Palanga.

Hey there! Hope everyone is doing well back home. I miss home a lot, I must admit. This is harder than I ever thought it would be. I mean, the longest I've ever been away from home was maybe 6 days. So going on 3 weeks is insane. Let alone 4 months. I think after the first month it'll get easier, though. It's got to right? :) All of you missionaries are so brave. How do you do it?
Anyway, I had a really wonderful weekend. My coordinator, Dima, took his family and us 5 girls to Palanga, which is like the paradise of Lithuania. Set on the Baltic Sea, it is this cute little town with old shops, restaurants, a boardwalk, and lots of tall tales. I absolutely loved it! If you know me, you know I love water. When I go to the beach, I am IN the ocean constantly, never stopping to lay out. When I go to Springdale or the lake I'm constantly swimming. I just love it. I feel so comfortable in the water. So to see the sea was just as marvelous as could be. I had brought my swim suit, but then saw that it was raining so decided to leave it in the car. Well, as we finally get down to the water, it stops and the sun even starts to shine through the clouds. I was very upset. The water wasn't freezing. It felt just like a lake back home would have. So that was my regret for the day. But besides that, we walked on the boardwalk and wrote our names on the rails. I had to explain to one of the girls the difference between an ocean and a sea ;) She didn't know they were different. Hahaha.
The town was so quaint. So many good smells were wafting through the air. We stopped in a few shops. I saw so many souvenirs I wanted to get but decided I didn't want to buy any souvenirs until my last month here. Just to see what money I have left. We had lunch at a little Kebabas stop. Kebabas are like Gyros. Flat bread with meat, veggies and sauce inside. I got a cheeseburger though. Of course. With fries and a coke. My meal of choice here. Haha. And anywhere. Then as we walked some more I just had to have a waffle on a stick. Covered in melted chocolate, nuts & sprinkles. Boy, was that good. I'll definitely have to make that for my mom when I'm home. Then, well I couldn't turn down the gelato when it was right in front of my face. So..it wasn't exactly my best eating day, but YOPO (you're only in Palanga once) right?
We headed home after a beautiful day and stopped at an Akropolis (mall) in Kaunas. It was humongous and on the inside I felt like I was in the Fashion show mall in Vegas. It had a huge aquarium and just felt like home. That was nice for a second. The car ride was about 5 hours long so I did a lot of thinking during it. I made a bucket list of things I want to do in 2014. Things that I MUST do. Last summer I wanted to go camping, hiking, and visit many different national parks, but really that didn't happen at all. I think I went hiking ONCE. No camping at all. So this next year I want to be sure to do it all. Especially with my best friends Greg, Jadon, Courtney, Marissa & Amy. Gosh I love all of them. So if you're reading this you guys, know that I have a million plans for us :) So be ready! I also made a list of movies I want to watch while I'm here, concerts I want to see when I'm home, jobs I'm going to apply at, next vacation ideas. Haha. So I got a lot done as you can tell. It was a beautiful drive. All along the country side. Just what I love :)
I hope that America is treating you all well. You should all go eat an In & Out double cheeseburger in my favor. And maybe as you're eating it, think real hard about me and maybe I'll have the pleasure of eating on in my dreams.
Thanks for reading xx
-Shelb

 Our host family took us to this mega park with all of these wild playground rides. This merry go round thing spun so fast, and you'r like hanging off of it thinking you're going to land right on your back.

 The main street in Palanga. I love that it's only meant for walking and biking. No cars allowed.

 In the Baltic Sea, wuut? 

 Dima!

 The Fraternity and Sorority of Vilnius University were having a party to celebrate an aristocrat family who lived in this old old house. So they dressed from the 1920s. It was neat! And they let us sit in on their photos :) 

 Hopefully I can make it back to Palanga someday :) 

Thank You, Thomas.

Yo! I've been in Lithuania for 2 weeks already! It is flying. Like, the week will start and we'll head to school on Monday, but then I swear the next day is already Friday. That's good AND bad! :) haha. Good because that means the weekend comes faster, which we LOVE. You don't understand. Teaching children a completely new language is so exhausting. And talking and teaching straight for 4 hours is tough business. I respect teachers a lot more now. Especially having class sizes of 20-30. I can hardly handle 6! Today in class I had 10 kids and I wanted to cry. Nobody would listen to me and no one would pay attention and answer the questions and it was just really rough. So yes, the time flying is good for those reasons. But also bad because it means that my time in Lithuania is going to end sooner and sooner. Our 10 day vacation off of teaching is in october. And my head teacher says that after that vacation, the rest of the time here is like lightning fast. I know I will miss it a lot. I really do already look forward to coming home just to see my friends and family, and to be able to eat food and not have to study it first. But Lithuania is just so refreshing. It's so CLEAN here! The roads hardly have trash on them, everything is pristine. And I will definitely miss my green, flowery walk to school. That is my favorite. I'll miss all of the beautiful, lush ponds near by. The houses with colored roofs. The rollings hills, Cathedral square, the pizza!! Goodness, who would have known that Lithuania had the best pizza I've ever tasted? We've eaten pizza at 3 different places, and they have all been so delectable. They really know their stuff. Crispy and thin crust, and such fresh toppings. I will also miss the magija bars. They are these little chocolate covered cheesecake bars and boy, they are so creamy and lovely. If there's one thing I could bring home from Lith, it'd be those. But they have to be refrigerated :( I wish you could all taste one. You're life would change.

Just look at it. Your mouth is watering, isn't it? So yes, the pizza is the best ever.
I had a really neat weekend! On Friday we were all so stoked to get out of school so we could get to Old Town. Vilnius was having a huge music festival and we definitely didn't want to miss it. We get there and there are little shops and booths set up along the main street in Old Town, and there is a huge stage in the middle of it all! This really good rock band from Latvia was playing! We hung there and danced a little bit, then made our way to find food. That's when we found Cili Pizza and had dinner there. I got a whole 10" pizza and a large coke for only $9.59 US dollars. With that good of quality and ingredients, a meal like that in America would be like $15. So the currency here is definitely another thing I'll miss. The other day I bought a tub of raspberries, a yogurt smoothie, a sprite, a huge croissant, & a donut and it came to 10 Litas which is about $4 US dollars. Crazy huh? Such a good deal :) So I definitely think my money will last me the whole time while I'm here.
Anyway, we finished the delicious pizzas and headed down to Cathedral square for another concert. We just caught the end of it, and headed back to the bus. We waited and waited for our bus. The sign said it would arrive at 11:43. 11:43 comes and goes and no bus. So we just keep waiting, maybe it's late. Then a random guy comes up behind us and asks us where we are from. We tell him we're from America. He starts speaking to us in pretty good english and asks us to play a question game with him or something? So it's a pretty goofy game. And then we ask him if he knows when the bus will come. And he says "uhhh, the bus is long gone. The last bus was a half hour ago!" So we were pretty mad, we must have read the sign wrong. So he tells us he will help us find a taxi. We follow him like all the way back into Old Town, we're all so exhausted. And he tells us we might have to spend about 25 Litas each for the taxi. Which is like $10 EACH!! He said that if they know you are American, they will over charge you. So he finds a taxi, and talks to them and asks them how much he will charge for us American girls. And thankfully he did, because he helped talk down the price to only 5 Litas each. So that was SO SO nice!! We were so thankful for Thomas helping us out. That was our first encounter with a kind person off the streets. Truthfully, people are not friendly here. Our host family and our coordinator are the only friendly people we know. So that was such a miracle for us! Especially for him to just randomly come up behind us and ask us where we're from! We would have had to walk about 8 miles home if he didn't :) Thanks Thomas!!

 Myself, Hayden & Kelby wandering Old Town!

So we were very excited about the concert! And that it was in english!

First Week.

So I survived my first week here in Lithuania. Haha. Actually, I am really loving it. The first few days was hectic and scary and sweaty. But as we've continued to teach, it's been a lot easier to figure out lessons and teach them correctly. I really enjoy teaching the older kids, the ones who can already speak english pretty well, but are now learning more advanced english terms like in math & science & social studies, etc. They are really fun! I like that I can actually carry a good conversation with them. Finding activities to do that the kids will actually like has probably been the most challenging for me. You can only make so many catapults and paper airplanes before they start to get bored of it. You need to be creative which...well, I've never really mastered that skill. But from what I've heard, it gets easier and you get used to it. So hopefully that will be true for me. I haven't been getting a lot of sleep because our teaching schedule is from 3:30pm-7:30pm and then we either go to the apartment with the other girls and talk about lessons, or we go home, have dinner with the family, and then go straight to our room to work on lessons. We are usually working on lessons until about 1-2am. Then we are waking up at 8 or 9 to finish our lessons! So I'm still getting about 6-7 hours each night, but seriously, this lesson planning and teaching really drains you! It's exhausting! Here, for those of you wondering exactly how my days go here in Lithuania, I will enlighten you:
8-9am: Wake up, plan lessons, shower
10-11am: grab a slice of bread or something and walk to school. Our walk to school takes 15 minutes
11-2pm: Prepare activities for lessons, set up classroom, etc.
2pm: lunch at home or iki, which is a very nice grocery store by our house. I usually have a couple croissants (SO GOOD!), some grapes or a peach, and a Majiga bar. A Majiga bar might be the greatest thing I've had in Lithuania so far. It's a miniature, cold cheesecake bar covered in chocolate. It's to die for. I really need to settle down because I want multiple every day!
2:30pm: back to school to prepare for lessons.
3:30pm-7:30pm: Lessons!!
7:30pm: Clean up classrooms, and go either to the apartment or our host family's home. Have dinner.
9pm-1 or 2am: Plan lessons
Then sleep..
So as you see, my schedule is just a little crazy. I know that as time progresses and I get more used to making lesson plans, I will have more time to do other things. It's just difficult to get the hang of. But I'll surely tell you I'm so sick of being cooped up down in the basement working on them rather than taking a walk outside or even reading or exploring old town. We do get to explore old town on the weekends which is great, but I would love to do more. And I didn't really expect 5 out of the 7 days a week to be sitting in my room all night. It sort of bums me out. They really didn't prepare us much for any of this! Today was my first day teaching the older elementary kids, and I literally just learned how to teach them today!! Because no one has communicated to me how to do it and it really upsets me. I don't want to look like a failure teacher to these kids. I want them to have fun and enjoy having me as their teacher! So I'm really hoping things get more organized. It will help so much.
I got really home sick on sunday. I was really hungry and wasn't feeling like eating anything at my host home, and I didn't want to spend money on anything. So I was in a really bad, annoying mood. I was starving and tired and I really didn't want to go to church but I felt obligated since all of the other teachers go. I actually am glad I did go, because it was just so interesting to see other members of the church this far away from home, but..I fell asleep during sacrament. So really, I didn't absorb much. Hopefully in the future I'll have more sleep and can enjoy church. So we leave church and I'm still grumpy and tired and hungry. And then our host family is like "Oh, we're going to take you to Trakai." Trakai is a BEAUTIFUL lake side town 30 minutes away from Vilnius. I have seen pictures but they don't even do it justice, just like pictures often don't. It's like, the most european place you can think of. Bright, colorful log homes. Flowers everywhere! Green as can be, large lakes, canoes, people playing guitars on the docs, tiny winding streets. It was just pristine. I was smitten the moment I laid eyes on it. The main attraction in Trakai is the very large castle right in the middle of the lake. Way way back from medieval times. Our host family took us to this little, cozy restaurant on the lake. I can't remember what it was called but they really wanted us to try authentic lithuanian cuisine, since every restaurant we had previously eaten at had been just McDonald's, Hesburger & pizza restaurants. Hahaha. Typical american. So we had this drink called Gira, which is basically fermented rhye bread. It was very interesting & sour and..well, I didn't like it. I'll be okay never drinking it again. Then we had chicken soup which was just chicken broth. Literally nothing else. Good though! And then Kibinai, which is a very yummy, buttery pastry with pork and onions inside. It tasted just like a pot pie! I was really into it. And then the main dish was called Cepelinai. It's like ground beef with potatoe wrapped around it. I was excited I love potatoes and ground beef together. But it was wretched. The potatoes were like bread, and the ground beef just didn't look cooked to me. So that wasn't exactly the greatest meal, but it was amazing to try the authentic lithuanian food. That is a large reason why I'm here. To overcome my fear of strange food and customs. I have always been curious about how the rest of the world lives, and it really has been crucial to my spiritual growth. I love Lithuania :)

 The restaurant! 

 My host brother Davidous!

 Davidous, Arturus, Kelby, myself & Jolita

 Kelby, Madeina & myself. We took a pedal boat to the castle. It was incredible!

 The most perfect pizza restaurant I've tasted.

 Gira, Kibinai & soup.

 The castle!!