Our Ninth and Tenth Days

Tuesday June 5, 2018

Hey there! Sorry about the lack of an update last night! I have a really good excuse, though!

So, something I haven’t really mentioned to anyone back home yet is that I’ve actually been struggling with some health issues since we’ve been in Lithuania. Basically, the flat we were staying in had a bit of an issue with mold and I was having a very bad reaction to it. The thing is, most of the bathrooms here don’t have any fans or vents like they do in America, so there was a lot of moisture that had settled into the flat over time. It was pretty obvious from our first night that the place was stuffy and humid, but it wasn’t until a few days in that I really started to experience the worst of the allergy symptoms. It started out with the usual sneezing and itchy/watery eyes, but by Monday it had progressed to my lungs and I was doing a lot of coughing and having trouble breathing, even with taking allergy pills twice a day.

I had even taken to sleeping with an eye cover to keep the watering down and a scarf tied around my mouth to avoid breathing in the mold spores. Still, I knew I was getting worse, but I didn’t want to make a big deal about it in case it would offend our hosts, so I was going to just keep sticking it out and hope that it wouldn’t get much worse than this.

It was Tim who convinced me that I needed to look out for my health and made me realize I was not going to be able to keep staying in that flat. With his encouragement, I wrote to the managers of the program we are working with about my symptoms and asked if there were any other living arrangements that could be made. I’m so grateful, because they were very understanding and accommodating. They immediately made plans for us to move to the flat of one of the teachers, who is out of town right now and generous enough to allow us to stay at her place while she is gone. Thus, after a really rough day working with the kids while feeling very ill, Tim and I packed up all our things and relocated to our new abode – which is amazing!

The first thing I did was take a long bath in the six-foot long bathtub, which helped so much with my sinus pressure and chest pain. The shower pressure here is very powerful, which also helped make me feel a lot better. Most importantly, the bathroom has a vent! Even though it doesn’t have a fan, just having the ventilation to the outside really helps keep the moisture level in the flat down, which means there is no problem with any mold! For the first time in several nights I slept without anything covering my face and didn’t have any eye or lung irritation. I woke up this morning feeling mostly refreshed with only a few lingering symptoms from my body rejecting the allergens still inside me, but I can tell that I’ll start feeling better from here on out. Yay!

Wednesday June 6, 2018

So, anyway, basically yesterday was not a great day, until the end when we got to settle into our new place! As for today, it went much better! Since I wasn’t feeling as sick I had a lot more energy to work with the kids. I have also been re-assigned to work with the older group of kids since they have slightly better English comprehension, so they can understand me more than the younger ones could.

We went to the playground and did some yoga, which has been a very popular activity with them. We have also started a ritual of meditating every day after lunch, which several of them seem to not enjoy, but enough of them like it that us teachers think it’s good to keep doing it.

One of their favorite games is musical chairs, which is great because they will often sing along to the English lyrics of the songs, so it gives them a little practice with vocabulary and pronunciation. The major group activity for the day was to watch a movie in English, which was Finding Nemo. Some of the children got bored watching it because they couldn’t really understand what was happening, but a lot of them had already seen it in Lithuanian so that helped them to keep up with the general story.

I can’t believe it’s already after 9PM here! The days are just flying by lately! It’s time for us to start getting ready for bed now, so I will sign off for the night.

Sending our love from Lithuania! <3

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

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