Mano senelio senelio senilio senelis?

Here are some random pictures of the last week, including the tragedy that occurred on Thursday, the snowfall.

The snow started to stick....

There was only one thing that would cheer me up after the snow, kugelis in a pot. Thank goodness for my cousin and her cooking.

I never used to use sour cream, but now it seems I do every day. Crazy!

Here is the lookout from my 8th story classroom from the university where I am giving speaking lessons to some professors. The buildings are mainly just apartment buildings. It certainly is not what I think of when I think of Europe. Of course this is not the center of town, but an important fact to remember is that only 12% of the town was left standing after WWII. That is a lot of buildings that needed to be built very quickly.

For the first time in my life, I bowled a clean game, meaning I got either spares or strikes in every frame and did not leave one pin standing. I think I was having a lucky streak because I was actually bowling a second game at the same time with the group of men I went bowling with. (We were bowling 2 games each on 2 different lanes) In that game I bowled an even higher score of 209 and nearly bowled another clean game but had one split which I nearly picked up. (On a side note, I don't want to just toot my horn, but the only other time that I played in Lithuania, I bowled a 201 one of the games and picked up my first split of my life.) So I was having a lot of fun. Unluckily for the group that I was with, they wanted to have a competition in which the person who won the game would win a big beer, 2nd place would get a small beer, 3rd nothing, and 4th and 5th would have to pay for the small and big beers respectively. Well, let's just say I made out quite well. Out of 6 games, I won 4 large beers and 2 small beers. Since it was such a landslide, everyone just paid my bowling games and that was it. I still may have to lose some games, though, if I will be invited again. Oh, also in this picture is a 100 Litų bill (100 Litai), worth about $40.

What is the most logical thing that you will find next to the Lithuanian liquor? Female hygiene products of course, including pregnancy tests. Catching this woman bending over was not intentional.

The picture above and below is are old relatives of the Jonaitis's, former rulers of Lithuaniam, I believe. Of course I already knew our family was like royalty so really there is no surprise. I could not look anything up on him, though, online so I will have to ask my cousin who is the museum curator in Lithuania to give me some history on him and maybe find out where my nearest castle is.

This is one of the bikes in the bike museum where I live. Notice it does not have any peddles... it is like a Flintstones' car in which you go by running on your feet. Šiauliai did and still does produce many bikes.

Atsiprašau. Nekalbu lietuviškai.

My first week in Lithuania I kinda felt like I was in a coma at times because I was having a hard time adjusting to the time difference. I might finally fall asleep at about midnight and then only wake up at 3 to a stomach wondering where dinner was. I would study some Lithuanian for a couple hours to fall back asleep at about 5 or 6 only to wake up at 8 or earlier. I am not good at not getting sleep, but actually I did well, probably mostly because I had very few things I needed to do. The 1 goal for that week was to talk with 2 high schools about helping with English, which I did. Both were extremely receptive and happy to have me as a volunteer. I offered to come in one day a week to do mainly some speech and listening comprehension. I actually started at one of the schools Thursday and it went really well. The teachers were happy to have me and the students were participating so much I really would have had to prepare little for the lesson. The paid part of my experience, as I soon was able to understand when I got to Lithuania, could possibly come from helping in the town university. The students of course want to better their English understanding but also the professors want some help. I will meet with the university during Holy week so we will have to see how that goes. I also will meet with another high school where my cousins that I live with go to. This will also be a volunteer position. So a good outcome to all of this would give a schedule that would be teaching in the high school as a volunteer for 3 days and teaching for some minimal pay at the university 2 days of the week.
Besides this planning, I also was being led around by the hand through the city so that I could get around by myself in this small town and could use the buses. I walked around quite a bit (of course most of the time accompanied) and surely confused some people when I was doing my own personal English-Lithuanian language lesson on produce in the supermarket.
On another note, learning Lithuanian has proved to be a huge challenge, something I can see that will almost surely not be done by me in the time that I here while living in an English environment. I have heard and read that it is one of the toughest languages, some ranking it as 2nd or 3rd. When I first saw the word declension, I had urges of jumping out of a window. All I know is that it's definitely a lot harder than Spanish. But that is OK. I am surely going to continue with my personal lessons but not get upset when a native mistakes me even after 6 months.
Finally, as I am sure I will be through out my time here, I am very thankful my extended family has been helping me out so much and speaking a lot of English. Without for them, I know I could not transition as easily nor have the connections with the schools they had already arranged.
First sunny day and the Lithuanian flag
I got to see a musical my first week in town. Here are 2 shots I took. The musical was called the Devil's Bride.



The apartment complex where I live

Cabbage rolls... I forgot the potatoes.

Wild blueberries and raspberries from the farm


I guess seeing all that food got the pet turtle hungry too.