arrival

Well, I made it to Lith!
Honestly, the only reason I'm writing this post on my first day out is because we are being forced against our will to stay up until dark so that we can get used to the time zone here. This will help me stay awake, but it also may make no sense. I feel like I've been awake for days, probably because I actually have been awake for days.
Chicago was a great last impression of America. Nobody does giant skyscrapers on the waterfront quite like Chicago does. I wanted to stay and explore, but now I'll just have to go back. The 8 hours to Stockholm, Sweden provided me with very little sleep, but a lot of time for reading. And then flying into Vilnius, over the Baltic Sea was just magical. I couldn't even believe it was real life.
After exchanging our money for litas, we ate. If you can believe it, our first meal here was under those golden arches...McDonalds. I don't know what our coordinator  was thinking, ha but I was famished so I also didn't really care. I am excited to eat at all the cool little cafe's we saw when we got a short glimpse of beautiful old town Vilnius. I won't even describe anything we saw yet, cause I need to go back for some pictures.
We went and saw the school where we would be teaching at and then we were assigned our host families. Now, first of all, I was not prepared for a host family. I thought that I'd be living in an apartment with other teachers. But I'm trying really hard to just go with it. The mom and dad are so so kind, and speak broken English. They have 4 kids between the ages of 3 and 15. Honestly, I cannot remember how to pronounce any of their names for the life of me. I'm trying. For dinner we ate "pancakes" which were actually crepes, stuffed with chicken, tomatoes, ketchup, sour cream,and some other unrecognizables. I have to tell you I was tired and scared to eat it, but I just did. We will just say, it was not bad, but I probably wouldn't request it again. But that's not even weird. The big rule here is, do NOT kill spiders. That right, I said do not. The mom says it's a bad omen and she doesn't want them killed in her house. I am still going to kill any that I see. Sorry. So far I'm doing ok here but boy am I excited to sleep. I am so happy to finally be in Europe. The world is so great!

(sorry there are no pictures yet, I haven't had a camera accessible yet)

europe bound

So, I guess it's time I let the world know, I'm going to Europe!
I mean really, I'm sitting in the Salt Lake Airport right this second, waiting to board the plane. It's fine
I guess you could say that last December, I made the spontaneous decision to ditch school for a semester and to go explore a little bit of the world. The moment has finally come! For the next 4 months I'll call Vilnius, Lithuania home. I'll be traveling and working with a program called International Language Programs (ILP), and living near the school where I will teach kids English every day. The non-profit organization is a volunteer program that works to bring English to children throughout the world, providing them with more opportunities in the future. The purpose of this blog is 1- to give provide my mother with some updates (since I assume she will be the only one reading this. Hi mom!) and 2- to document my many adventures.
I'm just so excited!
Check out the ILP website if you wanna see what this is all about!

The original Rainbow Road: Old Town Vilnius