while, either way. Anya's friend's husband is an instructor so I went to class with them in the nearby village of Bugyi. 

It was interesting, and certainly not what I'm used to. It was much more impromptu than I was used to. Not much teaching happened, just a lot of hitting targets. And Ákos, the instructor, has a very different style than Jim Doan, my sensei back home. It was fun though, and a bit of a relief. For the first time in ages I got that little voice saying 'oh yeah, I'm good at this.' I go back tomorrow and I can't wait.

Until next time my lovelies,

Moira Ann

Fun-garian Fact: Bugyi is both a village in Hungary and the Hungarian word for underwear. I wouldn't bring that up in front of the residents of Bugyi, though. It's an old joke and one they don't appreciate. 

An Update

Tomorrow I will be heading to Vienna, Austria and I couldn't be more excited. From what I've heard, the city is amazing (and how could the city that host one of the bigger Pride parades in the world not be?) and I can't wait to see everyone and exchange stories.

We will be spending one night in Vienna, where we will be watching a German-translated version of Kiss Me, Kate (not sure how I feel about this yet. I love the theatre, but Ich kenne nicht Deutsch!) and spending some time going on a tour of the city. Then, we'll be heading back to Hungary, and spending a night in Sopron, which I hear is beautiful. The whole thing sounds fantastic.

On another good note, I think I will be taking karate here soon. I've spoken to anya about it, and Lizzie, so something should come of it soon! I tried handball, and frankly all it proved was that team sports are really not my thing. It's not that I was bad at it, or particularly uncoordinated, as I had feared. I just don't play well with others. And besides, it seems only prudent to participate in a sport where the goal is to cause harm, considering my track record. Not to mention the fact that I like karate. I took it back home and liked it a lot. It just wasn't as good of exercise as kickboxing was, since it involved a lot of standing around. Unfortunately kickboxing doesn't seem to be an option. Dabas is a small town after all, much smaller than Kamloops. We don't even have a Starbucks, a MacDonald's or, I think any chain restaurants. The only chain here is Coop ABC, a very prevalent grocery store chain in Hungary.

Anyways, I thought I should keep you guys, my loyal readers, up to date. I am feeling much better than the last time I posted, by the way. I had a bit of an issue  involving one of the 'attentive' Hungarian boys that I have since dealt with. It's always kind of amazing to me how much dealing with a problem can help your mood, even if you didn't know it was affecting your mood in the first place. I'm still getting some nightmares, but I've found a couple of things that help with those as well, so alles ist gut! I thought I should practice my German a bit.

Alright lovelies. I'll make sure to take lots of pictures on my trip and I'll post again when I get back!

Kisses!

Moira

Bad Dreams and Big Caves

Good morning, everyone.

I know it's a bit of a stretch with th me alliteration in the title, but I have two subjects for today's post and I wanted to make it work.

Bad Dreams: My mom asked me this morning if I was okay after reading my last blog post. The answer is yes. At the moment, I am okay. I have sustained no injuries and am in no danger of doing so, and I'd say to an extent that I'm happy sometimes though not usually. It doesn't help that for about a week now, I've been plagued by bad dreams almost every night. They change every night, and I can't always remember what they're about, but what I do remember is horrifying. Last night I dreamed that someone was pouring boiling oil on my hands. It didn't hurt, or at least not much that I remember, but there's something terrifying about watching your skin redden, blister, and fall off before you own eyes. Another dream I had, and I may have said this one already, involved baby spiders hatching under my skin, crawling inside of me and eventually bursting out as fully grown things that size of my fist. The others aren't as clear, but I usually end up waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night and it takes me ages to get back to sleep.

Whether this is caused by my unhappiness or is causing it, I don't know. I can't remember if depression can cause bad dreams, I'll have to look that up when I get home because, as I write this, I'm not at home.

I woke up late this morning (courtesy of a nightmare last night) and anya wasn't pleased to see me heading off to school after class had already started. I tried to tell her that no one cared when I got there as long as I made it there eventually, but she either didn't understand or wasn't convinced. My bet's on the former but at least I tried.   Truly, it doesn't seem to matter when I get to school. Maybe this is because very few things seem to matter to me at the moment, but I never quite understood why it was so important for me to attend school every day, especially when I rarely go to class even if I'm at the school. At home, I could see the importance of attending class, even if, in the throes of my depression, that became harder to do. Here, I'm not learning anything and I have my budding writing career to think about. I can get some work done in class, but not as much as I would like. 

Anyways, I biked to the school but couldn't bring mysf to go inside, so I'm sitting in the town square nearby, eating my usually breakfast of sandwiches and enjoying the morning air while I write this. Later, I think I'll get some coffee at my favourite local coffee shop. I've already trained two of the girls there into making my order (one Americano, here called hosszú kavé, black) as soon as they see me come in the door. 

Big Caves: I really should have written this earlier, and I tried but I lost everything I had written and I didn't want to have to rewrite it. My mom wants to read about my trip though, so her we go.

This past weekend, almost a week ago now, my host family took me on a trip. We drove across the country to the town of Josfávő on the border of Hungary and Slovakia and saw some caves that are there. It was cool, although, if you're going to look at caves, I suggest taking the shortest tour that you can find. There's nothing that exciting to see in caves in two hours that you can't see in a half an hour. That being said, I enjoyed myself, and got lots of bad pictures of stalagmites that I, in my teenager-ness, think look like penises. I'll let you be the judge.

After the caves, we drove to Miskolc, to anya's aunt and uncle's house. I love driving in Hungary, especially eastern Hungary. It's full of long flat planes, rolling hills and deciduous forests that seem to go on for miles. It's really beautiful. 

We stayed the night in Miskolc and the next morning drove to a park. The entrance was littered with shops and restaurants, but once you got into the park, it was just trees and nature and other people walking through on the giant paved path they'd put that led to the top of the park. It was nice there, very peaceful. We went on a train ride back to the bottom before getting back in the car and driving back to Dabas.

It feels weird thinking about driving across the country on an overnight trip, like it should be more significant than that. I know that's just because I'm Canadian, but it still seems strange to me. It also seems strange that I'm going to Austria for three days next week, like that too should be more significant. It's another country, shouldn't it take more than hopping on a bus for a couple of hours?

I'm excited, though. I've never been to that many places, and I want to see everything. Dabas feels a bit like a cage sometimes, especially since I can't go anywhere by myself for another month. I like having my bike, because at least then I can move around within Dabas with a certain amount of freedom, but there aren't many places to bike to.

I was excited to come here, and I'm still glad to be here, but sometimes I wonder if I'll ever have the freedom I long for. It sounds weird and deep, but I think about it a lot. High school, now exchange, then university and I'll have to have a job, then I'll be an adult with all the responsibilities that come along with that.

Sorry, I'm getting sidetracked and I promised pictures of penis-shaped rocks. So, without further ado:

Roller Coaster

I find myself in a state of constant flux. I don't like it. One day I am happy, and the next three are spent bordering on miserable. What's worse is that I have no idea why I feel this way. I know I've suffered from depression, and that's one explanation I entertain sometimes, but I like to think that there's some alternate cause, something that I can fix myself.

The difficult part is that the things that make me happy lately are the very things that people keep telling me will make me unhappy, and vice versa. Being alone, drinking coffee and thinking, brings me more peace than anything else. Spending time with friends from school, however, makes me anxious and upset if done for extended periods of time. Everyone (especially anya) keeps telling me to go out more, spend time with people, and I do sometimes, at school usually. Outside of school, I never want to. I just want my space, which is hard when, whenever I'm by myself, I feel guilty for not being with other people. I'm beginning to wonder if there's such a thing as being too independent, especially when it comes to exchange.

In Canada, if I spent time with anyone, it was Courtney, usually. She was always the one person I could be with and feel perfectly at ease. It was like being with another version of myself. She is halfway around the world and as much as I want to talk with her sometimes, I understand why people caution against talking too much with people back home. My parents were also people I felt comfortable spending large amounts of time with. Again, the issue is the same.

I was having a good time for a couple of days there - my host family took me on a trip across the country for a couple of days (weird, driving across a country in a day...). I'll post more about that later. It was fun, relaxing. I didn't feel pressured to do or be anything. Almost immediately after getting back, that feeling went away and I went back to feeling stressed and uncomfortable.

Anya has been pressuring me to be more social, and I truly want to, even if it is just to make her happy. Mostly I just don't know how to explain to her that I'm not a social person. I'm not shy. Not remotely. I just find more pleasure in solitude than with others, especially teenagers. The people my age in Dabas tend to spend a lot of time drinking and smoking; things I rarely do, if ever. There's also the unfortunate language barrier, which I'm doing my best to overcome, but I've only been here two months.

I'm fairly certain it was also anya's idea to enlist Bence, her nephew, to befriend me. I appreciate the thought, I think. He's nice enough, I guess, but Hungarian guys are, at best, attentive, and at worst... Well, that's not the point. The point is that now I have a new friend forced on me, one that I have to be with if I want to take the bus to school - which I have to now that it's cold and rainy - and who's insistent that I can't do anything for myself and need to be escorted everywhere I go. It's condescending and suffocating.

Anya isn't the only one who thinks I must be lonely. My second or third day here, one of my teachers tried to lecture me on what I was doing wrong. She didn't like that I read a lot, she said it made me look closed off. I think it makes me look more appealing to people that I want to hang out with, i.e. book lovers. Another thing that I think doesn't help is that when people ask 'how are you?' here, they actually want to know how I am, and, as a rule, I don't tell people how I am. I say 'fine', they think I'm rude because I haven't pulled out my diary, and so my air of being 'closed off' continues. I've had people complain to me about my doing this as well. Hungarians aren't shy about voicing their negative opinions of you. I'm not complaining, it's just how they are, but you can only hear what you're doing wrong so many times before it gets to you.

This sounds harsh, I know, but it's been bugging me for some time and I'm just now getting it off my chest in the only way I know how: writing. They're openness and honesty are some of the things that I love most about the Hungarian people, as well. There isn't so much bullshit here as there is back home. With Hungarians, what you see is what you get. Thing is, I've gotten quite good at honest to goodness bullshitting, and I hate to think that my skills are being wasted or worse, getting rusty. The people here say what's on their mind. Even if they're shy, they say what they think, and there's something to be admired in that. They're friendly people, and everything I've described here is their way of trying to help, I get that. Problem is, it's not helping, it's making things worse, because more than ever, I want to hide in my room, drink coffee by myself, and/or put my headphones in and play my music too loud.

I'm not writing this to worry anyone. If anything, I feel no worse than I ever did at home (which, yes, I know, mom and dad, that was never excellent, but that's another conversation entirely). What I mean is, I'm here, and maybe I'm unhappy, but I'd rather be in Hungary and unhappy than at home, unhappy.

The thing is (and I keep meaning to end this post so sorry if it's getting a little long), I have to keep doing the things that make me happy, even if they aren't the things that people think I should be doing necessarily. I can't force myself to be something I'm not, I can only be myself. I can grow and change who I am by expanding my horizons and doing things I'm not comfortable with, but not all the time. There needs to be give and take, I need to walk before I can run and - if I can fit just one more cliché in here - it's all a balancing act. Maybe I can fit in. Eventually. Just give me time.

Yours always,

Moira

Adventure vs. Disaster

How do you know you're having an adventure? It's usually hard to tell in the moment, so I'll give you some tips on how to know that you are currently on an adventure (please note that these are not exclusive to adventures, nor will all adventures follow all of these criteria):
1. You don't know where you are.
2. You don't speak the same language as anyone around you/who is reachable by phone.
3. You don't have your phone.
4. It's raining/snowing/extremely hot/extremely cold out.
5. You don't have any way of getting home.
6. You have a tight, panicky feeling in your chest.
7. You're confused, and can't quite remember how you got to be where you are in the first place.
8. You think you might cry.

Don't panic! You're just on an adventure! Sit tight, and ride through it.
I like to think that what I went on today was an adventure, mostly because that means that it was daring and fun, rather than depressing and scary, and leaving me with the sense that I've made a complete ass of myself.
It started this morning with anya yelling slightly more frantically than usual for me to wake up. This was because it was raining and I couldn't bike to school and leave whenever I wanted, I had to take the bus, which leaves at 7:10 am. It was 6:50 when I got up, which I think means that I got ready in a record time for me. Anya drove me to my bus stop where Bence was waiting for me. Bence is a nice guy and anya's nephew. We'd been talking on Facebook for a while, but this was the first time I'd met him in person. It was weird, he seemed familiar to me somehow, although I think this was just me being overtired. I've been suffering from nightmares lately and haven't been sleeping properly.
We got to school and he met up with his friends to have a smoke. I joined them, not to smoke - I don't smoke -  just to have some place to be before school started. I was in a grumpy mood, having been rushed through my morning routine and forgotten my phone at home, but hanging out with Bence and his friends helped a little.
School sucked, no surprise there. Partway through the day I realized that I didn't have my glasses. I don't wear my glasses much, only when I'm working, so I figured I could have left them at home too, but I didn't think so. I seemed to remember wearing them in class that morning. Also, anya didn't have time to make me food in the morning like she usually does, so I had to get a sandwich at the shop in school, and they're disgusting.
I did find my glasses eventually, and told Bence I was going to get a cup of coffee before going home. He wanted to make sure I got home all right, which was sweet, but at the time I thought it was wholly unnecessary. Boy, was I wrong.
I couldn't find Bence after I finished my coffee, but he'd told me when the bus was arriving so I went to the bus stop. He wasn't there either when the bus got there, so I got on by myself.
It was the wrong bus. I didn't realize this until the bus driver stopped and tried to explain in Hungarian that this was the last stop and we were most certainly not where I wanted to be. We were in the next town over. I didn't panic, or at least, I tried not to. I took a few deep breaths and told him I didn't speak Hungarian, that I was an exchange student, that no, I didn't have a cell phone with me. After a few minutes of me wondering what on earth I was going to do, tears springing readily to my eyes, he took pity on me. He told me to get back on the bus, and he drove me back to Dabas. He even pointed out the bus that I needed to get on to take me home.
Anya was very worried about me, Bence had called my phone several times, and now they don't stop laughing at me. I think that's what happens when you're worried about something and then it turns out to not be a big deal. You laugh, even if it's at someone else's expense, namely mine.
Now, I am home. And, I got my first hair cut in Hungary. It was a long day. I didn't like it. I don't ever ever ever want to take the bus again, mostly just because I will be horribly ridiculed by Bence any time we get on now.
I don't want to have an adventure ever again, at least not alone.
Moira