the journey of an aspiring linguist

I’ve been in Amsterdam for four days now. The best thing about it is that, even though I’m in a capital city, I don’t really realise it: there aren’t nearly as many cars and there isn’t nearly as much noise as in Budapest or indeed in London! There are more bikes than cars here, and even now that I have been to the city centre, I still can’t complain about the quality of the air! It’s also wonderful to see how helpful people here are. I’ve only been living at Spinoza Campus for 4 days, but I’ve already made a lot of friends, both Dutch and international ones. As I still can’t find my way around the city, it really is fantastic that I always find someone to help me get where I need to get. Thanks to these incredibly nice students, I managed to get to the bank on Tuesday. My bank account became officially live the very same day, but I was asked to come again when I get my BSN. I also went to the introductory events of the university, exclusively for new international students. Althoough ...

I have had an amazing day with some Dutch friends of mine, who are very dear to me. I got to know a whole family after having known the father for a month or two (we met on mylanguageexchange.com). He taught me the very basics of the Dutch language and has been helping me since. In the very beginning, we would use English and German to communicate, but that didn’t last long: I managed to learn Dutch so fast that we were able to switch to Duch in as little as a month, and even before, I would try to use as much Dutch as I already knew. Thanks to my memory and my aptitude for language(s) (which I cannot be grateful enough for!), I turned out to learn so fast that I was able to discuss topics such as politics, healthcare, ICT or visual concepts in less than two months. I soon got to know his wife and then his three daughters, and we’ve been Friends ever since (and yes, the capital F is necessary!) They would help me with everything I needed, and today they proved to me that everything the...

After 18 (instead of 14) hours of travelling, I have finally arrived in the Netherlands. I cannot adequately express the gratitude I feel. I will never be able to properly thank those who offered to take me all the way to the Netherlands by car, just to avoid it costing me an arm and a leg to get here (I would have needed to buy a plane ticket at the last minute). I will never forget the moment I stepped inside my (clean, already half-furnished) room and “saw” the same friends I had been chatting with on facebook, who have now properly shown me they do keep their promises and that they mean what they say. My faith in humanity is officially restored!

Hello and a warm welcome to my blog! Thank you for stopping by – hopefully you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing! As you might have guessed, my name is Dora. I have just turned 22. I was born and raised (and educated until the age of 19) in a small town in the south of Hungary, relatively near the Serbian border. After three years of uncertainty over my career, I am elated to be able to write that I am currently studying linguistics at the University of Amsterdam a university in Budapest studying English and American studies, but I have always hoped and intended to study (and then work) abroad, and this year, this dream of mine is finally coming true. I’m the only girl in a set of triplets. One of my brothers and I have been blind since birth, and my other brother is partially sighted. However, blindness certainly doesn’t stop me [or my brother, who is now at the academy of music studying classical organ!] from having big plans for the future and contributing to society...