Too Much Breaking

Oct 18-20

This week is awful. Actually, this whole month has been pretty annoying.

I promise

I want to let you know

That I am always with you

No matter what happens

No matter what you’re going through

You can always count on me

To be by your side

Through thick and thin

And know that you don’t have to hide

The pain and hurt that you feel

For I am here to share

The burden that you carry

Because in my heart I care

About you so deeply

In hopes that you will realize

That you do not have to be alone

During your darkest times

This I promise you.

There are so many things in life that I’m not meant to understand.

So does that mean that I should accept them and live?

Or should I reject them and fall?

Never before have I had these poems be so true. Everyone around me is breaking down, and I don’t know what to do to help. I guess the only thing I can do is not break down too. Not while everyone else needs me to stay strong. Well everyone, I’m here. Whatever I can do to make your situation better, I’m here. Come to me for support, and I will never turn you away. My heart is yours to share, please take it and find peace.

“The only good thing about a runny nose is that it makes you keep your head up.” -Me

Oct 21

Soo… my presentation was interesting. I was able to print my paper out that was due, but then I went to upload my power point slides on the main computer, suddenly the Internet wasn’t working. I ask my professor about it, and she looks down and sees that the cord was cut. Well then... James let Lauren and me use his flash drive so that we could upload our slides to the computer that way. Lauren’s worked, but Hotmail wasn’t letting me log on to my account. Uhhh… I moved to a different computer, only to get the same result: Server is too busy. Wow.. way to go Hotmail. I asked the IT tech guy, and he said it was Hotmail’s fault and there was nothing he could do to help. Now I get to do my presentation with no power point slides. Awesome.

James needed my help to demonstrate some of the aspects of relationships like affiliation, need conflict and other stuff. So we’re up there and I’m making funny faces, that of course went along with what James was talking about. Then it was my turn to go. Got up in front of the class, looked at everyone and laughed saying, “Well, since the Internet is down, that is my power point presentation” and pointed at the blue desktop screen that was projected on the wall. “My paper is about fear, which is currently pretty accurate because it’s what I’m feeling right now. My eyes got really big when Hotmail wasn’t loading, my hands got all cold, my muscles were very tense because I wanted to just leave and skip class and my heart is still racing.” And that’s how the intro to my presentation went. I dunno, I think it went pretty well overall, not too terrible considering that I didn’t practice anything at all beforehand and I was fighting back a mental breakdown.

To top it off, I had to go take an exam right after. I was going to need more Snickers’ bars… I think it went decent, but at this point I don’t want to think about it anymore. Nothing I can do about it now, so what’s done is done. Yeah, alright self, whatever you say.

Alpha was the only thing to get me through this night: shepherd’s pie and Emas. Emas is such a talented talker and so knowledgeable and funny in his style of answering questions. It makes me think: you don’t need to actually answer someone’s question to fully answer it. Sometimes people need to find their own answers to the questions they ask, because they won’t necessarily accept whatever answer that you give, regardless of the content. I dunno, just food for thought.

I’m sorry for complaining. I know my week wasn’t even that bad, and I really shouldn’t be complaining about it, so I’ll try not to anymore. I am glad it’s almost over though. Only a little bit more left and then I’m free for fall break. And what a break it will be :) stay tuned for stories.

Oct 22

I got beat up today. I was halfway to campus, and all of a sudden I see tiny little raindrops start to appear on the sidewalk. Uh oh, time to walk a bit faster. Ever so slowly the raindrops begin to get bigger, the pace of my walking increasing with them. Then I started to really feel the drops against my coat. It started raining harder, but then I was seeing these little white balls bounce against the pavement. Is that hail? Am I seriously getting hit by hail?! Yes, yes I was.. I put my hood up and booked it to campus. It was a lost cause though because I had no chance against the hail. It only got worse the closer I got to campus. I walked into the lobby and went to a nearby classroom to look for my umbrella. Only would have been slightly helpful at first because after a while it got too windy for my umbrella to be effective anyway. Sadly, I didn’t find my umbrella in the classroom that I left it in (but I did eventually find it, don’t worry), but when I turned around I did see little footprints soaked into the carpet. I looked behind me only to see that the footprints stopped where I was standing. My shoes were so drenched with water that I left a path of where I had walked. Never again shall I wear my little moccasins when it rains.

Thank GOD it’s finally Friday!! This week seemed to drag on forever, but I guess that’s because I’m so excited to leave for Russia tomorrow morning! This Fall Break is definitely necessary. I really need a break from school, let alone I’ve missed traveling. And don’t worry all my fellow college friends, you’ll have some days off for Thanksgiving Break (and actually get to celebrate Thanksgiving… oh the stuffing <3), so that’s payback.

Here’s a brief itinerary for Russia:

Saturday 23: Klaipėda to Riga (5 hr bus ride) to Moscow (overnight train)

Sun 24- Mon 25: Moscow

Tues 26: Moscow to St. Petersburg (5 hr train ride)

Wed 27- Fri 28: St. Petersburg

Sat 29: St. Petersburg to Riga (overnight train)

Sun 30- Riga to Klaipėda (5 hr bus ride)

Russian Fun Facts:

Kimberly Lizann Strauch = КИМБЭРΛИ ΛИЗЭН СТРАУК

The Russian alphabet freaks me out. The letters are terrifying and don’t seem to make too much sense at first glance. I need to do some quick memorizing to help me pronounce everything. Either that or I’m shadowing James around everywhere.

$1 US = 31 Russian Rubles

Russia will be cold. Very, very cold. But hey, I'd rather be cold than hot.

Mārtiņš is bipolar, and I want an orange shag rug carpet

Oct 11
Oh, Lithuanian. How I love you so. My midterm went better than expected, but we will see what the grade says. Happy Columbus Day everyone! Glad you have no school and I do!

Oct 12

“Give me freedom and give me internet. These are both basic, essential human rights” – Mārtiņš and Derek. So true guys. So, so true. The internet has still been acting up, and for the most part, I do not have internet in my room for the vast majority of the day. I spend more time trying to fix my internet connection than I would normally spend wasting time on Facebook if I could! But come on, when I’m trying not to study here, what else am I supposed to distract myself with besides Facebook?! …Save me…

Everyone around me is bipolar. And when I say everyone, I really only mean Mārtiņš. I went downstairs to give Merunas his Soc notes back, but apparently I missed him by about 20 seconds. Mārtiņš was attempting to write a paper, but he couldn’t think of a good thesis, so I sat down at the table to kinda sorta but not really study for Soc and mock him about how he couldn’t think of a good thesis. Absolutely loving his other works, he insisted that I read this one as well. As I tried to help him come up with a thesis, Merunas comes in and distracts me from helping Mārtiņš anymore. Mārtiņš starts freaking out on Merunas, telling him to stop distracting me so I can finish writing his paper. Ugh, I was NOT writing his paper!! But neither Merunas nor Mike believed me, and poor Adomas probably thinks I’m completely nuts. But then again, remembering who his roommates are.. I think I’m safe. Anyway, I finally came up with a decent enough thesis for Mārtiņš to work with, and eventually he subtly yet very blatantly tells me to leave. After being told that I’m not wanted anymore, I obviously go to leave and both he and Merunas yell at me not to go! I sink down into a chair, totally confused, and allowed Mārtiņš to convince me to stay and watch him cook potatoes. Oh joy. Well, it was either that or study for my Soc exam tomorrow, I’m pretty sure you know which option won. I got a knife and started peeling potatoes, to only be doing that wrong too. Mārtiņš and Merunas both offer me some of the potatoes, and when I refused they absolutely insisted on making me try some. So I said, “Fine, if you really want me to eat the potatoes, I will” and then they both refused to give me any of their food! WHY IS EVERYONE BIPOLAR?! Ugh.. boys….

Oct 13
Happy Birthday Lauren!! Forget about Soc exams, I want a fiesta! (Lauren is part Mexican). Braving the darkness to walk over to LCC on my own in order to make it to this wonderful party was well worth it. There were tacos and chips and beans and all other sorts of fun fiesta food. There was even a homemade Merunas original piñata! I was more than glad to let Lauren have all the fun with the piñata, there was a reason why I quit softball :)

Oct 15

Since SOMEONE (ahem Gabby!!!) decided to cancel on me, chili night was changed from Tuesday to today. And it wasn’t even in Karklu anymore, since the Neumann people completely outnumber me. Gabby had some meat since Monday, and it looked/smelled kinda iffy, but I decided to still give it a shot, but after cooking it and comparing it to the other meat, we decided to be on the safe side and not use it. But wow, the food was so good that it was all gone, except for one small helping. Definitely will be cooking chili again in the near future.

Then off to Memelis- it was one of those you-had-to-be-there moments to understand it :)

Oct 16

I wish I could tell you how productive of a day I had today, but I can’t. Stayed in bed til around 12, then Calvin canceled our plans to go to the thrift store, and then got convinced by Mārtiņš to go distract him. Or distract myself by distracting him really, because I have a 5 min Lithuanian presentation on my family on Monday! Yay me :) Well, that’s what Sunday is for, right? Of course… Mārtiņš forced me to watch Robin Hood, but it was in Russian. I’m practically fluent now ;). Later I there was an awesome get together at Vaiva’s house that included awesome food, amazing music, and even better people. Plus, I found a new cooking buddy. What a wonderful night. I really don’t want this weekend to end!

Oct 17

Must be productive… I must be productive… Yeah, no, didn’t work too well. Though I know I should be working on my presentation, I’m sitting here writing this post. Hmm.. I think there’s something wrong with that. But oh well, I needed to be distracted for a while. This week is going to be annoying, but then Saturday we head off to Russia!

Then off to be re-Americanized. Allison, my study abroad recruiter, came back from a recent trip from the States, and brought back some goodies. There were kit kats, peanut butter, oreos, Reese’s, peanut butter cookies, Autumn-in-a-cup tea and other yummy goodies. And then she surprised us further by putting in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”. It was so nice to have a comfortable and familiar American setting. And I got to share my dream of my fun room. I will try to make a picture of what I want, but for now here is a description:

Orange shag carpet; red entrance rug; different color blue sheets, with a crazy deep blue pattern comforter; dark purple curtains; matching opposite walls- one wall will be black with bright pink zebra stripes, and then the opposite wall will be bright pink with black zebra stripes, and the other two walls will be deep green with bright yellow leopard spots, and the opposite wall will be bright yellow with deep green leopard spots; the ceiling will be a mix of all the colors, very softly mixing with each other; the furniture will be an off-white or cream color; and finally, a black fuzzy butterfly chair.

To my future husband: Honey, I will have this room somewhere in our house, and you will like it. Love, me :)

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.

Epic Traveling Adventure

Sept 27

Surprisingly my presentation went pretty well. My topic was explaining the different Lithuanian holidays, and though a lot are similar to those celebrated back in the States, they had a few different ones. One is called Užgavėnės. This is celebrated in the Spring time to celebrate the defeat of Winter and the coming of Spring. Children can dress up in costumes and walk around to get pancakes, candy or money. Pancakes represent the sun. Another holiday is Goninės, which is the celebration of the day becoming as long as the night. And finally, All Saints Day is to commemorate all those who had given their lives, both known and unknown.

Sept 28

Today was pretty much a filler day. I finished my paper for Social Research and had to write a paper for tomorrow since I’m skipping class on Friday. I know, surprising isn’t it?? For me to skip class is a pretty foreign concept, but there’s a first time for everything I guess! (Or I guess third in this case.. thank you Junior and Senior Cut Day!)

Sept 29

So freaking excited!!! Did pretty bad on my Lithuanian quiz, but at this point I don’t care at all. Finished class at 3:45 and then rushed back to the dorm to start packing for tonight. Thought I had til 7, but due to a change in plans I now have to be ready by 5:15. This isn’t going to go over very well… Gabby helped cook me dinner while I frantically tried to pack everything into my backpack. No room for unnecessary junk, and plus, I’ll have to carry this sucker around everywhere. Hello new workout program!

After two trips down the stairs (an extra one for a mad dash to get my bus tickets that I almost forgot… oh self….), I was finally ready to go. We took off to the bus station to get our tickets to Kaunas. And now we wait for the awesome adventure to begin!!! We like to call ourselves the Fab 5: Calvin, Lauren, Steph, Mike and, of course, Me! Our mission: to travel and have the most adventurously epic time possible! The bus left Klaipeda around 6pm, and arrived in Kaunas (still in Lithuania) shortly after 9. The overnight bus to Krakow didn’t leave til after 11:30, so we decided to walk around the city a bit. It was a pretty cool night, but it was calm weather. We boarded the bus and we were finally on our way to Poland!

Sept 30

The Fab 5 arrived in Warsaw, Poland around 8am. This bus wasn’t much easier to sleep in than our bus last week, but I think I got enough sleep to sustain me for a while. Warsaw is pretty much just a connection city, so we quickly got our train tickets to get us to Krakow. The train got in around 1pm, and a few members of the group wanted to see Auschwitz, a Jewish concentration camp, while we were in Poland. Now normally, I really wouldn’t have wanted to go because history has a tendency to make me really angry and frustrated, but I wasn’t going to say no to the group.

It was softly raining outside and the sky held a soft gray color to it. It didn’t feel menacing, but it certainly fit the dreary mood of visiting Auschwitz. Once we walked onto the grounds, to our right were rows of the Jewish housing. We walked into one of the barn-like structures and I couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like to be forced to live in there. I was snuggled in a warm sweatshirt and coat with two scarves on, yet I was still pretty chilly. (I refuse to say cold until it hits 0.. but for everyone else, it was cold). But it was only late September; the Jewish people had much less clothing than I had. And then they had to endure winter’s wrath during November thru February, with snow on the ground and working outside in terrible, unthinkable conditions.

 Calvin asked me a question while we were walking, “Doesn’t this make you lose your faith in humanity?” I stopped to think, because in a way I felt as though I had. I’m usually an optimist, I love to believe in the potential of people and I try to see the good in places that people try to simply brush away. But here, standing in the middle of Auschwitz, a Jewish concentration camp where thousands upon thousands of people were murdered, what good could I pull out of this seemingly hopeless situation? Somewhat surprisingly, I answered, “No… the fact that the Jewish people were able to recover from this horror gives me hope in humanity.” If we stick together, we can survive the terrors of this world. Better times will come, we just have to endure the struggles now in order to get there.

We got back to Krakow later on in the evening, but the city was pretty lively. There was a center square where shops were scattered all around. Steph knew of a kebab place where we could get something to eat. Kebabs are awesome. A Kebab is flat bread with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, ranch dressing, other dressing that kind of tasted like thousand islands, and your choice of chicken or beef, spicy or non spicy. Or you can just call it deliciousness. Either one works.

After dinner we walked to the train station to get our overnight tickets to Prague, Czech Republic. Played a few rounds of Durak (or Fool, a game explained in the previous post), and then I taught the group Presidents. It’s a tricky game to explain, so you have to play it to understand it. But it was getting close to midnight, we already had a long day and we were looking to get up around 6. Time for some much desired sleep!

Oct 1

Stupid train ticket checking people… They are required to come at every major stop to recheck everyone’s tickets, not caring about the fact that you’re asleep in blissful warmth. The train car got a whole lot colder over the course of the night, but finally around 6:30 we arrived at the train station in Prague! Not many stores were open this early in the morning, so we walked around the curving streets of the city. Steph and Mike had the great idea to go out on the bridge and watch the sunrise. It was gorgeous to watch the sun slowly climb over the city buildings. After a while, we headed back into the heart of the city to get some breakfast, or at least sit in Starbucks until the restaurants started opening.

After eating, we walked to find the Dancing House. It is this crazy cool building that has a bent structure. It looks awesome, and Mike was really excited to find it. But for all the excitement, while walking past a park, Calvin mentioned taking a nap. I all too readily agreed to take a short nap (shocking moment #2.. I hate taking naps). The park was gorgeous, and it had a fountain and everything. I got all settled against my backpack, and enjoyed the moment to be able to rest my eyes. Calvin had picked his spot at the fountain but came over after realizing it would be really bad if he ended up falling in. I forget how it happened, but somehow we got on the topic of s’mores! And then this lady walked by with some pastry that reminded Steph of s’mores. When Calvin and I heard this, we took it as a sign and convinced the group to go into the bakery to get something sweet to eat.

After our snack we walked along the bridge where a whole group of artists had set up stands to sell their different crafts and paintings. There was a lot of metal work, and as I looked at each piece, it reminded me of my craft class and I remembered how to make all the earrings and necklaces that were hanging. It was really cool. From one of the vendors, Steph heard about this giant graffiti wall. It was trickier to find than expected, mostly because the directions given to us weren’t exactly accurate, but we found it. It was all about love and filled with different lyrics from the Beatles. Calvin found a pen on the ground, and I proceeded to add my little artistic flair to the wall: “I’m in love with being in love with you… forever and always <3 KLS” But then we wanted something to represent the Fab 5. So with our genius idea in place, I hoisted Calvin up to stand on top of Mike’s shoulders, and to mark our place on the giant graffiti wall. It was awesome!!

We stopped at a restaurant for some traditional Czech food for dinner: dumplings (severely sticky potato wedges) and some mixture of meat and sauerkraut. I’m not exactly sure what it was, but it was pretty tasty, and very filling! After another walk through the city, we headed off to the bus station to be on our way to Budapest, Hungary. Unfortunately, the bus attendant refused to let me board the bus since I had somehow managed to forget my passport in my room (Mom, don’t say it! I know you’re rolling your eyes at me.. I’m sorry). Despite the pleas of my friends, we watched as the bus drove away, and we huddled together outside the bus station at midnight to quickly create a Plan B. We decided to walk to the train station, but ended up getting escorted outside for the 2 hours that it had to close (anyone want to explain that one to me??). We wandered back to the center of the city and sat in a pub until 3 when they closed as well. Walking back across the city to the train station, we huddled together in some locker room for the remaining 3 hours until we could buy our tickets to get us back to Krakow.

Note to all your travelers out there: Not like you probably need reminding.. but the first two things that should be packed for each and every adventure must include your passport/travel documents and your tickets. Everything else you can probably scrape by with not having, but I tried to forget both of these before I left, and succeeded in leaving behind the most important one… Save yourself the devastation, and pack smart, and early.

Oct 2

Our train back to Krakow had a layover in Brohum, Czech Republic. 

The town was incredibly cute, and the Fab 5 stopped in a local café to enjoy a hot cup of cappuccino before getting back on the train. We arrived in Krakow around 3pm and decided to try and find a place to sleep for the afternoon since last night didn’t turn out exactly as planned. Steph had the wonderful idea of asking a monastery or convent for a place to sleep in exchange for a couple hours of work. But some people decided to get married today, so both places were filled with celebrations, and no room for five sleepy travelers to rest. But the convent did help us locate a hostel in town to spend the night! We were so excited.

Scary moment #2: Hostels require a passport in order to check in. Calvin can testify to this, I looked like I was about to freak the flip out. Luckily for me, they only needed one passport per group, so I was spared having to plead with the guy for a place to sleep. We dropped off our backpacks in our room, and with lighter spirits (and backs) we went off to explore the city once more. Another round of kebabs and some gelato, we stopped to enjoy a street concert, the NZS (Independent Student's Association). They had all these different bands get together to honor some musical movement? I’m not exactly sure about what, but Lauren and I still had a blast jumping around to the music!

Your birthday ended with a bang, Caroline!!

Oct 3

After a very refreshing rest in the hostel, we got to spend another glorious day in Krakow! Mom, be sure to tell Grandpa how much I’ve enjoyed Poland. I love it!! We stopped by the castle once more, since the previous night it was closed. We even attended a church service in the castle, it was so cool. Since we had already seen the city twice, Steph took the group to the Jewish quarters along the outskirts of town. Despite her and Mike’s amazing map reading skills, the quarters were a bit more difficult to find than expected. As always, right as we gave up, we turned the corner and Steph yells out, “Here it is!” The plaque that they had to honor the Jewish community that had lived in these slums had rocks on top of it. Where flowers can die and eventually perish, rocks are a more solid and long lasting representation of remembering someone.

Having an afternoon train ride to get us back to Warsaw, the group headed to the train station to begin our travels back to Klaipėda. After some help from a kind girl we were sitting with on the train, we made it to the correct bus station and waited for our bus. But the tickets were slightly confusing: Lauren and I had our matching tickets for the bus at one time but Steph and Mike had matching tickets for the same bus yet at a different stop. Poor Calvin bought his tickets last, and was forced to get on a completely separate bus from the rest of the group. I got on the bus first to make sure my ISIC card would be accepted. It was and I quickly rushed to my assigned seat and sank in it with a deep sigh of relief. We watched Calvin stand outside for a few minutes until his bus pulled up behind ours. With a quick wave, he confidently walked out of sight towards his bus.

There was a large group of Latinos that were sitting in front of us, laughing and having a grand old time. Normally I wouldn’t have cared at all, but Lauren and I were trying to sleep and it was not easy with the group being so rowdy. Not to mention my mind was constantly trying to translate what they were saying! Plus, the person sitting in front of me had her seat reclined all the way back, making it highly uncomfortable to sleep. Mike (Henry), I am so sorry because now I understand what you go through every time you travel.

Oct 4

Steph, Mike, Lauren and I arrived in Kaunas around 4am and waited for Calvin to arrive about half an hour later. I got a bit silly due to lack of sleep, and was hopping around and walking circles around the pillars, peeking around them back at the group. Only the other three there can fully appreciate the level of shenanigans that was going on with me. As promised, I sat down and began making signs to welcome Calvin back to Kaunas. They read, “Welcome to Kaunas”, “C. RUTH”, “We *crossed out* I love you!” and the last one was a “tulip” since Lauren wanted to buy him a flower. Oh the crazy things I do…

We waited eagerly with our signs to welcome Calvin back home, but he wasn’t getting off the bus. I started mentally freaking out, thinking he wasn’t able to get on the bus, but finally he walked out and over to where we were standing. He had just been woken up by the driver, and sleepily made his way down the aisle. He told us about a slight fiasco that he endured back at the bus station in Warsaw. The bus I had seen Calvin walk towards, was apparently the wrong bus. When he handed the driver his ticket, the driver handed the paper back to him and shook his head. Calvin asked again, “Kaunas?” and pointed to his ticket. And again, the bus driver simply shook his head no. Luckily, a guy who spoke English was standing nearby and pointed Calvin to another bus that had just pulled up. With a glimpse of hope, he walked over, asked the driver, and happily got on the correct bus to Kaunas. Poor Calvin… Thank God we all got home safely!

Ah, to see the welcoming sunrise in Lithuania! I had finally made it home! I had been terrified since Friday night not having my passport, fearing that I would not be able to get on the bus or train or having a surprise boarder check getting in and out of Poland. Got to Klaipėda safe and sound at 9, and as the four left to go to school I quickly turned to walk back to Karklu for the hour I had before class. This weekend was crazy, kinda scary, exciting and completely unpredictable. The Fab 5 became 100x closer during this trip, and I really couldn’t have spent this traveling adventure with better people. Thanks for not hating me after this trip :)

Birthday Weekend in Tallinn and Riga!!

Sept 23

10pm came quickly enough as somehow I managed to write my paper and finish packing just in time. My roommates wished me a good time, and an even better birthday, it was really sweet. We left slightly later than planned, so that meant no Finland for us. Things needed to work out too perfectly for that to happen, so it was decided to just spend our free time in Tallinn and enjoy it. Finland shall be another weekend trip later on perhaps.

We had a 9ish hour bus ride to look forward to, arriving in Tallinn around 8am. Too excited to go to sleep, Gabby, Martha, James and I started playing Kims. It’s the game where I win, every time, all the time :). No, but seriously, you play with partners and you have to get four of a kind and get your partner to say “Kims” before the other two players say “Stop!” It was very exciting playing on my puter that’s resting on top of the seats while on a moving bus, but we made it work. It was a lot of fun.

 Sept 24

And finally, with my little 30-second mental countdown in place, it was finally my birthday :) I am now no longer a teenager; I am a double decade, 1/5 of a century, twice as old as a 10 year old; I have lived 7,305 days... Or in less fancy words: I am 20 :). Gabby whipped out a small gift bag for me including bubbles, chocolate and a card. Then Emas got on the bus microphone and lead the bus full of sleepy study abroads in singing Happy Birthday to me, and then gave me a bouquet of daisies. It was wonderful :)

Succumbing to sleep sounded easier than it turned out to be. I curled up with my Spongebob fleece blanket on my two seats and managed to find a comfy position to fall asleep. I usually don’t sleep on moving vehicles, and Dad you can vouch for me on this one, so I guess I had trained myself too well because I ended up waking up every hour, weirdly some time in the 30s: I went to sleep around 1:30 but woke up at 2:34, 3:33, 5:39, and finally at 7:35 (I didn’t check my watch during the other two times, but I know I woke up around those times). We stopped by a hotel for breakfast, and I got to eat French toast!! It was pretty good.

We stopped by the hostel to drop off our things, and then headed out to explore the city. We thought about taking some bikes out and ride around for a bit, but it was a bit pricey and we figured we would have more fun just walking around. There was this 7-seater bike that we might have been able to get, but it was ridiculous. It was pretty much a circle of seats, and one person steers and the others help pedal. It looked absolutely amazing! I must find another place that has a bike like this and try it out. We went to this church with a tower of 278 stairs, and a few of us had the bright idea to walk up to the top. Mike, I know that you like spiral staircases, but this would have killed that love of yours. It was a ridiculous spiral staircase, but it felt very accomplishing once we all got to the top. And the view was gorgeous, so it was totally worth it. The group headed back to the hostel to rest and take naps, but I was still somehow full of energy and wanted to go out and shop some more and just simply explore.

I talked Gabby into joining me, so we went back out to the market and I got a beautiful teal scarf for myself for my birthday :). We meandered around the other stores in the area and finally gave into our craving of getting coffee and something sweet to eat. Finding a coffee shop was a whole lot harder than we ever could have imagined. We kept seeing signs for them but every time we walked over, it was a regular restaurant. But we finally found one, and chatted for 3 hours before heading over to the restaurant for dinner. Dinner was awesome. There was so much food, and Master of the Table James made sure that everyone was well fed with refills of all the foods. Note to self: As much fun as it was, stop playing with the candle wax.

After dinner, the group didn’t want to stay in at the hostel, so once again we went out to further explore the city. We walked down this one road, and heard all these motorcycles revving in the middle of the street, but couldn’t figure out why. Walking through the park, there was this stage set up for some band that was going to perform. Though we couldn’t understand the Estonian rappers, the music wasn’t too bad. But the beat boxing performance after that was so cool; there’s a video on Facebook for your enjoyment. It was a long day today, very enjoyable and awesome, but tiring. We got back to the hostel, played a few more rounds of Kims, and then waited out the last few minutes of my 20^th birthday. It was such a great day, thank you so much to everyone who helped make it as special as it was. And thank you for the wall posts, I saw all the e-mail notifications earlier :) it made me really happy.

Happy 20^th Birthday self and Squini!!! Double decade! Woohoo :)

Sept 25

So, I’m sitting here at 1am at the table in the lounge starting to type up my study guide for World Lit, and these two British dudes come walking up the stairs and try to get into their room. They’re holding McDonald’s and they are calling to some other guy in their room to come open the door. They are talking to him (in their awesome British accents) as though he is sleeping and/or ignoring their calls to open the door. They keep saying things like, “I know you can smell your Big Mac through the door…. Don’t make us eat your milkshake! Open the door!” Mike and I are cracking up as we are sitting right next to the guys as they are trying to get in their room. So the guy finally comes and opens the doors, in his boxers and cries out, “Oh crap, there’s a girl in the room!” And hastily hides behind the door as Mike and I laugh harder and I quickly turn away and look back at my puter. But I’m beyond done with writing this study guide for World Lit, so I’m off to bed. Gotta get up semi-early to get breakfast and go explore more of the city. Good night :).

Got up, got packed, and got breakfast; pretty effective morning. Went out shopping once again with Gabby to get this awesome fuzzy hat (the one that I wanted to get from Russia.. but heard they were really expensive, and this one was good enough) that I had seen the other day. As we were walking through the park, we ran into Calvin, Heather, Steph Mings, Mike, Lauren and Nastia around these round, tilted circles that you’re supposed to run on yet somehow not impale yourself into the ground. I guess Calvin didn’t get that memo. But we walked around, and people kept bringing up getting tattoos and piercings. I totally wanted to get one, but I knew I was going to be too lazy to want to take care of it while I'm here, and if anything happened to go wrong, it was going to be quite a pain to have to go to the doctor's or hospital for anything.

Finished exploring the city, stopped by Rimi (supermarket) to stock up on some food, and got on the bus for the 5ish hour bus ride to get to Riga. Right now as I’m writing this, side note to Chels, Sam and Squini: the bus just passed another truck while going around a curve. It wasn’t as bad as our trip because it’s not raining and we weren’t going up a hill, but I must say I stopped typing this to completely pay attention for any cars to suddenly appear around the corner. Stupid white car… scarred me for life. Anyway, I managed to sleep for about an hour on the bus, and now I’m convinced that I am incapable of sleeping for more than an hour on a moving vehicle. But we got to the hostel, dropped our stuff off and headed off to the restaurant for some dinner. Got some lasagna :) sooo delicious, but I only wish the serving portions were slightly bigger. One of the things that I miss most about home is the amount of food served at restaurants.

After some hardcore decision making, we wandered around the city at night. It was gorgeous. We stopped by some outdoor restaurant place where there was some music playing and sat and enjoyed that for a short while. Then off to some hotel with a skyline bar to see the whole city lit up. It was a relaxing way to finish off our first day in Riga. Then we headed back to the hostel, got ready for bed and played a card game called Durak. Durak is an awesome Russian game that Nastia taught us. It’s about “attacking” one person with a card, which they then have to beat with a card of the same suit, or of a “trump” suit (higher than the other 3). If they can, then the cards get cleared, and the next person goes. If not, then the person has to pick up all the cards laid on the table. The game ends when there are no cards left in the pile, and the player is able to play all their cards. I’ll have to teach you sometime how to play, it’s super addicting!

Happy 21^st Birthday Chelsea!!!!

Sept 26

We had about 4 hours to explore the city this morning. It was more than enough time since we had seen most of everything last night. But we moseyed around, taking our time and enjoying all the sights. While we were walking, we decided to run up this hill and walk on the train tracks. Unfortunately, before we got the chance to take some cliché pictures, an alarm sounded and yelled at us in Latvian to get off the tracks as the train was coming up behind us. Haha oops :)

It was getting close to 2, so we started heading back to the meeting spot at the square. We stopped by a church nearby, and right outside was this wooden horse. So of course we climbed up and took some awesome pictures. There was this lady with a bull stuffed animal, similar to my bear Amore that I’m traveling around with. Unfortunately, Amore could not make it to this trip in fear that he would be too squished in with everything else and might get lost. It would have been really cool to have him with me now though to take a picture with the lady and her bull. Sorry guys :(

Finally, we drove off to somewhere to stop for lunch. The restaurant worked in a way that you paid only for each plate that you used. So at the salad bar, you could get whatever you wanted, and only had to pay one set price for your plate, no matter whether you got a grape or 5 kilos of various salads. It was pretty cool, and very filling :). Sadly, we had to get back on the bus for our 4-hour bus ride home. Didn’t get much studying done, but I’m not too worried. Whatever happens, happens, I just can’t wait til Wednesday :)!

Exams, Brownies and Birthdays

Sept 20
Got my Soc exam back and I did better than I thought :). Ditto with my Lithuanian quiz. Pretty good way to start the week, too bad it’s only going to get a lot worse very soon…

Sept 21

Thanks to Calvin’s massive craving for brownies, a few study abroads got together to attempt to make some. We had most of the ingredients, kind of, or at least similar enough for us to attempt the recipe. Though most people here had no idea what brownies were, I believe, “a super moist, fudgey chocolate cake” kinda helps explain it. But, they didn’t quite turn out as normal brownies usually do. We’ll have another attempt at perfecting the recipe. But hey, they weren’t a total failure. Oh, and we’ll actually try to watch the movie which was the whole point of the evening. Well, that and studying…

Sept 22

My life is officially exploding. Here’s what my life looks like for the next two weeks:

          Thursday: Motivation and Emotion exam; Social Research exam; leave for Latvia and Estonia around 10. Friday-Sunday: travel around, perhaps go to Finland also? Attempt to study for… Monday: World Literature exam; Cross-Cultural Seminar presentation… Tuesday: Social Research proposal paper due… Wednesday: Lithuanian quiz; World Lit paper; leave for “4 for 4 Countries” trip including… Thursday-Monday morning: traveling around Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia… Monday: go to class after a severe sleep deprived weekend… Tuesday: Motivation presentation… Wednesday: Lithuanian quiz… Friday: Sociology project paper. Saturday: pass out… Sunday: study for Lithuanian midterm. So in about 2ish weeks, my life will become more manageable again. Until then… I don’t even want to think about it.

I don’t mean to complain because I know I’m very lucky and I love traveling, but I’m sorry, I think my academic life majorly sucks right now. You’re probably wondering why I’m taking my academics so seriously while I’m studying abroad, and everyone else keeps asking me this, but my answer is I just can’t help it. They are still real classes, and the grades are still counting towards my GPA. Call me an overachiever if you want, but hey, I am who I am. One of my best/worst qualities is caring more than I should.

Sept 23

Don’t ask me when I wrote this. All I have to say is I’m sick of studying…

I love it when what I studied isn’t on the exam. That’s how I felt through both tests, but we’ll see how I did on Tuesday, so til then, I don’t care anymore. I still need to pack for this weekend trip. We leave tonight at 10, and I still need to write a paper to send to my research partner before then. But, I did buy the tickets I needed for my trip next week. I’ll talk more about that during next week’s post. Oh, and the reason why this post is shorter than usual is because I figured I would have some pretty exciting stories to tell from my weekend trip, so I’ll let that be a special weekend post when I come back. A very special weekend ;)

P.S. Happy 20^th Birthday Squini, my fellow Birthday Girl :), and Happy 21^st Birthday Chelsea the day after!! Sorry I couldn’t be there to celebrate them with you!!!! I’ll make it up to you, I promise ;)

Realizations 2

I had a very interesting walk back to Karklu last Friday (Sept 17). I walked back with Mārtiņš, and before even leaving DeFehr, we had begun a very interesting conversation. He will probably call it an argument, but whatever it was, it made me think.

We had just finished Lithuanian class, and Mārtiņš had to stop to talk to someone quickly. So I was tagging along, and I walked ahead of him through the doorway (since gentlemen here let the ladies go first.. men back home, take notes), and stopped a little further ahead to wait for him to catch up. There was another guy trying to walk through the doorway at the same time as he was, and instead of either one stopping and letting the other go first, both of them tried to squeeze through the frame. So I questioned him, ”Why didn’t you just wait three seconds and let him go, then you could have easily fit through the door?” To which he oh-so-calmly replied, “What are you saying? That men are impatient? What, did I walk through the door incorrectly because I’m Latvian? What do you have against Latvian men?” and opened the door for me to leave Defehr. (I’m sorry Mārtiņš, I know this isn’t quite exactly what you said, but it was along these lines: that I had something against Latvians, and something against men, yeah?) He had a mischievous look in his eye, and I knew he was only teasingly picking a fight with me, but I still attempted to explain what I had meant by my comment.

After I eagerly denied any bad feelings against men, and especially Latvians, he then moved on to pick on me about being American. I am not saying that Mārtiņš honestly believes these, because I’m like 99.9% sure he was just teasing, but I think there was some truth behind his words. This list describes the *stereotypical* American that I think everyone can nod, kinda laugh, and agree with. A few things include:

          As an American, I thought I was better than him

          As an American, I was trying to impose my beliefs on him because I thought my way was right and his Latvian way was wrong

          Americans can only speak one language and we’re selfish

          Americans are stupid

I was trapped, my back against the wall as I was being called the stereotypical American that I wanted so desperately not to be. So I did the only thing that I could think of: I told the truth. I, in no way, thought of myself as being better than he was, either as a man or especially as a Latvian. I was merely curious of why neither one of them had stopped to allow the other one to go through the door first so that they didn’t have to squeeze through the doorway at the same time. I had noticed other people doing that too, and I wasn’t quite sure why it happened. I think it is more convenient to be able to walk through a doorway one person at a time rather than two, and it takes about five extra seconds to let the other person go first.

The “Americans only speak one language” really gets me. I believe that it is important to know more than one language (preferably fluently), but I think America is stuck in a pretty tricky situation. The world language may as well be declared as English because nearly anywhere you go, people can pretty much speak it. Other countries have their home language, and the shared language of English. Now, America’s own language is English, which is also the shared world language. So I ask you, as a nation, what other language should America speak? America is forced to *choose* one language to have as a second option? That would most likely cause a bit of a problem. If we chose German, would not the French be offended that we didn’t pick their language? If we chose Ukrainian, would not the Lavtians be insulted that we didn’t pick theirs? If we chose Russian, would not Lithuanians be upset that we didn’t pick theirs? I don’t want this to come off as an excuse, but I don’t think it’s right to make America as a nation choose a second official language. I do believe it’s important to make people learn a second language, even if it is their choice to decide which one.

The “Americans are stupid” card. I want to make this very clear, the *stereotypical* American, I will agree, is portrayed as being stupid, and I admitted this to Mārtiņš. But as all stereotypes do, they only truthfully portray a very small portion of the group they are assigned to. But, I think it is important to think about the difference between ignorance and stupidity. I believe most Americans are ignorant to how the world really is. Sure, we are educated in school to learn about history of other countries, what wars have taken place, and know of some of the world’s current news, but do we fully understand and comprehend what that means? I know I don’t. I was naïve about the truth. The words I read in textbooks, the multiple choice answers I circled on history exams, the essays I wrote about information I quickly skimmed over; I don’t think I ever fully realized what that information meant. It is a completely different perspective to leave home, to go to a different country, different continent, different part of the world and experience a different lifestyle. I believe ignorance is not knowing something, whereas stupidity is knowing something but choosing to believe in it knowing it is wrong or incorrect.

I believe that each and every country has a group of people that accurately portray their stereotype, but the vast majority of the population differs from that label. Sure, America has people who have done some pretty stupid things; unfortunately some of them happened to be people that were in charge or at least in the popular spotlight that is portrayed to the rest of the world. But I hope I am not part of this stereotype. I hope I am not seen as a stupid individual who refuses to admit when I’m wrong and acts unaccepting to others in light of that. I hope I am seen as an open individual who can see and understand that there are different ways of doing things. I hope I am not seen as a selfish individual who only knows one language, and just because it’s English, I believe that learning another language is pointless. I hope it is not an internal pride that keeps me from being bilingual, but maybe growing up in a system that did not value speaking multiple languages as other countries had. I hope I am recognized and accepted for being different; not better, not worse, but simply different. I am proud to be an American, though I may not be proud of every aspect that an American may stand for.

I hope this post doesn’t come off as conceited or arrogant, and I hope it made sense. I don’t want you to think badly of Mārtiņš for some of the things he brought up in our conversation. I’ve had parts of this conversation with many people, and no one has ever verbally attacked me for being an American. It just so happened that Mārtiņš had put a lot of common themes that others have talked to me about together, and so I figured it might be important to stop and truly think about. Plus, he agreed with my answer of every country has stupid people, and that there is a difference between stupidity and ignorance. Just something to think about.