PROGETTO “Recycling Island” ERASMUS+ Giuliana Azzari, 20 anni Ungheria
My first month in Budapest was amazingly scary, I felt part of a Hitchcock thriller, sincerely I didn't know what to expect about this adventure. I was pretty sure about the project, I fell in love with it in the very moment I read the description, but after being accepted a lot of things changed: being a volunteer has positive and negative aspects, requires skills and taking responsibilities. At the beginning, it felt a bit uncomfortable to being welcomed by strangers. The first thought that I have was "I'm gonna end in the Chinese black market without a kidney". But the people that I thought would have killed me, ended to be really kind and, if you are reading my blog I'm glad to let you know that I still have my kidney. One of my other fears was the Hungarian language. The Hungarian is not easy to understand neither to learn; I already have a lot of problems trying to learn it. But is funny to see everybody laughing when I said something completely wrong. I work in a charity shop in Budapest, my work is awesome we received donations of any kind from clothes to alive snails, so yes, you can find everything in that little tiny store, also because every two minutes you can hear somebody screaming from the door "donation!". My coworkers have different types of abilities, as understanding each other without speaking the same language, dealing with Hungarians clients not knowing how to speak Hungarian, or challenging "Newton's law" creating mountains of clothes up to the sky. So yes, in this month my volunteering prepare myself to hundreds of things and teach me thousands more such as there are Hitchcock movies with happy endings and not everybody in this world wants to steal a kidney from you.