Week number dos!

Yes, that is spanish. I actually said something in spanish the other day in front of the kids at school and they repeated me like it was english. Opps! Haha... I think my brain just goes multi lingual whenever I'm around people i don't understand. "Oh, you don't speak english? Bonjour!" It's a real problem.

Anyhow! This week has been awfully long. On sunday i got a fever that ended up turning into a bad cold which in between felt like my lungs were going to give out. Being sick in another country really stinks. All i wanted was some good drugs to knock me out and ramen. What i got was some weird riccola cough drop flavored natural cough syrup and lithuanian soup. And tea. Lots and lots of tea. I'm sure my host mom thinks it's a cure all. Bless her heart. She has a hundred reasons why i got sick. My favorite was when she told me i needed to stop drinking water cause it's cold and it's only good to drink warm things in the winter. She was very worried about me though and it was nice to know she wasn't gonna let me die or anything :)

So i've been getting over that cold all week and my lessons kinda took a toll. The kids seemed sooo energetic this week and i didn't feel like my lessons were productive or made sense to the kids. I'm certain being sick made them seem extra crazy, but it was a good humbling experience to try and chase them around the room and reenforce the "english only" rule, because i was certain they were using more than just lithuanian to make hilarious comments about me :) But even though they're obnoxious i can't get over how cute they are and how much i love them. They want to speak and be bright and say awesome things. Even when they all start in a round of "heyyyy sexy lay-day!" and i feel like giving up on the class for the day, one sweet soul will smile at me and say, "Tea-churr Wendy, if we be good can we pleeeese sing gangam style?" And i throw my hands in the air and say what the hay, why talk about our favorite food when we can sing gangam style? So i make them tell me how pizza smells and tastes and feels and then we all get up and dance before i try and recollect the class again. It's a process. But i can do this job :)

Other than being sick and teaching i haven't done much. My big excitement for the week was getting cleaning supplies to finally clean the shower. It was a big deal. Also, The weather has been a bit colder this week. Like it was 0 degrees pretty much all week. I even got the experience of frozen hair to prove it.

Anyhow. I would love to hear from you! I'm sure in conversation i'd have more interesting things to say so don't heaitate to send me an email or even just a mailing address so i can send you some cool mail! You know you want lithuanian mail... :)

Love ya!

P.S. The first two pictures are of when my host sister and her friend drew crosses on their foreheads, put underwear on their heads, and lured me and my roommate into the bathroom claiming to be nuns. They taped us to the wall and taped our mouths shut while they did demon voodoo. It was the strangest thing :) Picture 3 is of all the cards my kids made for me on the day i stayed home sick! They are the best!

Life stories and luck with arachniphobia

Labas! Hey, wassup? It's about the only word i know in lithuanian :) Well, I don't know where to start! Maybe it's jet lag but everything has been coming and going and time is so confusing it doesnt even seem to exist! I didn't sleep the night i left in hopes that i'd bust the jet lag but wouldn't you know, i still get tired at random times and wake up at 5 in the morning :) Thankfully i did get to sleep most of the plane ride!

At one point i woke up for a few minutes and went to go back to sleep when an older german woman tapped me and said in her cute accent, "Please don't fall asleep! I've been waiting for you to wake up so i can get past you and use the toilet!" I felt so bad! When she got back i told her to wake me up anytime! (because anyone who knows me knows i can sleep anytime, anywhere, for any amount of time) I tried to make small talk to show her that I'm really not a crazy person and asked her about her travels. She had been visiting her daughter and was traveling back to her home in munich. When she found out i was traveling away from home for the first time she went off about her first time going to london to make something better than her poor circumstances in germany. Her story was awesome and inspiring. Throughout her life she worked in movie production, translated news stories for a network, owned a costuming boutique business and all kinds of other things. She said, "I'm almost eighty years old and when my friends get together they sit and wonder together about the things they wanted to do, i say, I did that. Don't let any small things or hard things keep you from living your life as you like. Then you don't sit and wonder, you sit and remember." It was this crazy advice from this little old woman, but i won't forget it. In the coming months, when it all seems crazy and i want to give up i'll just say to myself, I wont have to sit and wonder, i'll sit and remember.

After a while she got embarrased and said, "Oh my god. I just told my life story! I never to this!" She offered to give me her number so i could visit her in munich and we could go "on holiday" to her house in spain. I should have taken her up on it but theres something happily mysterious about meeting her again, even if its in the next life.

When i got to lithuania they told me i was going to be living with a host family. In all honesty i was a little worried at first and unsure of the situation, but my little lithuanian siblings are the cutest! I have three sisters and one cute two year old brother. They're still warming up to me and my roomate but after giving them gifts we are making progress! The 2 year old even comes down to our basement room and will just sit next to us and talk on and on in lithuanian. He doesnt seem to mind that we don't understand :) besides the boy the whole family knows at least some english and so i have fun dumbing down my english so they can better understand. I feel so taken care of! They feed me and ask me about my family and america, show me how to get places, buy wifi for us, and make us feel at home. Mom is pretty fluent so she takes good care of us, making sure we stay hydrated with tea, that we eat TONS of food, and sees that we aren't sick in bed if we dont come to breakfast. I did offend her on accident the other day though. Waking up the first morning after we slept, my roomate asked if i was okay with spiders. I said it depended and she took me to our bathroom where we found about 10 spiders on the ceiling! We went back to where our beds were and found several more above the beds. We wasted half an hour getting worked up over them before my roomate decided to ask pur host mom about them. She sleepily handed us a broom and we spent the next half hour trying to kill the crazyy things. Later our host mom asked what we did that morning and i explained they we killed the spiders and she said,"Oh no, we don't kill the spiders! Its bad luck!" My roomate and i made a pact to be secret spider killers. So i killed about 4 yesterday, but i've had rotten luck all day! My laptop broke so i dont have a way to get pictures off my camera (so i'm making this update from my ipod- please excuse the typos and lack or visual fun-ness), the wifi broke, we ran out of toilet paper, and i got two blisters on my feet. I think theres something to the spiders...

Well, teaching has been better than expected! I had prepared myself for this impossible lesson but most of the kids speak fair english already! It melts your heart hearing them come in and say "Teacher, i love you!" in their cute accents! They love it when you act dumb and let them tell you all about something and its so rewarding helping them add to what they know. I'm still getting the hang of it- planning lessons with the program's method is a little difficult trying to make sure you'll have enough for for the kids to talk about, but the kids are having fun so i feel like pretty good :)

It's just the first week and i don't want to make this any longer than it already is, but just know i love and miss you all! I'm finally feeling like i can get settled in and i feel so blessed to get to do this! Thanks for letting me share it with you!

Visa gero!

P.S. This spider is way more threatening than it appears. Really. Pictures don't do the devils justice but i had to leave you something :)