Our Fourth Day

Thursday May 31, 2018

Good day my loyal readers! Did you want to hear all about our day? Alright then!

We started out with a quick breakfast of pastries with cherry filling, and cold-press coffee.Then we made our way to our first class observation at the same office we went to on Tuesday.

The lesson today was a continuation of the topic we discussed last time: School Systems. We had a really animated conversation about exams and how much pressure they put on kids these days to do well on them. After class we chatted with the teacher, Egle, who is about our age. All of us have a lot in common, and we made some tentative plans to get together for dinner some night soon!

If you follow me on Facebook, you may already know that after class we decided to take a walk down a nature path through Jomanto Park.

It was a pretty short path, which led us directly to these really unique yellow buildings that looked sort of like converted shipping containers turned into shops and restaurants.

We spent some time perusing the stores here, then hopped on the bus to head back to our flat.

Instead of going back home, however, we stopped into the Panorama mall to treat ourselves to a little gelato. Usually they cost 1 euro and 50 cents for an individual scoop, or you can get two scoops for 2 euro - so Tim and I just shared one cone with two scoops. We sat and did some people watching for a little while until we had to leave to get to our second class of the day, which was at the office right above our flat. Tonight's class was very lighthearted. We separated into two teams and came up with five examples of things, for example, "five things you listen to". Then the other team had to try and guess the examples you came up with. It was an effective game to help with English vocabulary, and I even thought it would be fun for native English speakers to play, just because!

This seems like a pretty short entry, even though I feel like we did a lot today. I've been feeling very tired today, and I even took a little nap earlier while we were sitting at the mall. I think the heat and all the walking has finally taken its toll on my body. I need to get a lot of rest tonight, because Tim and I have a free day so we are waking up very early to take the train over to a very cool castle in the middle of a nearby lake! I can't wait to share that experience with you tomorrow!

Good evening from the lovely Lithuania!

Checkout all of our photos in our European Adventure 2018 album:

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0WGrq0zwG7hjZE

Our Third Day!

Wednesday May 30, 2018

What a wonderful day!

After a tasty breakfast of eggs and a slice of toast with jam, we made our way upstairs to the office to chat with the manager, Ligita, and play with the pups. You saw pictures of them in our previous post. Their names are Uma, Festa, and Azija and they are all super cute and friendly! We chatted with Ligita a bit while we made some coffee, then we hit the road for a day of exploration and fun!

We rode the bus to the area we were in on Monday, which is pretty close to downtown Vilnius.

Since the class we were teaching tonight didn't start until 6:30pm, we decided to get to the area early and wander around a bit. We got off the bus at a random stop and started aimlessly walking any direction that seemed good to us!

The first interesting landmark we came across was this church that had golden spire tops.

It was probably just some normal church around here, but to us it was very extraordinary! We kept walking past many shops and restaurants, some of which we could see had some cool, fancy decor. One in particular caught our eyes, with the Gothic-themed doors and interior design.

Around this point in the day Tim and I both had to admit we weren't feeling very well. As mundane as it seems, our allergies have been getting the better of us since we've been here so we really needed some headache and allergy medicine. We happened to come across a Pharmacy, which we were a little nervous about going into because we knew we wouldn't be able to read any of the medications or what they were for. Still, we were getting pretty desperate after three days of dealing with our unpleasant symptoms, so we decided to go for it. The clerks in the Pharmacy did not know much English, so we had to rely on very broken communication to obtain a box of something we did not recognize as any sort of allergy medication we've ever seen before. However, after some thorough Google searching and translating, we discovered that it was basically Clariton-D. The headache medicine was much easier to find, since the name on the box was basically the same as what we get in the States.

After our brief detour into the world of Lithuanian medication confusion, we decided it might be fun to pull out our old Pokemon Go games and see what kind of Pokemon we could find around here.

It's been a long time since either of us have really played Pokemon Go, and I needed to download an update for the app - which required us to seek out some free Wi-Fi so the game file would actually be able download. Finally we stumbled across a spot where I could connect to the free Wi-Fi from a nearby shop, and soon after the Pokemon hunt was on! We had a good time catching some unique Pokemon that we haven't seen before today, but sadly the app was experiencing some connection issues, and kept crashing on us. So we really only played for a short time, before putting it away and re-focusing on some of the city sights.

At one point we came across an intriguing display of gloves and mittens that we figured might be a combination of an art exhibit and a free donation for people who are house-less and may need some warm clothes.

The fact is, however, that we really haven't seen many people at all who appear house-less since we have been here. I've just done a little research on the topic, and apparently there is a fair amount of people living without homes in Lithuania, but overall the problem doesn't seem to reach the crisis points we have seen in the cities back home. Still, we thought these gloves were a beautiful gesture of social support for those less-advantaged than others!

A few hours before we had to get to our class we started to feel a bit too tired from walking around in 85 degree heat, so we decided to hang out in the nearby Rimi Hypermarket. This one was a free-standing store and was much larger than the one we have visited in the mall near our flat. In fact, it was almost like a mall itself! We settled in for a bit at the little cafe they have inside the store and ate the lunch we brought from home - a bowl of our leftover pasta and "sauce" that we cooked up last night. It was actually very good, and we felt proud of ourselves for being able to create something tasty out of a total mistake! After refueling our bodies, we did a little grocery shopping for a few basics like more bread, and discounted "day-old" pastries for quick "grab-and-go" breakfasts throughout the next week.

On our way out we saw a booth where a lady was selling the most delicious-looking fresh strawberries! Of course, these are a weakness for Tim, and we just couldn't pass them up. They were a bit more expensive than the food we've been buying, but at just 6 euros for 1 kg (roughly $3/pound) it was still a pretty good deal - especially since they were literally some of the best strawberries we have ever had!

They made a great snack before our class, and we still have some left over for breakfast tomorrow!

Speaking of the class we taught tonight, we felt like it went really well! Basically, AKS has several services they provide. The position we applied for was to teach English to children in the Summer Camp but, since we got here a little earlier than the camp program starts, the managers have been having us observe some of the English-speaking lessons for adults. Apparently, one of the teachers has been out for a little while so they asked us if we could fill in for them today. After seeing how three different teacher have operated the class, we felt confident we would be able to do it, too! Basically, it's a small group of usually 3-5 adult students (all of them seem to have been 30 years or older) that get together to have a guided discussion with the "teacher" - who is really just a person who is fluent in English that chooses the topic for the day, guides the conversation, and helps the students with pronunciation and explanations of unknown words/phrases. Most of the teachers for these classes we have met are native Lithuanian's, but they are very good at speaking English. Still, everyone has been very excited to have us in their classes, because they don't get many opportunities to hear the language from a native English-speaker.

Our lesson plan was simply to ask them questions about life in Lithuania, such as "what are the seasons like here" and "what do people like to do for entertainment". We also had a great conversation about all the movies we like! The students we had tonight were all super nice, and everyone participated pretty equally in the discussions. I feel like we were able to teach them a lot of new words and phrases that are specific to America, like "that's a bummer" and "hunker down", which they seemed to really enjoy! Tim and I both had a great feeling about it, and we were super proud of ourselves!

Well, it's late here now, so time for me to get to bed. Tim will update the blog with pictures for today's post sometime tomorrow.

Love from Lithuania! <3   

Checkout all of our photos in our European Adventure 2018 album:

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0WGrq0zwG7hjZE

Our Second Day

Tuesday May 29, 2018

Day two of our wondrous adventure in the land of my ancestors!

This morning we woke up a little later than yesterday, and we had somewhere we needed to be relatively early, so it was a little more hectic than our relaxing start yesterday. I was feeling a bit stressed out about planning our travel to the other school location, which was in a different place than the one we visited yesterday.

I should mention that ASK has six locations: five near Vilnius and one in Kaunas.

After today we will have observed classes in three of the five locations in the Vilnius area. Anyway, Tim came to the rescue again by researching the location of the school we needed to be at, and the time it would take us on the bus to get there. Once I had a better idea of all that information, I was able to clam down and enjoy the morning. We went upstairs to the office to make coffee, which we discovered yesterday is always free for us to use, and ended up chatting with the manager Ligita for a while. It was lovely to chat with her about the differences between British and American English and how we used to own Sugar Gliders, while we sipped our coffee.

Eventually we did have to get a move on, however, to catch our bus. The bus trip to the school went smoothly, and we got an even better idea of the lay of the land around here.

We were especially excited to notice there is a Water Park not too far from us, so if we have a heat wave on one of our days off we decided we might try to check that out! Again, we arrived with plenty of time to spare, so the teacher gave us a tour of the facility and chatted with us about random things. This lesson was about the differences between the school system in the U.K. versus here in Lithuania, but of course we also ended up making some comparisons to the U.S. school system - astoundingly, another topic that is important to us! It is especially interesting to me, since I have always wanted to be a teacher, but my research and knowledge of the public school system has turned me off from the profession in the past. I could talk for hour about things I don't like about our education system, how I would make it better, and alternative methods of education that are available in the United States. In this speaking class, the students were a little less advanced in their English skills than the class we observed yesterday, but we were all still able to communicate really well.

After the lesson, we walked across the street to a grocery store called LIDL which Tim said he had heard about back in the States. It reminded us of an ALDI, only somewhat nicer quality. We decided to buy some items to try and make our "ketchup" sauce into something that more closely resembled pasta sauce. One onion, a clove of garlic, and a jar of oregano later we started the return journey back to our flat. Everyone here has been telling us that the weather is unusually hot for this time of year, at about 85 degrees Fahrenheit - which is not the weather we packed for! As such, we have been over-dressed since we got here, and sweating it! Thus, we both needed cool showers as soon as we got back to our flat before we could think of doing anything else.

After we got cleaned off and cooled down, we decided to have a go at fixing that sauce. Thankfully, Tim is a fabulous cook and I'm a pretty decent sous chef, so together we managed to make it into a new creation that we would actually call pasta-sauce-like! Yay us! But again, we didn't have time to eat before we had to go upstairs to observe yet another speaking class. This lessons topic was "Politically Incorrect Jokes" which was actually super fascinating for us! Being pretty dedicated to the American concept of "PC-Culture" ourselves, I was a little concerned that Tim and I would feel very uncomfortable talking to others from a different culture who might have very different views about being politically correct (AKA: kind) as a general rule. What I didn't anticipate was how much I learned about the history of Lithuania and its surrounding countries, and how that affects the types of cultural stereotypes they have versus the ones we see most commonly in the U.S. as a result of our unique history. Tim and I both enjoyed the frank and open conversation with everyone, and found that we were in a pleasantly safe and non-judgmental space. We were all willing to admit that nobody is perfect, and that societies all around the world still have a lot of work to do in improving the lives of oppressed groups, which includes being sensitive to how certain types of "jokes" can perpetuate their oppression.

I must say, though, my favorite part of the day by far was when we got to pet the three dogs that are members of the AKS family!

Today was the first day that they were here at the same time we were, and it was such a joy to be able to play with a puppy again. We miss Rhythm so much, and even though we know that she is in good hands, it's still hard to not be able to pet, snuggle and play with her any time we want. It isn't exactly the same as having our pup with us, but we are both very happy to have at least some way to get our doggy fix while we are here!

Tomorrow is the big day for us, when we get to teach a speaking class on our own! We are all prepared with a lesson plan, and feel very confident that it will go well! Wish us luck, though!

Best wishes from across the pond! <3

Checkout all of our photos in our European Adventure 2018 album:

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0WGrq0zwG7hjZE

Our First "Real" Day - Arrival in Lithuania

Hello! Or perhaps I should say, Labas!

This post is all about our day yesterday (Monday May 28th, 2018). Let's jump right in!

The day started off relaxed. We made some amazing coffee in the French Press we have in our flat, which was so delicious! For breakfast I ate toast with jam, and Tim had some cereal, which was good. After breakfast we went to a bank inside the nearby mall to get some of our money exchanged from U.S. dollars to Euros, which we think is much prettier than our American money. After that we roamed around the mall and checked out all the shops they have. Most of them are very similar to the ones we see in the United States! For example, there is a shoe shop that reminded us a lot of the Payless stores we have back home. They also have identical stores for companies that are global, such as Guess, H&M, Coach, and The New Yorker. We splurged a little.

Once we were done at the mall we came back to our flat for a bit to have lunch before heading out to casually explore our local area. We walked through a University campus that is about a two minute walk from our flat. The campus had some cute wooden swings, which I made a comment to Tim about coming back to swing on later. Eventually we came to a main highway, near a bridge that gave us a view of the Vilnius cityscape. We made a plan to come back here sometime to take a picture of this amazing viewpoint.

At this point we were starting to get hungry, and we knew we would be out a little late because we were scheduled to attend a speaking class to observe how other teachers in the program work. By the way, the program we are working with is called Anglu Kalbos Studija (The English Speaking Studio), or AKS for short. So anyway, we returned to our flat to cook dinner - a simple meal of spaghetti and tomato sauce. Or so we thought...

You see, we made some mistakes that affected the quality of this dish. First of all, when we went grocery shopping on our first day, we had some trouble determining the difference between spaghetti sauce and ketchup. The reason for this is that, while they surprisingly do have the Heinz ketchup we know and love from our Pittsburgh side of the family, they also have some sort of "tomato sauce" in a jar that was hanging out in the same place as the ketchup. In our defense, there also were some jars of other sauces in the same section that seemed to be actual pasta sauce, but in our quest to be as frugal as possible, we opted to go with the less expensive "tomato sauce" option thinking it was just very plain pasta sauce. Well, today we discovered that it was, in fact, basically just ketchup in a jar.

The second mistake we made was to cook the pasta wrong. Our stove is really just an electric cook-top, and we still aren't 100% sure how the temperature settings work, but we are pretty sure we had the heat up too high when cooking the pasta. Why, you ask? Well, because we basically made a loaf of spaghetti with a gooey outside and barely-cooked inside, despite the fact that we stirred it nearly constantly. So here we are, with a blob of doughy string and some ketchup... but at this point, we were in a bit of a rush to finish preparing our dinner so we could speak with one of the AKS managers about how to get to the class we were scheduled to observe. We quickly did our best to fix up the "sauce" with a little salt, basically whisked it into the pasta to break it up a bit, then ran upstairs to the AKS main office.

The office was packed with teachers, and one of our managers, Ligita. She gave us our bus passes and wrote down instructions for how to get to the other school location on the bus system. Tim (being the wonderful tech expert he is) was able to figure out the route on Google maps, and we realized the next bus left in seven minutes! The bus stop was a 5 minute walk from the office, so we hurried out and hustled to the bus stop, making it just moments before our bus pulled up! There are two types of buses here: the typical bus we are used to, and the "trolly bus" which is basically a street car or lightrail but without the rails on the road. We made it to the speaking class with plenty of time to spare, and spent some time chatting with the teacher, Edvinas (Edwin), who is native Lithuanian but speaks very fluent English. The class was small, just three adult students, the teacher, and us, which we found to be very nice because everyone had a lot of chances to participate. The topic of the speaking class could not have been more perfect for us: Eco-guilt, or in other words, "How Environmentally-Friendly are you?" The format was very casual, and everyone in the class just took a survey about what they do or don't do in their daily life to help the environment then we discussed our answers as a group.

Since we are going to be expected to teach this same class on Wednesday, we were paying close attention to how the teacher prepared for class, and what the dynamic in the classroom was like. After seeing how it went, we both felt pretty comfortable and confident that we will be ready to do it when our time comes.

After class, as we were leaving the school, we looked up to see a flock (yes, this is really what they are called) of hot air balloons floating in the sky! It was completely breathtaking to see! Tim had already seen some other balloons earlier when we were at the mall, but I missed seeing them that time, so I was very glad I got another opportunity to witness them. We have only been here a couple days so far, but we are thinking this might not be a very unusual sight, which is totally amazing to us!

We were able to get the bus home with no trouble, and we were especially glad to see that the bus let us off right near the bridge we had walked to earlier in the day!

We took this opportunity to get some pictures of the cityscape from the bridge, and take another walk through the campus - which also gave us our opportunity to swing on those wooden swings I had wanted to try out before!

Tim and I each swung for a while and just enjoyed the cool evening air. As we walked the short remaining distance back to our flat, we felt as light as one of the hot air balloons and so giddy to be living out our dream of traveling to new places!

Good night from lovely Lithuania! 

Checkout all of our photos in our European Adventure 2018 album:

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0WGrq0zwG7hjZE

The Intro

Hi readers! Every blog needs that initial post to introduce the writer and the topic of the blog, right? Right! So, here we go:

My name is Aftyn Garvin. My husbands name is Timothy Garvin. We have a dog named Rhythm, and no children. We are nerdy, nature-loving, vegetarians. Except for Rhythm - she eats meat. Anything else you wanna know? Just ask!

Now to tell you about our blog: We have another blog about a road-trip we took across the country. You can check that out here: http://the-cali-blog.blogspot.com/

This blog, however, is going to be about a backpacking trip we are taking through Europe. We love to travel and have been talking about an adventure like this for a long time, and it's finally coming to fruition! In fact, today is technically our third day in Europe already! Let me catch you up...

On Thursday, we left Maryland - where we have been living for the past 7 months - and took a bus up to New York City. We roamed around Manhattan for a few hours, where Tim got roped into participating in a street show! Our goal was to walk down Times Square for a bit, then head towards the Hudson River to catch a glimpse of Lady Liberty.

We accomplished all of these goals, except the part of the river we came out to wasn't anywhere near the Statue of Liberty... so, we had to settle for a glimpse of her from the window of our Lyft ride to our friend Rose's part of town in Brooklyn. We met up with Rose and had a quick bite at this super cute restaurant called Madcap, then went back to her place and watched "The Devil Wears Prada" - which we chose just because it takes place in New York City.

The next morning we got up and had to run an errand. You see, my mother passed away on May 20th... that's right, just 8 days ago. So... this might be a good time to mention that this trip either came at the best, or the worst, time - depending on your point of view. We like to think it was the best timing because, the fact is, I really needed a change of scenery. Losing my mom has been the most painful experience of my life so far, and I simply could not go on with "regular life" right now. Besides, my mom always encouraged me to follow my dreams, and I just know she would be so proud and excited for Tim and I if she were here to see us right now.

But the reason I bring all this up is because the errand I had to run was that I needed to get this paper related to my mothers passing signed and sent to my sister before we left for Europe - that evening! She e-mailed the form to me to print, sign, and mail off. No problem, right? Well, maybe just a few problems. The first obstacle to overcome was that Rose didn't have a printer, so we needed to find a place - within walking distance, since we didn't want to have to pay for a Lyft - to do this. There was not a single Kinkos, FedEx or any other similar shops nearby, but there was a library! We made our way there and, of course, the computers required a library card to be used. We asked if they had a guest card we could borrow, and the man behind the counter informed us it would be "just $3 to use the card". Tim and I looked at each other and he said "I mean, $3 just to print a paper. I don't know, what do you want to do?" and I must have looked so crest-fallen that the man behind the counter said "All you need to do is print a paper? Ok, I'll let you use my computer, no charge." Plus, he didn't even make us pay the usual .10 cents it costs to print a page! Next we needed to figure out a way to mail it, since we didn't have an envelope. We knew the Post Office would charge us for an envelope, so we went into the Walgreen's across from the Post Office to ask for one. They didn't have any, but we noticed they had a card section, and plenty of empty slots with just envelopes in them. We picked one and stood in line to see if they wanted to charge us anything for it, but when we got to the register the lady looked at us incredulously and said "Just take it." So we walked across the street to the Post Office and, thanks to the fact that Tim happened to have some stamps on him, we were able to just put it in the outgoing slot! And thus, we spent hours traipsing through Brooklyn in pursuit of this quest, but we managed to do it without spending a cent! That evening we took a Lyft to the airport and boarded a 10pm flight to Lithuania, with a 24 hour layover in Sweden. The plane was huge, and very nice! There was a tablet system embedded in the back of every seat, so each person could choose their own form of in-flight entertainment. Tim and I watched the movie "Wonder" which made me cry many times, then tried to get some sleep before we landed in Sweden. 

Ah, Sweden! The green fields, sparkling lakes, and historic sites... that we never got to see. We originally wanted to take a bus into Stockholm, which was 20 miles South of the airport we flew into - but it turned out that the minimum we could have paid to travel there would have been equal to about $60 USD. Well, we didn't land until after 1pm and didn't see much point in spending that much money to only be able to spend half of the day in the city. Plus, we were really tired from a restless night on the plane, and just didn't have it in us to carry our 30 pound backpacks all around Stockholm. So instead, we spent the rest of the day at the airport, exploring their "Sky City" shops and restaurants, watching movies, and napping.

We spent the night snuggled on two of the benches that we pushed together like a makeshift bed, which we agreed wasn't as uncomfortable as the plane but not as comfortable as camping.


Our flight to Lithuania was around 11am, so we got checked in and went through security, which was quite an ordeal thanks to an "item of concern" that Tim had slipped into my backpack, unbeknownst to me. After the security agents rummaged through my bag, upsetting my clothes and me, they determined that I was not actually carrying anything that was illicit and let me go - well, after I had to completely repack. The flight itself was short and uneventful, and I napped almost the entire time. The program we are working with sent two people to the airport to pick us up and bring us to our flat, which is located at their main office in Vilnius. The flat is small but it has everything we need to get by while we are here. One of the only tricky things was that we found it's almost impossible to do the dishes in the tiny sink we have in our little bathroom. But, we found a solution that involves washing the dishes whenever we take a shower! After we got unpacked and settled in a bit we walked to the grocery store - which is conveniently located in a mall right down the street from our flat - and bought some food and other necessities to get us by for a couple weeks. Before bed we showered (and washed the dishes) and video chatted with my sister back in Maryland. We also video chatted with Tim's brother who is watching our pup while we are away.
We miss her so much, but it would have been too traumatizing for her to be in the belly of the plane for the long 7 hour flight over here. She's sadly too big to be brought over in the cabin with us, even if she is my emotional support dog. I can't describe how difficult the decision to leave her behind was, but we ultimately realized it was the safest and best option for her, despite how badly we wanted her with us.

And finally we are caught up to today, Monday the 28th of May! I know this seems strange, but this post is already pretty long, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow to talk about our day today. There is way more material to share than other days, and I think it deserves it's own post. Plus, it's nearing midnight here, and we are both pretty tired. So, tomorrow I will be posting 2 entries - one about today, and another separate one about tomorrow. We will also be coming back and adding pictures to this post, so make sure to come back for those!

Sending you our love from Vilnius, Lithuania!

Checkout all of our photos in our European Adventure 2018 album:

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0WGrq0zwG7hjZE