Recovery Week

Addition to the last post (I went to just add it there, but it messed with the entire format of my post, and I wasn’t having any of that…): After the bus left, we called the United States Embassy to ask for help on what to do. The woman on the phone told us that they were not able to do anything, but if we could wait until Monday morning we could go to the Embassy when they opened at 8:30 and get further assistance. She apologized and said that she was in a similar situation, so she understood what we were going through. When Steph asked her what she did when this happened to her, the woman replied, “Well, I wanted to travel outside the country. So I drove, got to the border and didn’t have my passport, so I just turned around and went home.” Wow. Thanks a lot lady. Cause it’s not like I’m currently standing in a foreign country, with no passport, at midnight, with 4 of my friends, with limited internet/calling options, with no place to go, and with a stupid Embassy that doesn’t help me at all when I call the flipping emergency number. I’m glad you understand the position I’m in.

Oct 4

Sleepy, sleepy, sleepy… A common question that I’ve been getting asked is, “Why on earth did you come/go to class today?” My answer is that I’ve already missed two of my MWF classes, and I really don’t want to miss more unless they’re for traveling reasons. As I said before, I care too much.

Today we celebrated China’s Independence Day. Free cookies and tea can’t be turned down, but sleep deprivation makes you do some pretty crazy things. Apparently Gabby was close to my level of sleep deprivation, so as I was sitting there calmly on the couch, she decides to play with one of my curls to see if it would spring back to its original position. Sorry to say, it did not look like a cartoon when you pull a pig’s tail straight and it sproings back to its original spiral condition. I dunno… But anyway, the girl representing China made dumplings and rice for everyone, it was pretty good, but not too filling. So a few of us got together and made dumplings (chicken and potato), mashed potatoes and grilled cheese; yummy!!

 Oct 5

Lauren, Calvin and I have been craving pancakes for a really long time now. So we got together and were going to attempt to make some fluffy American pancakes (not the thinner crapes that most Europeans are used to). We scrambled together as many of the ingredients as we had, and Lauren went out shopping for the rest. The word about “American pancakes” spread and we ended up with a huge group of people (mainly study abroads haha) to join us for dinner. The pancakes turned out beautifully :). And thanks to Calvin’s roommate, I learned how to flip a pancake without having to use a spatula! Kevin, you would be so proud! The pancakes tasted heavenly. Especially with bananas and nutella topping! …wow…

Back at Karklu, Steph and I got together to fill out my visa claim for the two tickets that I couldn’t use because of the bus situation. After reading my confirmation e-mails and rechecking the additional information on Orange Ways website, all it said was to have a valid identification card, or a passport. But either one, it had to be valid. Thanks for not accepting my International Student IDENTITY CARD!! Orange Ways… Sigh.. oh well.

Oct 6

Yet another cooking adventure. It was Wednesday evening, and the Fab 5 had planned on getting together to discuss our crazy weekend travels over some lasagna but decided it would be more fun to invite more people to this shindig. I bought the ingredients for lasagna, and as Mārtiņš declared, I would be in charge of making it since I was really the only one who knew how. Not that I had made true lasagna recently. I mean, it had only been about 8 years or so since I had made it with my grandpa, but whatever.

So, the process was close to failure. The noodles stuck together, I had no idea what kind of cheese I bought besides mozzarella, I had no clue what kind of tomato sauce I got, and Mārtiņš was making fun of the meat that I bought. This is going to turn out interesting. Well, I managed, with some help from Calvin and Gabby, to get the lasagna to at least look pretty, and then went off to cook it in the oven. Yeah, no, no idea what the temperature was set to, so I simply put the pan in and hoped for the best when I would return to check it 20 minutes later. Calvin was getting really antsy, so we both went to check on the progress, and good thing we did because it was turning a beautiful golden brown on top. Success. Not exactly traditional lasagna, but hey, it was all gone by the end of the evening.

While I was managing the lasagna, Steph and Mike were making chicken and cheese quesadillas. And Merūnas made hash browns during the process of making the other two dishes. Oh, what a wonderful meal. It’s truly a great thing to be able to come together with such an awesome group of friends and share a meal that you successfully cooked yourself.

Oct 7

Every Thursday, I go to an Alpha meeting. Not only do they feed us tremendously awesome food, but Emas speaks about different topics relating to Christianity and Jesus. The first topic was why Christianity was boring, unrelated to my life, and nonsense. Of course, he changed it around to explain why people see it that way, and then explained why it’s not true. I wish I could summarize it better for you, but I cannot do it justice.

Oct 8

A group of people went to see Eat Pray Love tonight. I had never read the book, so luckily I had no expectations that wouldn’t be met during this movie. It was alright, I didn’t care much for the ending though. But hey, it was a nice break from attempting to do homework. I’ll leave that for my poor weekend.

Oct 9

Study, study, study. That’s all I seem to do on Saturdays anymore, have you noticed this? Make it stop!!! Thankfully Mike, Steph and Mārtiņš stopped by and gave me a brownie. A real, true, and very delicious brownie. Totally made my day :)

I know I take a lot of pictures of the sky. But look at it! It’s beautiful!

Oct 10

Mārtiņš is in my Lithuanian class, and we have a midterm tomorrow. Ugh… so after not really knocking on his door (according to him.. excuse me for not wanting to wake up any potential sleeping roommates), we attempted to study for a couple of hours. Mārtiņš decided not to eat anything all morning, so we went out to get him some food. He got a few things, enough to require a bag, but he decided not to grab one while we were waiting in line. So he’s halfway done checking out, and suddenly yells at me to grab a bag. I turn around to do as he asked, but there were two ladies standing directly behind me, and I didn’t want to be rude and just reach in front of them to grab a bag, and I couldn’t fit next to them to walk around and get a bag. So with a sigh, Mārtiņš starts questioning me about how we are going to carry everything without a bag.

Silly boy, questioning my awesome abilities. I started putting things in my pocket, and simply left him one bag of potatoes to carry back. We got back to Karklu, and right as we walked onto the fourth floor where his room is, all I hear is *thud- thud-thud, thud-thud, thud…* I turned just in time to see Mārtiņš’ face as he looked from the ripped potato bag to his precious potatoes rolling down the flights of stairs. I lost it. I was hysterically cracking up, using the wall as support so I wouldn’t collapse onto the floor. Mārtiņš simply looked dumbfounded, looking from me laughing, to the ripped bag, to the potatoes still rolling down the stairs, and back to me, saying quite a few choice phrases. I recovered enough to walk down the two flights of stairs that his potatoes rolled down to help collect them all back.

I am proud to say that I am still laughing even as I write this post. The potatoes rolled all the way down to the second floor, I'm sorry but that's hilarious. Looking at the window, the ledge wasn't connected all the way to the window, so the potatoes were able to fall right through. I just keep replaying that scene in my head, but Mārtiņš' face was priceless. After eating, we went back to study, and I realized that he cheats. Apparently, a lot of Lithuanian words are extremely similar to Latvian words. No wonder he was able to fly through the book and figure out the exact meanings of them.And I'm sitting here making up all these stupid phrases to help me remember. Like "maža" sounds like a funny way of saying "mother", and my mom is shorter than me, so it means small. Or "greitas" is "I'll never be as great as Alyssa" cause she's so much faster than me, so it means fast. Mārtiņš, I call shenanigans.