Lėktuvų ir Gaisrinės Mašinos

Alright. I have a ton to share and a lot of posts will be posted in the next week so to catch up. After my trip to Germany, I finished working at the university and high schools and continued to work on my working visa, which was difficult and involved going to many different institutions. I was doing this because the director of the school where I was working admitted that she was having problems getting the visa and did not know where to go or what to do since I was the first foreigner ever to come to the school. I also started doing some summer activities, like playing frisbee with friends (I picked up 2 frisbees in Germany) and going to small lakes. Here are some pictures of 2 things I did with friends early on; I visited a small community where a friend had a summer house and visited the local fire station where a friend's dad worked.

The summer house. It was among a small community of summer houses created for the people who fly the plane, which is seen below.

There is also regular parachuting on the weekends, but unfortunately we were there on a weekday.
An old abandoned mansion in Raudondvaris, the town where we were.
We also went to another fixed up estate and mansion nearby. They had some exhibits such as this machine which I think was used for wool and the steam engine below, which looks like a canon.

This shot explains why the U.P. and Lithuania are similar... the mosquitoes. They were all over because flat Lithuania has tons of small lakes and swamps and because it rains so much. In fact, it's name is derived from the word rain.
The estate had tons of tulips, which of course were already withered away, but the peonies were just coming out.

Gazebo on the estate

At the summer house trying a Lithuanian beer and watching some bb-gun action.
I tried too. Apparently it is good to keep both eyes closed when shooting. I did though hit the target with 1 shot from far away after seeing that no one else could from the same point.
The small lake of the town.
We found a small hedgehog.
We roasted some meat, and then by the end of the night, they were trying to set me on fire.
That night a cold front came through, but only storms were formed in the distance and never around us. The next day we played some frisbee golf and went back to Siauliai

A few days later, I went to the fire station in Siauliai.
This is an older Russian truck which holds a reserve tank of water for the newer fire truck below.
I wish I could remember how many tons of water it can hold. Uncle Jeff, do you have any guesses? This truck is the newest member of the fleet. They were telling me a story of the importance of the mirrow which is on the outside of the top center of the windshield (hard to see in the picture). They were driving it from Vilnius for the first time to Siauliaia when they came to an intersection. They were about to go, but then they looked in the mirror and saw an elderly person crossing in front.
Here, I'm inspecting their chemical disaster response truck. Everything looked in order.
In 42 seconds, this ladder on the Russian truck can be fully extended I believe to 6-stories high.
The picture above and below shows the 2nd newest truck of the fleet.
The father of the friend who gave me the tour. He was curious to know how much fire fighters in America make. In Lithuania at this fire station, they make about $800 a month. That definitely is not much for the work they do and their importance for the safety of the city.

An old mechanical water pump that they used many years ago.