Hungarians in the wild: Our first week as exchange students
New place, new people, new food. Everything seems to be new when you’re off to a foreign country for pursuing studies as an exchange student.
Míra, Zsofí and Benedek
This is exactly why we set off to Bornem in January.
The purpose of our visit was to experience another culture while widening our horizons and at the same time to see how the school system works outside of Hungary. To say the least, we were pleasantly surprised. One of the most amazing things we noticed was, that no matter how big the group of pupils was that we joined in for lunch or just to hang out with, everybody tried to speak in English, to help us join in the conversation.
As for school, Flanders have a completely different system. They have fewer classes and more subjects to choose from as well. It was great that we could participate in a students’ council meeting and could get an insight into school life and what programmes the students plan for Valentine’s Day.
We especially enjoyed the CLIL classes. Our most memorable class was when Míra played the role of a medieval lord, while Zsófi and Benedek acted as if they were peasants.
We also enjoyed the lesson on Cold War and the discussion on that historical period. We liked these lessons because the teachers encouraged us to apply our knowledge in an active way.
We stayed at the houses of the local pupils and took part in their daily activities. It was interesting and at the same time surprising to experience how families can live and cook their meals without using any spices.
Besides going to the local high school we visited different cities as well. We took the train to Leuven, Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp, which turned out to be an efficient way to take the trip from one city to another. Everything worked well for us. We have nice memories of these trips. We especially liked Antwerp, where we popped into cathedrals and other amazing buildings at every streetcorner.
In Leuven we visited a place where women who devoted their lives to religion used to live.
We could gain new knowledge and experience on the Belgian way of life. We experienced huge culture shocks for example bubbly iced tea, and the popularity of French fries. Besides that, people are way kinder and more polite than in Hungary. We have quite a few funny and surprising stories to tell. When we took the train to Leuven and one of us had her birthday that day so a few people wished her Happy Birthday. At one of the stations a man walked past us, then turned back and said to her: “Congratulations, and Happy Birthday. We were shocked, it was something that would have never happened in Hungary.
As one of our host students is really into theatre and performance art, we also had the opportunity to visit the Festival of Drama Arts in Antwerp.
We are grateful for this opportunity, this experience, and we had a great time at OLVP Bornem. We got to meet new friends and meeting people from different backgrounds is one of the few experiences through which we are able to grow as a people.
It was a life-changing encounter for us and we are grateful for all the students and teachers who took their time and tried to engage with us.
