The rest of the first week!

I've been here a week already!  You may be wondering what I've been doing since I got here.  Well, here’s the Reader’s Digest condensed version…


Saturday- went to the market in the morning with my neighbor (another LCC employee), spent the afternoon napping, went shopping with the Metelaks in the late afternoon to a cross between a Lowes and a Target type store, and then in the evening I went to the Staves house for dinner with a few other single LCC women. Highlight of the day was playing Ivea, the Stave’s 4 year old daughter. She reminds me a bit of my niece Lily and is too sweet for words! This is our tasty dessert plate…

The white rectangle on the left is vanilla ice cream, on the top left is an apple cake, and the chocolate on the lower left is called "tinginys".  Tinginys is a traditional Lithuanian dessert that I'd love to learn how to make...it was very tasty!  :)

 

Sunday-went to church at City Church. This church is in Lithuanian, but they provide headphones with a translation of the sermon in English. After church we walked down to the beach and I got to put my feet in the Baltic Sea! We also enjoyed some ice cream purchased from a vendor on the street. The rest of the day I spent at my apartment watching a movie and playing online. It was a lonely afternoon and evening. Here are some photos of Sunday at the beach…

Me enjoying banana ice cream by the beach!

Meca (a student), me, and Diane M standing in the Baltic Sea!

 

Monday was my first official day of work! It was a similar day to what the first day of the year was always like at GC, so it felt comfortable. We went out for lunch and I had a Lithuanian pork dish. Here’s a photo of it…

Breaded pork tenderloin w/a mushroom sauce, boiled & then fried potato wedges, and salad.  This meal was 9 litas - which is about $3.60.

I spent most of Tuesday in the office reading through binders and documents – trying to figure out how to do my job! In the afternoon I had my first Community Life meeting. It was a lot fo fun to have the people that are going to work with me all together and to start talking about our year ahead. It was during that meeting that I had the first real sense that I am going to be totally ok here. I’m known it in my head and clung to God’s promise that it would be ok, but at that moment I looked around the circle and knew I was exactly where I’m supposed to be for this season! Tuesday evening I ventured to take the bus to the mall on the south side of town and do a little shopping. It was a successful and fun trip!

And today I spent in meetings most of the day at work. During lunch though I walked to the mini mall near campus and had lunch with one of my RDs, Veslava. It was really fun to get to know her a little better outside of the context of work meetings. After lunch we had a Student Life “get to know LCC/Lithuania” game time. It was also a birthday party for Ina, our counselor. Then we had a migration/student housing meeting where I was on such information overload, I about slammed my head into the wall! Thankfully my boss is very patient with my questions and she’ll explain it all to me!  And then for dinner I went to dinner with my other RD and her husband (Becky and Erik). Veslava came as well and we had a wonderful evening of eating (chimichangas-YUM) and getting to know each other. They are going to be great people to work with!

Ina with her birthday cake!

RDs - Veslava, Becky, and Becky's husband Erik.