Annyeong! I'm Seungae from South Korea, and I'm currently a student in the English and American Studies programme at ELTE, specialising in film and culture. If I told you that ELTE is the first school I have ever attended in my entire life, would you believe me?

My friends always ask: why are you studying English literature and linguistics in Hungary, of all places? To answer that, I have to tell you my whole story, and it begins with homeschooling. I was homeschooled through all of elementary, middle, and high school. Adapting to university life was genuinely challenging at first, because I had never once sat an exam before arriving here. But in many ways, that unconventional background became my greatest strength. Without a fixed classroom structure, I learned early how to take full responsibility for my own learning, designing my own study routines, setting personal goals, and evaluating my own progress.

English was no different. My parents didn't speak a word of it, so every day my mother would go to the library and bring home twenty English books. I learned by reading, listening, and watching DVDs. At one point, my mother offered me a reward of 500 euros if I read 1,000 English books. So I did. All those books slowly opened a window to Europe in my imagination.

Then, through a homeschool book club, I fell in love with the Analects of Confucius. For anyone unfamiliar, Confucius is to Asian philosophy what Aristotle or Socrates are to Western thought. That love led me to study Korean Classical Translation, where I read ancient Chinese philosophical texts in their original script. Language, literature, philosophy, and history- I found myself drawn to all of it. There is a particular joy in reading a text in its original language that no translation can fully replicate. So how did I go from studying philosophy to studying Shakespeare on the other side of the world?

The answer starts with Jeju Island. After four years at the institute, I spent about three months working as a guesthouse manager on Jeju, a beautiful island off the southern coast of Korea. Ninety per cent of our guests were foreign travellers. Listening to their stories and talking with them, I began to understand that the conventional life script was not the only path. I decided, finally, to pursue the dream of studying abroad that I had carried for so long. I wanted to experience education that was truly alive, that is full of questions, debates, and genuine curiosity. And I wanted to go somewhere most Korean students wouldn't think to go. Not the US, not the UK. Hungary.

That was how my life at ELTE began, which is my first school ever, my first exams, my first seminars and lectures. It was all completely new. But it was exactly what I had come for. Discussing Blake, T.S. Eliot, and Shakespeare in a room full of passionate, opinionated students and professors, I looked forward to class. Studying English literature in ELTE allowed me to learn the fundamental questions of life and philosophy from some of the great masters of literature, and it has become a genuine source of joy in my life. ELTE was a place where I could simply be myself.

Budapest itself surprised me. The international community here is remarkably active, with events and programmes open to everyone, announced almost daily. Hungarian students were warm and welcoming too. I was invited into Hungarian homes, once on Christmas Day, and I genuinely felt like part of a family.

I also had the privilege of spending a semester on Erasmus exchange at Nova University in Lisbon, Portugal. Erasmus, I think, is one of the most extraordinary things about studying at a European university: a door flung open to an entire continent. ELTE is the first school I have ever attended. And it turned out to be exactly the school I always needed.

If you are thinking about studying here, my advice is this: real change never comes from staying comfortable. You must be willing to leave behind the familiar, and when you do, it will take you further than you ever imagined. The Seungae who existed before studying abroad and the Seungae who exists now are not the same person. Had I stayed home in Korea, I think I would have kept living within the familiar boundaries I already knew. But when you step outside, the sky has no limit. For me, that sky was Budapest. We think as far as we can see, and here, at ELTE, surrounded by passionate people who had also chosen to step outside, I learned lessons from their eyes, their energy, their conversations, and smiles that no amount of money could ever buy.