The First Few Days in Lithuania

This week has gone by so fast! I cannot believe that tomorrow is Friday already. However our journey here felt like it lasted forever…

It all started when I arrived at the airport bright and early for our eight o'clock flight. Casey, one of the ILP directors and the person in possession of our passports and insurance information, was late... so late in fact that we had to re-route our flight to a later time, changing our first layover from D.C. to Chicago. We walked away from our families with tears in our eyes and sharing our last goodbyes. I'm not going to lie, I struggled getting through security. But who doesn't? The unloading, removing of laptops and liquids, taking off of shoes and the reverse of it all, only after you get the all clear confirming you're not a terrorist.....It can all be a pain... but I'm grateful for the safety precautions.

Kaylyn and Emma waiting for our first flight to Chicago

The first flight was good, the plane was small and we made friends with a German guy heading home after finishing his year at Utah State University. Excitement was in the air, but none of it felt real.

On the plane, this is actually happening!

 

Emma and our new German friend, Pascal

 

Goodbye Utah! See you in four months

When we got to the Chicago O'Hare airport we had the LONGEST walk from one gate to the other. The airport was hot and humid too. We enjoyed some burgers and fries, not knowing when the next time we would have good old American food like that again.

We made it to Chicago!

 

International traveler  

The flight from Chicago to Brussels was actually not as bad as I was expecting. I wasn't able to sit by any of the girls I was traveling with, but I sat next to a woman heading home to the Netherlands (who by the way, didn't even know where Lithuania was and she was a travel agent....?) and a really sweet lady and her mother-in-law from Missouri who were heading to Cameroon to visit some family. We were in the first row of the economy class and my foot kept touching the curtain dividing the two classes. So... you could pretty much say I was in first class....without the spacious chairs and alcoholic beverages, of course. Dinner was good for airplane food and then I was out like a light. It didn't feel like I was sleeping very well, but I put on a playlist of about fifty songs from my iPod and I woke up at one point having gone through forty-nine of them.

When we finally arrived in Brussels I was incredibly happy to get off the plane. We walked through passport control with just a little bit of an interrogation process; what were we doing, how long would be here, etc... We had to go through security... again... and it was just as miserable as the first time. When I went to put everything back together though I realized I had lost a shoe in the process! How one loses a shoe, I don't know, but I was probably not the most aware person as I walked through that line. Don't worry, I found it under a table eventually... As we walked to our next gate we met up with (as in stood over her until she woke up) Michaela who had been able to catch the earlier flight and had arrived two hours earlier. We chatted for a little bit, had some bouts with spilling water on the floor, and then as we all laid down on the hard airport chairs suddenly we were out. I slept more comfortably in those two hours on an airport chair than I did in the entire eight hours on my way to Brussels. The Europeans around us looked at us weird, I'm sure, and it was there Brussels that I first experienced smiling at someone and them just staring blankly back at you.... There was an awkward head turn on my part after that exchange. Oh Europeans....

Kaylyn woke me up at one point informing me that our gate had been changed so I woke the other two girls up and up to the next gate we went. Brussels, compared to Chicago, was freezing! We didn't understand the announcer but somehow we made it onto our airplane and literally from the moment we took off to the moment we landed... I was out. So so tired apparently, I didn't even get my usual Ginger Ale as the flight attendants walked down the aisle.

It was a happy moment when we finally arrived in Lithuania! No more airplanes! We waited for our luggage and met Lindsay, our head teacher, outside and later Dima, our native coordinator. He arrived in a fun little Mercedes with a sticker on the side that said "We speak English! Our teachers are from America!"

The sign on Dima's car, picking us up from the airport in Vilnius

You don't get a better ride than that. First thing we did in Lithuania you ask? We exchanged our USDs for some litas. 2,64 Lt to the dollar my friends, 2,64... Sweet! Next we headed to the head teacher apartment. I'm not going lie as we drove to our destination I was a bit surprised. Lithuania looked nothing like the pictures I had seen on the internet. Everywhere we looked there were very tall and very similar apartment buildings. Where were the old churches and the rolling hill-sides I had drooled over the last few weeks? I later found out that they do exist it's just that where we are staying used to be a Soviet-Occupied district and so it looks a little... bleak? I've been here less than two days however and I have already grown to love it.  

All of the apartments around here look like this. This area we're in was at one point a Soviet-Occupied district and everything had to be very similar.  

After a look around at the apartment we headed over to my new home, the host family's house. We unloaded our suitcases from the car and Dima made fun of me for my very heavy bag. Everyone came into the house for a moment, and then they left just like that... leaving Emma and me with our host family, feeling just a little unsure about how all of this would work out. However, the host family has been more than wonderful! They all speak at least a bit of English and the mom is very easy to communicate with. We sat down to dinner with the Mom, Dad,and three-year old son upon arrival and ate exactly what I expected to be my first Lithuanian meal, turkey meatballs and potatoes. It was incredibly delicious and it's probably a good thing I like potatoes because I will be eating a lot of them over the next few months. In addition to the cute little boy they also have three other children, three girls; a fifteen year-old, a ten year-old, and a six year-old.

Our host family's house is on the far right. It is quaint and I love it! 

The front door of the house. These town homes were built only seven or eight years ago.

Our address!

There are double doors, both with dead locks! Nobody suspicious is getting through them because I barely can.

Our host family's kitchen

We slept well and our next day was filled with meetings, exploring the town and school we will be teaching at, and getting used to our new home. I do have say that for our first full day in Lithuania we not only ate pizza but sushi too! Two things I thought I had said goodbye to back in America.

  

People park anywhere and everywhere in Lithuania. And let's not even start on their driving skills....

 

Recycling and trash bins

 

Lithuanian flag at a nearby school

 

It's not all apartment buildings, and it's very beautiful as the sun goes down

 

Little boy in my host family, he's got a cute little attitude.

Two of the girls in my host family, this one is of Medaina and Amanda. Medaina is always giving us this funny look. She's quite the comedian.

Today we spent the morning cleaning our new basement apartment in the house and then we were off to teach! The kids were so great and although it was a little bit overwhelming, I love them already and I can’t wait to get to know them better over the next few months.

All in all it's been a good couple of days. I'm feeling a bit homesick already, but I'm so excited for all that I'm about to learn and see!

 

Emma and me before our first day of teaching!

P.S. Little tid bits of information from my host family... Wireless is bad for your health and spiders are good luck...and there are a lot of them in our basement.