My ring and my pass-holder

I actually have two objects I want to share. The first is the ring that I got from my mom. The ring was given to my mom by her dad. She passed it on to me, I guess it was just before I left. The second object here is a bit different but still very important! I’m from Hungary and we often use card holders to hold our bus passes and cards. I don't really see them anywhere else, I always go back home and pick them up. They are just plastic but they are so useful! I don’t know why you don’t really get them anywhere else. I am from Debrecen, the second largest city in Hungary, next to the Romanian border. I came to Ireland in 2015 to study. This isn’t my first time living abroad - I studied French in the south of France for about three month, where I spent my time their traveling and volunteering. At the moment, I’m in Dublin City University doing a four year course. I am doing translation studies here. If I studied back home, I would only be able to do one language but here I can do two - French and Japanese, and of course I am doing it through English, so technically I’m studying three languages. I’m a languages person, so I love traveling and picking up new languages - My boyfriend lives in Rome, so I am trying to learn Italian. He was born and raised in Rome, I don’t know whether he will ever leave the city! I get it! The beauty, the food, why would you leave Rome?! I am almost more homesick for Rome than my own hometown. I feel that I am someone with my heart in so many different cities, so who knows where I will go after Ireland. As part of my course, I got to spend one year in Japan, last year. I absolutely loved it. I have just come back here and I will probably leave Ireland when I graduate for somewhere else. I would like to do a masters in Hungary, but maybe in Budapest instead of my hometown. I have a lot of friends there and I like the buzz of the city. I always wear my ring. I think this piece of jewellery is so important to me. It’s tiny but it expresses a huge value. It’s something I always carry with me and always wear. Part of living out of a suitcase is that you don't get to bring stuff around with you. But with jewellery, you don't have to pack it in to 20kg bag, you can just wear it! I can wear this ring every day and it's always with me, wherever I am. Ireland is not too far but when I was in Japan… Asia is so far away and yet I have my bit of home with this ring. So I don't feel so far away. I lived in Kanazawa, a beautiful city near the Sea of Japan, studying in the university there. It’s a more traditional city than Tokyo, they pretty much only speak Japanese there. Learning Japanese is a never ending process, and we had to learn it when we were there. I found that linguistic knowledge has nothing to do with how easy you will integrate into society. Of course, you cannot become Japanese yourself but you can still become a very integrated part of the community. Everyone in Kanazawa knows each other, says hi on the street and they treat us foreign students like family. They never minded if we didn’t speak a lot of Japanese. I did and so I mostly translated for others but they really didn’t mind. They welcomed us into their homes and they were always so welcoming. We were concerned that perhaps Japanese people might have had some distrust of us coming in. They are the safest country in the world, there is sometimes a fear that people from other countries would disrupt the peace in Japan. Thankfully, we were welcomed in with open arms though. It was easier in Japan thank Dublin actually. I found it more difficult here because I was foreign but I was also European, so I was difficult to break through the social barrier in the groups in my classroom and actually connect. The plastic card is kind of a conversation starter for me. “Where did you get that? It’s so useful” - I don't know why nowhere else does it, it’s like half a euro to buy. I often bring a few back for my friends here. We call it a pass-holder in Hungarian, for your fast pass which is the most important thing in your pocket! The card holder is useful. I carry Polaroids and little memories in it as well as my passes. When I tap my Leap-card on Dublin bus, there is also a Polaroid of my boyfriend beside it. Living abroad can be tough, sometimes you need the emotional support of these little pieces and pictures to get you through the day so you can feel connected to your loved ones wherever you are. I was fed up with Hungary when I left, I was a moody teenager and I wanted to get out. But only when I left I realised how much I missed it, it was a culture shock but it made me appreciate my home country.