LCC Graduation 2007

It's over. LCC Graduation 2007 is over. My friends are done with another year of school and mostly heading home or elsewhere early next week. Several will be in Klaipeda during May, as they'll be taking a class at LCC and so my goodbyes have been delayed for a while. Meanwhile, I leave in exactly four weeks!

The ceremonies on Saturday were well organized and went on without a hitch. The weather was beautiful, and I think the flower shops in the area had a boost of business because every graduate was walking around with an armful of blooming well-wishes.

The commencement ceremony went like this: The staff and faculty lined up on either side of the sidewalk leading to Michealsen Centras, where the ceremony would take place inside. We then followed them into the foyer, where we bypassed them and went in to our seats in a mini processional. The graduates then came in and found their seats, and the speeches began. The main speaker was an advisor to the Lithuanian president, who gave his speech in Lithuanian, and then an interpreter gave it in English. His speech was very nice, but it was getting long and somewhere along the line, people in the bleachers started clapping and shouting - I thought the president had just walked in, but apparently they were just indicating that they had heard enough and that the speech should be over. The speaker apologized for the length of his speech and gave his closing remarks in English. It was pretty rude, and a student apologized for their behavior in a later speech given to thank the parents of the graduates. There were 95 graduating students, and each one received a Lithuanian sash with their name on it, and those who won awards received extra sashes. For example, Regis got three sashes that formed the colors of the Lithuanian flag, and Dori got three sashes too, but two yellow and one green. Most everyone's parents and families were there - and it was fun for me to see them and gauge the family resemblance. After thousands of photos were taken, the families grabbed their grad and took them out to dinner for some quality bonding time and more congratulations.

The LCC party was being held at 8 pm at a hall above a bar/club in the old town, and upon arriving a fashionable 10 minutes late, we found that there was not enough seating and not everyone had arrived yet. Champagne, wine, various other alcoholic beverages and many, many fancy snacks were available. There was a slideshow of photos and a dance performance by two non-grads and it was pretty fun. A good time was had by all, seating or no :)

Goodsearch...

Here's a new, easy way to raise money for your favorite cause: Just start using GoodSearch.com as your search engine, and every time you search, they make a donation to your favorite charity, church or school! LCC is currently listed as a supportable institution, and every search adds a penny to their account. It's powered by Yahoo, so you get decent search results - I added it to my Firefox Google toolbar, so it's readily available for me to use as I surf the net.

The button above is a direct link to the default page, with LCC already filled in as the cause your searches will support, but here's a text link as well :) Even if you don't want to support LCC, it's a good idea, as thousands of causes are listed, from the ASPCA to The Breast Cancer Fund - so, you may as well support someone while you search!

Two More Stamps

That's right - two more stamps in my passport because I went to Latvia on Saturday! It was a random event - Evaldas, Regis and I had been sitting around my house wondering what we could do and someone suggested going somewhere and then somehow Latvia was decided upon. Do we have currency for Latvia? No! Do we speak Latvian? No! Do we know anything really about Liepaja? No! Sounds good, let's go!

So we did. It was great! The drive was not very long, only about an hour and we set about trying to find a place to park in the either 'you must turn right' or 'you most definitely may not turn right' small town of Liepaja. After some driving in circles, we parked and walked around and found that old town was about a three minute walk, total. We took some photos and had supper in a nice restaurant where they thankfully spoke English and prices were in Latvian lats (1 lat = 1.92 USD), so initially everything looks really cheap when a full meal is about 3 lats and drinks are .50 lats, but convert that and it's about the same price as Lithuania.

After supper we headed to the sea - or rather, the direction we thought the sea should be in - and ended up driving around random roads trying to find a sign or something directing us to the beach. The signs in Liepaja are ancient - surely not changed since Independence or even before that - many are still in Russian. As we looked for the beach, we came upon rows and rows of empty, not quite finished apartment buildings. It was just like the scene I mentioned from 'Everything is Illuminated' - When Elijah looks at a huge Soviet-style apartment building that has been left to decay and asks 'what is it?' - the Ukrainian young man looks at the same building and replies 'Soviets.' Elijah continues, 'what happened?' and the Ukrainian young man pauses and says 'independence.' The three of us were in awe that the buildings were just relics, left to stand unfinished and as a reminder of apparent Soviet plans for the area. After we saw the buildings, we saw the top of a Russian Orthodox church nearby, so we went to investigate and found to our surprise a huge, beautiful church in the middle of nowhere. We decided the church was built first, and then the apartment buildings which would house the potential congregation.

After our discovery, we again searched for the sea. We went down a very long, rural road through the woods and ended up at the shore. It was very, very windy and the sand was more than willing to fly right into my eyes. Evaldas was no sooner out of the car than he was running down the beach to the top of a nearby cliff overlooking the sea. That's great for him, but I was cold and retreated to the car to avoid getting sand blasted. After a few minutes, we headed further down the road and came upon more relics! This time, it was bunkers facing the sea that were in a state between 'pretty good condition' and 'ruined' - the ones on the cliff directly were torn apart, probably from the sea taking its toll on them year after year, but the ones still intact were surprisingly well kept. The ones I had seen in Klaipeda were always small, dark and full of beer bottles from teenage parties. These were deserted, open and I actually felt comfortable walking into them. It was really weird to imagine the activity associated with the site, with the construction of the bunkers, the soldiers who occupied them, and the people who had visited them after the war was over.

We explored the area some more - came upon a huge wind turbine and more bunkers, and then headed home. I told 'scary' stories on the way home in the dark and had both boys' attention whilst telling the stories that freaked me out as a kid reading those terrible books marketed to 5th graders (which I think are far too scary, especially the drawings, for a 10 year old). We stopped at Maxima and got some food and headed to my house to watch Se7en, since it was the only 'scary' movie I had...We all were too tired to finish it and rain checked it for later. The trip was wonderful though, shame we didn't do more excursions like this! There are pictures from the trip posted in the album on yahoo...

The Spit at Night...and other tales

The thesis defenses are over! My four fourth-year friends who opted to write a business thesis presented them yesterday and in order to celebrate, we had lunch at Skandalas, a great restaurant that my parents favored when they were here. I bought the wine as a congratulations gift and a good time was had by all. Then each of the friendlies went home for a nap, and I met up with Regis and Evaldas later for a 12th Floor excursion. It was a great day and they were feeling inclined to treat themselves to the fancier restaurants in town. While enjoying our food, view of Klaipeda and company of friends, we decided to go to the Spit for a short time - and we ended up catching the second to last ferry across, which meant that we had one hour or so to goof around, and then we had better get our booties back to the harbor, or we would be stranded for 6 hours until morning. There was only us and the two crew members on the ferry, and when we stepped off the boat, we headed to the path into woods, which would eventually take us to the beach. Picture this: the path through said woods starts a short walk from the parking lot and refreshment stands and it is the start of a 'no-streetlamp-zone' which means it is pitch black journey of fun. Being the token scaredy cat girl, I claimed the middle position and held both boys' hands as we began our trek into the black.

Evaldas was enjoying the fact that both Regis and I were not as comfortable with our adventure as he was (though I was the most frightened, and had I not had two strapping young lads to (hopefully) protect me, there's no way I'd have walked around like that) and so he took every opportunity to make a noise or exclaim 'what's that?!' and point into the woods as he could. I swear, I am the jumpiest kid I know - Regis will go ahead of me in my own stairwell, open and close the door so I think he's gone outside, when he's in fact hiding in the dark next to the door waiting to scare me. This is something I know he does and it's obvious when he does it, yet I scream everytime he jumps out at me. Anyway, back to the story - so we successfully walked through the woods and made it to the beach, where we gazed at stars and the boys ran around, apparently trying to scare me into thinking they had left me. There was a particularly bright orb of light near Mars, so we were wondering what it was...Venus maybe? After our beach walk, we headed back to the wooded path, far less intimidated than before and boarded the ferry and we all went home.

The next day was the LCC choir and bell choir concert, which was great! I really like the choir songs and almost wish I had joined it, though my vocal chords were not blessed at birth, I do enjoy singing. After that event, Evaldas, Regis and I were joined by a study abroad student named Rachel and we headed to Kretinga, a small town outside of Klaipeda. We saw the Winter Gardens attached to Kretinga's Museum, which houses a cafe inside the huge greenhouse - picture at right. It was beautiful! There is a small park near the property that had wood and stone sculptures that marked important dates in Lithuania's history - from battles to All Saint's Day, etc. There was also a huge sundial.

We tried to go to an inn-styled restaurant that I hadn't been to before for lunch, but a chicken breast meal would have taken an hour and a half..so we left and headed to HBH, a place that knows how to handle crowds :) The weather was very nice, so many people were sitting outside. We enjoyed our lunch and then headed to the botanical gardens of Palanga, which also has the Amber Museum on the property. I hadn't been to the area in all my time in LT, so it was cool to explore a new place. The statue at left is another interpretation of Eglė and the snake she married that turned out to be a prince - a Lithuanian fairytale. We did not go inside the Amber Museum, but the estate itself was impressive. On our way to the beach, we passed 'Birutė's Hill' - a place that houses a stone altar that a girl called Birutė looked after, but was whisked away by Duke Kestutis, who had fallen in love with her and took her to Trakai (the lake castle) and married her. In true Christian tradition, there is now a statue of the Virgin Mary next to the cave/altar - combining the sacredness of the place into a pagan rooted, now Christian shrine.

We saw the sun set on the beach and headed back to Klaipeda after having quite an adventure!

Margučiai, Šaltiena & Šašlykai!

The Lithuanian words in the title are "Easter Eggs, 'Gelatin & Beef Tongue Cake,' and Pork Shish-Kebabs" - all very important things on my Easter adventure! I headed to Joniškis again to be with Regis' family for the holiday, and I had a great time. Language barrier or no, moms are still moms, worried about your welfare, hunger and thirst levels and unstockinged feet. Side note about those eggs in the photo - the ones with thread and designs on them were made by a neighbor of Regis' family - by wrapping thread around eggs from her very own chickens and decorating them with slices of small branches and seeds, she created a very unique and permanent Easter memento! Apparently she made 400 of them in total, so I ordered a dozen and will send them home. And now back to our regularly scheduled programing - There was constantly food available, and it was dangerously delicious...everything from tried and true herring dishes to colored hard boiled eggs to a cake made from gelatin, cut up beef tongue and grated carrot, served with a horseradish sauce. The 'cake' was not bad, just a different texture than I am used to - and everything else was excellent. The barbecued pork shish-kebabs were outstanding, and what a nice change to have something barbecued! Regis' mama even made cepelinai (the potato dumplings with meat inside) and I had three! A definite record for me.

Regis' older brother Donatas was visiting from England, and he was very nice and definitely a big brother - teasing his little brother about anything and everything in true sibling fashion. It made me miss my own siblings, but I shall see them soon enough! :) On Easter, their Keith & Peggy came over to dinner and the kid side of the table excused themselves early to go play the flag game Regis got for his birthday in February. Anyone know the capital of Malawi (flag shown at left)? If you guessed Lilongwe, you'd be right! It's a great game, very nerdy and informative - I feel smarter just knowing there is a country called Djibouti!

Anyway, I got to bake a cake and made baked eggplant - both of which were well received - I just love cooking! The weather was beautiful, sunny and warmish until Sunday night and Monday morning brought snow! Snow? Yes, folks...snow. Where was this snow at Christmas? Just plain weird, but I'm glad I did not pack up all of my scarves and gloves just yet, as I am sure rain is on its way eventually. Lietuva means rain after all, and we haven't had a whole lot of it...

I have posted some photos of the Easter adventure in my photo album, though I was disappointed I did not take advantage of the nice weather to walk around the small town and take more photos. Mew. More will come when I get them from Regis' camera. Spending time with his family was very nice, and I could tell that my comprehension of Lithuanian was better than Christmas, but my speech skills are still lacking because of my lame unconfidence and plain lack of knowledge of proper sentence structure creation. Don't worry Mom, I will be sure to send a thank you note in appreciation of their hospitality! I even got a bag full of cookies sent home with me, and intend to come back with recipes in order to try and recreate some of the scrumptiousness!

In other news, I'm posting my resume on some places and doing job searches, with little luck...anyone got a media empire that needs an employee or a great business plan they want to share with me? ;)