From one three-striped country to another

   Lithuanian Flag                                                                Ecuadorian Flag

Trip to the Market

So after around three weeks of living here, I finally found the courage (and inner warmth) to venture out into the winter wonderland that is my home, dragging along an incredibly amiable boyfriend. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we both only have one morning class, leaving the rest of the day completely open to spontaneous adventures in the city. 


I've been dreaming lately about fresh vegetables and fruit, handmade scarves and mittens, open air and native people, so when my Introductory Lithuanian professor (who is the funnest teacher - I always have great language professors) taught us the word "turgus", the Lithuanian word for "market", I knew exactly where we needed to go. 

After some directions from my very knowledgeable roommate, we left the LCC campus and boarded a bus towards "senamiestis" - "old town". 

Kirk was way more excited than he looks in this picture. I promise.

On the way, we saw an extraordinary amount of brick buildings. Again, I love the oldness of this place and the snow and the brick together look so handsome. 

We finally made it to the market, but it didn't impress me too much. I guess the big day is Saturday or Sunday, so maybe this weekend I'll drag more people out into the cold in search of the good stuff. There was a bread section that was pretty good, except it was lacking in small and simple loaves of bread, like my panecitos back home. There was also a flower section, full of roses, which I fantasized were from the motherland, a.k.a. Ecuador ("Ekvadoros" in Lithuanian). 


Kirk tried to buy a hat because his beanie got lost somewhere along the way from Vilnius to Klaipeda (I think it's at Trakai Castle). The woman selling it to us at first said it was 20 Lt in English and we were so impressed. It was only after Kirk had the hat on his head that she changed the price to 120 Lt. To be fair, it did have an Adidas symbol on it :)

We found a nice little alleyway with a few different restaurants. This guy was in the process of taking down Christmas decorations (the Eastern Orthodox tradition celebrates Christmas in early January).

Tomorrow's the weekend and I have big plans including, but not limited to: doing my laundry by hand (each load of laundry costs 4 Lt - about $2 - here and the machines are pretty small), maybe hitting up the market again, and figuring out new recipes. News flash: cooking is actually fun to do, even if I just do it from necessity. 

A (Very Long) Breakdown, Day 4-7

On Thursday, Day 4 of my Lithuanian adventure, we went to a castle. Trakai Castle is situated on an island in Trakai, Lithuania. Because it is the middle of winter, the lake that normally surrounds the castle was completely frozen over, making it look like something out of a fairytale.

      

                                      

Trakai Castle felt old. Displays were set up in every room to show what life in the castle used to be like: mannequins clothed in outfits from the 14th century, maps and paintings, jewelry, and rooms decorated in the old fashion.

A four-hour bus ride followed, complete with snacks and naps. That night, we finally arrived at LCC, where my roommate (and RA), Laura from Latvia was waiting in the lobby to meet me. 

My dorm room is more like an apartment. It consists of two bedrooms connected by a shared vanity/kitchen space, a shower room, and a bathroom. My bedroom is a very nice size with plenty of built in shelves. I also have a very roomy desk and a light right above my bed, which is perfect for my late night reading sprees.

I love my room. I love that it makes it easy for me to keep things organized (so much so that my roommate even commented on how "tidy" I am, a compliment I have never received in my life). I love that the shower is always hot and the warming rack keeps my towel nice and toasty for me. I love that the boyfriend lives literally right above me and I can hear him sometimes. I love that I don't need a fan to make the room cool enough to sleep in at night. I just love it.

Anyway, Friday and the rest of the weekend was spent running around Klaipeda and getting to know the area. I have a theory that Klaipeda is a cute little coastal town; you just can't tell with all the snow and ice and fog covering the loveliness. Though I think I would prefer Klaipeda during the summer time to wintery Klaipeda, the snow does add a sense of magic to the area. 

                                              

On Saturday, we walked to a sauna on the beach and I could have sworn I was walking through Lewis' Narnia. The big, fluffy, covered-in-snow trees are my favorite. 

                                              

On Sunday, I met two more of my roommates, Vilma and Benita and both of them are Lithuanian. I've been having a good time getting to know all of my roommates and having conversations about differences in culture and customs. I brought them all scarves from Ecuador, which was perfect because they loved them and it was a great way for me to explain about my not-quite-Americanness

We also attended a Catholic church on Sunday morning and were lucky enough to get a private history lesson and tour of the catacombs. Again I was blown away by the age of everything we were walking through and touching and learning about. Lithuania is old in a way I have never experienced and it surprises me every time I come face-to-face with the evidence of this oldness. 

The world is a lot older than I understand; this is what Lithuania is teaching me right now.

A (Very Long) Breakdown, Day 3

Screams all around meant a late night and a perfect excuse for the three of us (Matea, Leslie, and I) sleeping through our alarms the next morning and almost making our groups late to the KGB museum, where I discovered another hole in my world history education, something that my history major boyfriend was mortified to discover. (This is not a criticism of my education; it's just that my teachers focused more on Latin American history and, kind of randomly, Canadian history, in addition to American history than anything else. Or maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention when Mr. G got to this section in World History. It's very possible.)


We then visited the US embassy and met a few people who assured us of the good relationship between the US and Lithuania and gave us a brief history on what Lithuania has looked like throughout the past THOUSAND years of its existence (yes, Lithuania was first mentioned in history in 1009, making it a lot older than anything I have ever experienced). After the embassy, we went on a two-hour walking tour of Vilnius given by this great tour guide who seemed to know everything about the city. We walked through an old old old church (and its catacombs!) and learned a little about Baltic amber.


For dinner, we traveled to a beautiful restaurant situated by a frozen lake and ate fresh vegetables and a dish of chicken, pineapple, and rice. It was almost as good as my mom's cooking. Almost.


Later that evening, I finally had some time to catch up with the boyfriend and find out some more details about his Christmas vacation and travel to Vilnius. 


It's really great to have people from my life back in Azusa here in Lithuania with me. It means that when I go back, I'll have people to laugh at inside jokes with me and talk about memories and provide living proof that I spent four months here.

A (Very Long) Breakdown, Day 2

Tuesday morning, Matea and I trudged through the snow to find breakfast and nearly missed our destination, the grocery store nearest to our hostel. We took the safe route and picked out fruit, water, and bread for our breakfast and stumbled through paying for it at the register, where I inadvertently stole a grocery bag. I guess you have to pay a few centai (cents) for them. So on my first official day in Vilnius, I became a criminal. Whoops.

The rest of Tuesday meant reuniting with aforementioned boyfriend (yayyy!) and the rest of the study abroad students. There are about 29 total students and 14 just from APU. I had no idea there was such a large group from my school. It was a nice surprise.

For Tuesday dinner, we hit up a typical Lithuanian restaurant and ate delicious things like fried bread and cheese and fried bread with fried meat inside. Oh and, of course, potatoes, a staple of any Lithuanian diet which I have been assured by the study abroad interns (four of whom shuffle the rest of us around the city) will not cause me to gain weight due to the large amount of walking around we do.

For the rest of the night, we played Mafia at the urging of one of the interns, Elena, which I was all practiced up for thanks to the several rounds we played during my family's annual beach trip. I stayed up late and waited for Leslie to finally arrive as she had been delayed and deterred to Poland, a country she was not originally supposed to visit.

A (Very Long) Breakdown, Day 1

On Monday, December 4, I finally arrived in Vilnius, armed with my warm hiking shoes and prepared to grab my winter coat out of my checked luggage at the first sign of cold.

It was cold when I walked off the plane and into the airport terminal.

It was cold while I was waiting for my luggage to arrive.

It was cold as I stood in a line outside the lost luggage office and hoped for an employee who spoke English.

It was colder than my Christmases spent in Colorado and that week I spent snowboarding in Utah and how it feels at the top of the Teleferico in Quito and jumping into the ice cold pool after bathing for hours in the hot hot one in Papallacta ALL PUT TOGETHER.

It. Was. Cold. To be perfectly honest, the huge white blanket I saw covering the entire country from the window of my airplane seat should have warned me.

But anyway. Shivering and hopping from one foot to the other, I tried to ignore it while I searched for my luggage (my last piece arrived yesterday, thankyouJesus) and walked into the exit of the airport, prepared to begin another searching quest for the director of the study abroad program who had come to pick me up. I was totally expecting him to have some confusion about which person walking out of the airport was the student he was looking for, but no. Dalius spotted me right away, leaving me hoping that I'm not that recognizable as an American tourist. (Apparently it was my big smile that gave me away. Americans are known [and mocked] for their wide, toothy grins here. Note to self: please just try to adopt that unconsciously cool European attitude during the next few months so during next European adventure, will not stand out as much.)

For the rest of Monday, I hid out in my hostel (hostal?) room and made use of the WiFi to Skype my family, making the miles and miles and miles between us, as well as the 7-hour difference, feel like nothing.

Because I had arrived a day early, I had the hostel to myself until another early study abroad student stumbled into my room around 8 pm. Her name is Matea and she is from Bosnia, but has spent the past couple of years studying in the States. "Coincidentally" enough, Matea went on a mission trip to Quito a few years ago and so right away we had something to bond over. Her intimate knowledge of the city I grew up in isn't that big of a thing, but when you're in a country where you don't speak the language for the very first time in your life, it means something. God is really really cool in the ways he works little reminders of his love for us into the small details of our lives. This is a characteristic of his that I've always been aware of, but experiencing it now, as a result of my own connections and not those of my parents or grandparents, makes it feel more real.

A (Very Long) Breakdown, Pre-Arrival

Four days into my Lithuanian adventure, I'm beginning to get a feel for what this semester will look like and what my role is as a study abroad student. I've already learned a few Lithuanian words (a word that sounds like "achoo" means "thank you," labas is "hello," gerai means "ok," and kur tualetas is "where is the bathroom"), the cold is almost something I expect every time I walk outside, and I've finally made it to the dorm room where I will be living for the next four months.

It took me three days and four countries to get from Quito to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, last weekend. My travel time lasted this long because of delayed flights at every stop and a night spent in a Brussels hotel, where I was able to use some of my French (although not my favorite French phrase: Je suis une feuille de papier), eat a croque monsieur, and get used to being in Europe, a continent I have not visited since I was about four years old and a flower girl in my British uncle's wedding. Although the Brussels stop was fun, my favorite airport stint was spending a few hours on the runway in Guayaquil, Ecuador because one of my lovely Ecuadorian volcanoes, Tungurahua displayed some volcanic activity and we had to first reroute and then refuel the plane. Only in Ecuador...