"I took a flight to the other side of the world."

For Valentina Ochoa, that is how one of the biggest chapters of her life began. At 17, she left Quito, Ecuador, for Hungary to study International Relations at the University of Pécs. Until then, she had spent her entire life in the same city. Suddenly, she was moving thousands of kilometres away from her family to a country she had never visited before.

She knew she wanted to study abroad. What she did not yet know was how much the experience would change her.