Surviving the First Week

Sept 2

Survive class? Check… Eat something besides bread and cheese for dinner? Umm.. I think I can check that off. I attempted to cook dinner tonight because I am quite tired of eating bread and cheese. I went to boil water.. and I waited, and waited and waited some more. I really want dumplings, but while I was still waiting for the water to boil, I cooked one fish stick to make sure they were edible and that I heated it up right. 45 minutes later, water still never boiled. Fish sticks it is.

After dinner, I went out for some coffee with Nastia (different one from the student intern). There was a nice little coffee shop that is near the dorm, and we had a coupon in the student handbook which made it even better. Walked back to the dorm, quickly worked on my Lithuanian dialogue (terrifying!) and then headed out with the SA group and other friends to a jazz club. So much fun! Today was pretty hectic, constantly running from one place to the next, but I wouldn’t have it any other way :)!

Sept 3

This is a true TGIF!!! It’s not that this week was bad, but I am SO glad to have the first week of the semester under my belt. It’s a comforting feeling to know how the swing of the semester is going to go, and I have an idea about how the professors and classes are going to be. This will definitely be an exciting adventure. Happy Independence Day Ukraine! And I do agree that your borscht is amazing, and I will be attempting to possibly make it sometime this semester, so stay tuned. But some games that were played were absolutely hysterical. Derek and Denis had to clip clothes hanger clips on each other, and then blind-folded girls had to race to remove them from the boys. It was hilarious.

Oh, speaking of exciting! I got my water to boil in about 10ish-15ish minutes tonight! I used a different burner, and things went a lot more smoothly. And the dumplings were pretty good. A little bland on the outside, but hey, they were definitely edible and only cost 4 lita. It was a pretty quiet Friday night, especially compared to last night. But I got to see and talk to some pretty awesome people :) so I really enjoyed my relaxing night in. Miss you all <3!

Sept 4

Ahh, my first day of sleeping in. It’s really a shame, both my roommates have early morning classes, but alternating from one another. So at least one of them is getting up early each morning, but it only gives me the opportunity to do something productive earlier than I normally would. Now, if I actually do anything productive is a totally different story.

I headed off to Neumann for something fun to do today. Cooked some pasta with James, and realized what a difference a little seasoning could make! Then a long walk back to Karklu. Another relaxing day, but hmm… I guess I really should do some work tonight. Buuuut I really don’t feel like it, so I won’t :).

Sept 5

Sunday.. how quickly my weekend has left me :(. Totally jealous of all of you back home that have tomorrow off for Labor Day. I went shopping today and got a pair of skinny jeans and a pair of heels. Did a sociology observation, and notice a few things that are different from the mall here and the mall back home:

1. Europeans have a much smaller personal bubble. People walk insanely close to one another, and there is miniscule space while waiting in lines for stuff. Walking in the mall, people will not always alter their walking path to avoid hitting you. Instead, you will do a quick dance move right at the last second to avoid colliding shoulders.
2. The noise level is much quieter. You can’t unconsciously eavesdrop on someone’s conversation as easily. You know when you’re sitting somewhere and you can pick up all those crazy snidbits of people’s conversations as they walk by? That doesn’t happen as much over here. It might have something to do with the closeness of people with one another as they walk, or it can also be due to the fact that people talk much quieter here. I knew I could get loud and obnoxious with my friends, but that was usually at a crazy level. But here, I need to use a super quiet inside voice, because my inside voice is apparently at the level of their outside voice.
3. The quietness of the mall has NOTHING on the silence that you can feel on the bus. I honestly, with no exaggeration, could hear my own silent breathing. I felt as though no one was moving, and people who were traveling with someone else weren’t even having whispered conversations. It was an eerie silence that I could feel surrounding me. It totally freaked me out.

Ummm, lesson learned. Do NOT wear heels unless you have protection on your heels and or the rest of your toes. Cause it is severely painful to power walk in heels. It's not that I had a hard time actually walking in them (Mike and Calvin, you guys can vouch for me that I was able to walk perfectly fine in them), but the blisters that they produced are beyond painful.  My poor little toes :'(

Soooo I have 3 papers due tomorrow and I haven’t started anything and it’s about 12 now. I actually have no internet tonight, so that’s why it’s probably going to take me a while to upload this post. The internet is very sporadic here, and you can never be sure how much longer you will have connection before it is taken away from you. But I’m enjoying distracting Martins from doing his work, and his writing style is beautiful. Kate, he reminds me a lot of you.

And for all you people that can roll your Rs…. AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR…