Photo Shoot and Dream Room Revealed

Nov 8

Sociology has gotten a lot more personal. Professor Garrett has left to be States-side for a while, and his wife is filling in for him while he’s away for the next two weeks. It’s been… interesting… to say the least. But at least at the end of the day I had a wonderful dinner. Thanks to Gabby, my cooking perspective continues to grow. It was a great mixture of beef, corn, mushrooms, meat sauce served on pasta. It was delicious! Then to kindly walk Gabby to the bus stop only after walking through a mini lake to get her there. Literally, the entire width of the road was flooded, and Gabby and I had to shimmy across the curb next to this fence to get around it. On the way back, I decided to put my boots to the test and just walk through the monstrosity. Success, they work!

Nov 9

While we’re here, we have three meetings with our Tri-S leaders. Tri-S stands for spirituality, sustenance and shenanigans (cause I can’t remember it). We met a few weeks ago to help us adjust and prepare for the culture shock (which I don’t really think I’ve gone through, thank God) and other cultural differences that we may have faced. We will have one more meeting within the next month to help us prepare for our trip back to the States and how to appropriately adjust back to our own culture. It’ll be interesting, and very sad.

I remember when I was younger and I would say that I would never, EVER, like my brothers and that they would never care about me. Sadly, I truly believed that from the bottom of my heart. But now that I’m older I am able to appreciate my brothers a lot more, and in funny and subtle ways I can tell that they love me. Like with a quick chat with Kevin on Skype, he randomly asks:

          Fran Strauch: when are you coming back?

          Fran Strauch: not that i care…

          Fran Strauch: just curious

          Kimberly Strauch: umm 5 weeks minus 2 days

          Fran Strauch: 33 days

Sorry for my sappy little sister moment, but this meant a lot to me. When I was little, I wanted nothing else than for my brothers to accept me. Not only do they accept me, but they, no matter how little they’ll ever admit it, miss having me around. That’s awesome :)

Nov 11

Did you make a wish? It was 11/11 today after all. Anyways, tonight was wonderful because I got to spend it with one of my friends that I haven’t hung out with for a long time. We got together and watched ‘Up’ which is a wonderful movie, and had tea and cookies while we caught up on all the things that have been happening in our lives. A very nice and relaxing evening.

Nov 12

Note to self: Lithuanian homework is not to be expected to be completed within an hour’s time. The Lithuanian language is pretty difficult seeing that there are so many different forms to say how a person does something, goes somewhere, eats food, or does essentially anything else. There’s a form for everything, and you have to be careful to use the correct one, in the right singular vs. plural debate. It’s more time consuming that one might have originally expected.

PANCAKES! I finally got around to making my pancakes. Served with nutella and honey and bananas, it was very refreshing. I’ve realized that I really love tea, like really love it. Coffee is overrated, yet it does smell wonderful. But coffee vs. tea? Tea wins every time, all the time over coffee. Debate over. Thank you and have a good night ;). AFter dinner, Gabby came over to attempt to make lazy cake, which is this mixture that you don't have to bake or anything. Unfortunately, this mixture was lacking some key ingredients, so the entire process was a flop. But then we were off to Memelis to meet up with a few friends over some kepta duona. I will attempt to make this when I get home, but don’t be super disappointed when it doesn’t work. But, once again, the use of cell phones is a teasing memory as our meeting place wasn’t exactly specified and we ended up missing each other. Oh well, it was a well needed girl’s night out as VH1 was playing the top women’s voices, and we enjoyed guessing who would be up at the top. Oh, and of course kepta duona was still consumed.

Nov 13

Another morning beautifully started with pancakes with nutella and bananas. Delicious, I know :). And Gabby is finally coming over after a week of waiting to go to the amber market. It was raining the entire week, so we figured the people wouldn’t be out there. But today the sun (yes, that big white shining thing in the sky that I have been missing) is out for the time being.

Gabby and I took a walking tour around Klaipėda so that I could take pictures with Amorè. For those of you who don’t remember, Amorè is the traveling bear that I share with Caroline, Sam and Lauren. The weather was decent enough, the sun popping in and out from the clouds, but the wind was a little bit out of control. But we still enjoyed our photo shoot. Then off to a Thai restaurant with Calvin and Gabby :). It was so delicious, and thanks to Gabby not allowing me to switch over to a spoon, I ate nearly my entire dish with chopsticks! Much harder to do with noodles, but still sort of manageable.

On our way back to Karklu, we walked past Max Coffee and stopped by for some delicious caramel and mint macchiato and some amazing Max brownie. And then some interesting photo sessions.

Nov 14

Yet another unproductive day. My motivation enjoys a break from work as much as my mind does. I attempted to do some shopping today, but forgot that some stores like to close on Sundays. Better luck tomorrow. Oh, and I finished my picture of my dream room! There are two different ones, but I think the one on the left is my absolute favorite. I'm sure it will change again once I go to paint it, but it will be something along these lines.