So last week was the big move! I left home Tuesday morning and drove to Minneapolis. Flew from there to Chicago and from Chicago to Warsaw, Poland. I went through customs in Poland and after a couple hour layover finished my journey to Hungary! The trip was exhausting and a little stressful but fun. I spent the entirety of my last flight talking with a man from Poland. He had guessed I was Polish at first, but after my blank stares and a weak hello (it was about 3am in Minnesota by then) he started talking to me in English. I told him it was my first time in Europe and he gave me suggestions of a bunch of places to visit as well as some ideas about the easiest ways to get around and things to watch out for.
After we landed and I collected my luggage, Robin, Cassidy and Betsy met me at the airport. Betsy and Cassidy will be my new roommates and Robin is my team “mom” for then next few months. After dropping my things off at the apartment. We grabbed a metro and went downtown for dinner by the river. Budapest is really beautiful and I feel lucky to live here.
My first week in Hungary has been a lot of learning about the city, settling in and getting to know people. I am still figuring out what my role on the team looks like and trying to determine which opportunities will have the most impact. There are so many opportunities for me to be involved in. I am for sure leading one English club that meets weekly and co-leading two more. This next week I am spending three days in a public school in Budapest with some Campus Crusade staff and am not sure what to expect. The week after that I will be starting Hungarian language school which will take a lot of my time for the next several weeks. Besides that there are a few things that I would love to work into my schedule such as English bible studies with some of the people I am meeting and possibly an outdoor adventure group for high school students. The bible studies would not be that time consuming but the adventure program would be, and I would need to make some more connections. I am trying to take things slow though because I don’t want to over do it and I have been warned that language school is very time consuming.
This week Robin, Cassidy, Betsy and I took a small trip to Poland to go shopping for Polish pottery. It is crazy to me that we were in four countries in one day (Hungary, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Poland). They all use different currency and speak different languages, but because they are all Eastern European we did not have to go through any customs or have our passports checked anywhere. Learning to communicate is fun. Young people usually speak at least a little English and German is also pretty common since we are so close to Germany. Driving is very different here. Everyone drives stick and most vehicles are diesel. Roads are narrow, crowded and people drive fast and too close together. I had my first European driving experience winding through the Polish countryside navigating roundabouts, road signs I couldn’t read and road construction in a giant van. No one died except the van once at a roundabout when someone honked at me! I am thankful that for the most part I will be depending on public transportation here.
There are also some things that I will definitely have to adjust to here. The first one that comes to mind is food. My first time at the grocery store I was impressed to see only fresh baked bread (not even in a bag yet), fresh cheese wrapped in saran wrap, milk in a bag, grapes with seeds in them and bananas that were more expensive per kg than nectarines. Peanut butter is also more expensive than nutella and jam is a luxury. I am convinced that Hungarians live on carbs, meat, cheese, wine and chocolate. I also need to learn to pay more attention to security. I had my first experience with being pick- pocketed last Saturday. Someone managed to get my wallet out of my purse and I was very lucky to have kept my passport and all of my cards not in my wallet. Overall I only had about $120 and a $130 metro pass stolen. Everything here must be kept locked up all the time, even if you are just running next door for a minute. This is very weird for a Yooper girl like me who is not even used to locking her car or house over night.
I am learning and adjusting well (I already feel totally over jet lag), but I could also use some prayer. I fully believe that the enemy wants to keep us from effective ministry and will try in every way to make us useless in the Kingdom. I refuse to accept this, but that means that I am fighting a great fight. I want to have prayer for building strong relationships with my two new roommates. They are both night people, artsy, love shopping and are not very outdoorsy, so not people that I would normally be drawn to. We all love Jesus though and are in this together, so I want to find ways to love them better and build them up in who they are. I think that because we are so different we can make a great team if we build on each other’s strengths. I also would love prayer in keeping a joyful and adventuresome attitude in learning how things work in a new culture and getting my needs met in this new context. Hungarians have a much more laid back approach to life and nothing happens quickly or according to plan. As a doer and go-getter this is endlessly frustrating and will take some growing in patience for me. I also need wisdom in scheduling all the things I want to be involved in, and really just knowing what to do. I also am already missing family and friends and want to get a regular schedule set for calling and skyping people back home.
Finally I really want prayer for healing for me knee. I had surgery at the beginning of June and it did not go as good as expected. Post surgery the doctor told me I should not run anymore, which was very hard for me to swallow, but the doctor expected full recovery and no pain for all low impact activities. The healing process was slow and painful, but I spent most of the summer feeling like I was at least making progress in returning to normal activity. Now almost 4 months after surgery I feel that my knee is as bad or worse than before surgery. Walking around the city and climbing stairs is painful and frustrating and in the week I have been here I have already noticed my knee getting worse and more swollen. I really just need prayer in this area.
Thank you everyone so much for your support. I could not do this, and would not be here without all of your love and support.