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)