Week two (catching our breath)

It is nearly nine.  The kid’s are in bed, dishes cleaned, garden watered, and I sit here on my cozy Ikea chair with a glass of Hungarian wine feeling slightly and increasingly at home.

My last post already feels a bit like a different lifetime here.  A more overwhelming, isolated, and frightening one.  One that I hope we will not revisit.

Since that post the following occurred…

What felt like 20 trips to the nearest Ikea, which when you get lost three times each way, is not so short.

At least one haul to the grocery store each day, where no matter how much or what we bought we inexplicably ended up with some variation of pizza for dinner and an empty pantry the next morning.

A giant and terrifying move from school-arranged housing to our empty, barren home, where Finn slept on a beach towel for sheets and often ate our pizza meals on flattened cardboard boxes. 

A phone call and meeting with the middle school principal, whose concern and help felt like air to us at a time when we desperately needed to breathe.

The arrival of our brand new furniture, and about 15 minutes to stare adoringly at it before grubby hands and sauce-stained mouths attacked.

After a week of nearly complete isolation we met a new French couple with a three year-old daughter, ran into our new neighbors, an American teaching couple with two older girls, and met face-to-face for the first time with the family who held our hands and walked us through the exciting and terrifying moments of these past five months from afar.  Our next door neighbors are a very nice middle-aged Hungarian couple with two school-aged children.  We enjoy our conversations with them over the fence.

Our shipment arrived, and though we could hardly wait to get our stuff, somewhere around box twenty-five, when we realized they were only half way, I seriously considered taking it all back. 

Two trips to the city with our aforementioned friends.  And while the various modes of public transportation plenty sufficed for the boys, the sights, food, and atmosphere of this gorgeous city had us asking, multiple times, “Is this really our life?”

A bedtime story about Aiden train (a favorite character) who had to leave his best friend, Emily train, for a new station, where the passengers needed him and new friends awaited.  And though he finished the story while mommy teared up at his bedside, the reminder of friends and family an ocean away still remains.

And I know this constant mixing of bitter and sweet will mark our time here, for a while at least.

But we feel so blessed.  And though I am sure difficult times await I can say this was a great week and that we are happy.  I can say that we are adjusting and just beginning to find our place here. 

And at the very start of a journey with so many unknowns I think that is a lot to say.

First Visits to Budapest City Center