A Different Kind of "Home" Sickness.

This past week, I have been overwhelmingly homesick for Budapest...

The sounds, the smells, the public transportation, the people, the language, the food…the everything. I want it, I miss it, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Sometimes I forget how much growing and healing I did while I was in the wondrous Hungary. Then, like a gust of wind, I remember: “Gosh…Budapest was one of God’s greatest gifts to me.” Being able to go abroad, worlds away from my problems and my demons, in order to find myself...how many people get that gift?


Complete strangers became closest friends. A foreign place became a comforting home. A broken girl became a beautiful young woman. I became me.

I have changed so much in the past 20 months...

Budapest will forever be a part of me. Writing my adventure as Budagirl was one of the smartest things I could have done. My sister, God bless her, bound that whole blog and gave it to me for Christmas last year.

On May 30th, 2010, I wrote:

All the things that made this place home--the objects, the pictures, the bottles, and the tokens that made Caitlin and I call this little space ours--all of that is put away to soon become little, beautiful reminders of a chapter that is drawing to a close.

These things, things which made our whole semester wonderful and unique, are shoved into tiny little spaces in my suitcase.

This place, this little apartment on Margit Korut, this new home of mine, will always be alive in my heart. I will always have the Soviet shower ingrained in my brain. I will never forget cooking for 13 hungry tummys on Fat Tuesday in the world's tiniest kitchen. I will always remember the lice bed. And how could I possibly forget the view?

It's true. Almost a year and a half later, and those memories are still vivid and beautiful. I continue to have laugh echos when I have random memories creep into my head. And for that, I am very thankful. And I was right...I will never forget this view:

When it comes down to it, I would go back in a heartbeat. Even knowing, and completely understanding, that it wouldn't be the same. I just want to breathe the air. I just want to speak the language, taste the pastries, eat the gyros, drink tea in a tree house, and experience it all again. But, what I want most of all? To share it with someone I love. Wouldn't that be wonderful? To bring someone I love to a place that taught my heart to heal?

I look forward to the day that I get to experience that adventure...

But, for now, I'm perfectly okay escaping into the memories and thanking God for all the people and things I got to meet and experience...