Susie in Lithuania: November 2010

Sunday, November 28, 2010

LCC Thanksgiving celebration!

On Saturday we had a faculty/staff Thanksgiving potluck on campus! Here are a few photos!

Delicious food and a beatutiful centerpiece!

Veslava and Vaida filling their plates.

How do they eat so much and stay so thin?!

Hungry folks lining up to fill the plates!

A room full of food and fellowhip!

What a fun table!

Paul, Erik, Becky, Vaida, Alexandra, and Leah

Some lovely Lithuanians

Ilona and Ina

Robin and I heading out with full hearts and stomaches!

Talent show

Friday night was the Student Council (StuCo) sponsored talent show. It was a great event - there's a lot of talent here!

guitar player

emcees

rock band - the student in the middle is in my First Year Seminar class!

two talented young ladies who did a great poem

a singer

guitar player singing

Thanksgiving is an American holiday. So, on November 25th, when all my American friends were watching the parade and eating turkey, I was at work - going to meetings, grabbing lunch on the go, solving problems, etc... I've spent the holidays away from my family before, but I've never gone on with life as usual for the holiday before. It was weird, but not since everyone here was going on with life as usual as well.

The expats here at LCC have a tradition of going to McDonald's for Thanksgiving dinner. Only a few families were able to attend this year, but if was a festive celebration for all of us who made it!

Here are a few photos from our Thanksgiving celebration...

My dinner was a Big Mac value meal.

The expats who came to dinner...the Metelaks, Wes, the Brubakers, the McCollisters, the Staves, Teresa, and me!

Here's Andrew keeping Isak entertained!

SNOW!!!!!

Thanksgiving Day brought me a wonderful gift...SNOW!!!!

Looking out my office window in early afternoon - light flurries, but it wasn't sticking. (The large snowflake you see is a decoration, not actual snow.)

Waiting for the bus at 5:00 - the snow is starting to stick!

Walking home around 9:00 - the bridge is covered with snow.

Looking at Old Town (where I live) covered in snow. :)

My street - so cozy looking in the snow!

The view out my window.

Friday morning - what a beautiful view!

My (sleepy looking) snow inspired smile on Friday morning!

Community Life dinner!

I've been promising my Community Life women since August that we'd have dinner at my place. We've had such a busy year that I hadn't found the time...until now! We had a WONDERFUL time! I made one of my best meals - Chicken Curry in a Hurry and Gooey Butter Cake. We talked, laughed, and had a wonderful evening together. They are a fabulous group of women and I'm so glad that I get to work with them!

Veslava, Alexandra, Becky, Olena, and Gabija!

Gabija brought me flowers...so lovely!

November Student Life meeting/gathering

Each month our Student Life team gets together for a "gathering" of some sort. This month we paired it with doing some early prep for the campus decorating party that was happening over the weekend. We spent a couple of hours on Tuesday afternoon assembing and "fluffing" all of the campus Christmas trees - about 25 or so in total. We also included a birthday celebration, passing around baby Greta (our VP's 7 week old baby) and of course, FOOD! :)

This was our snack spread - sausage slices, fresh fruit, birthday cake, cheese & crackers, Lithuanian poppy seed nuggets (kinda like pretzels, but not), tortilla chips, and peanut blossom cookies (made by me!)

Here's the birthday girl, Kim, blowing out her candles!

Alexandra (one of my RDs) holding baby Greta.

Veslava and Becky (the other RDs) with baby Greta.

Becky, Ina (our counselor) and Olena fluff a tree!

Jarrett (construction project manager & husband of Gabija) with a baby size tree!

Kim and her little cherub - Isak (see his halo?!)

Alexandra & Gabija creeping in the trees! :)

Kim - an expert "fluffer"

Ina and Mackie

Viada and Margarita testing the lights and acting a tad silly! :)

Becky, Veslava, and Olena showing off their handy work!

Steve & Diane - silly & fun!

PostSecret Art Exhibit

Last week our Res Life department had their "educational week" for the fall. The topic this year was "Art." We are a liberal arts school, but given our volunteer faculty model, we do not have a fully rounded out program. The arts are an area where we are lacking, so we decided that would be a great theme for our week! The week included an art exhibit, some hands on art projects, discussions with artists, etc...

One of the events was a PostSecret exhibit of post cards made by our students. For those of you not familiar with Post secret...it is an ongoing community mail art project, created by Frank Warren, in which people mail their secrets anonymously on a homemade postcard. Select secrets are then posted on the PostSecret website, or used for PostSecret's books or museum exhibits. The simple concept of the project was that completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they had never previously revealed. No restrictions are made on the content of the secret; only that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before. Entries range from admissions of sexual misconduct and criminal activity to confessions of secret desires, embarrassing habits, hopes and dreams. The secrets are meant to be empowering both to the author and to those who read it. Frank Warren claims that the postcards are inspirational to those who read them, have healing powers for those who write them, give hope to people who identify with a stranger's secret, and create an anonymous community of acceptance. (text taken from Wikipedia.)

Here are some of the secrets created by our students..

This one is a little difficult to read because of the glare from my flash. It says, "My x-boyfriends girlfriend got pregnanat & I'm happy about it beacuse he will have to leave me alone finally."

And this one is blurry because I turned off the flash to avoid the glare. It says, "Somehow I always thought that girls who wear spiked heels are sluttish!"

Saturday, November 20, 2010

First Lithuanian Thanksgiving celebration!

The RDs invited me to work with them today to host a Thanksgiving dinner for the RAs. I was excited! I hosted one for the RAs at Goshen for many years, so it was fun to be a part of it here this year. It was many of the RAs first time celebrating the holiday. I so enjoyed being a part of their introduction to our holiday! I brought homemade bread, devilled eggs, and some party mix for an appetizer.

We all gathered around 5 smallish round tables that were pushed together to form one big "family table." We started with an introduction to the holiday and why it is celebrated. Then Erik (the spouse of an RD) asked a blessing on the meal. We passed the food family style and had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy, bread, devilled eggs, and broccoli. (The two things that we wanted and couldn't find ingredients for were sweet potatoes and green bean casserole.) After dinner we went around the table and shared what we're thankful for. It was great to hear the things that the students shared - it reminded me again of what an amazing opportunity it is to be at LCC. The finale of the meal was pumpkin pie topped with fresh whipped cream. Yummmm!

After the meal about half of them stayed with us and watched "It's a Wonderful Life." Only one had seen it before, so it was fun to experience it with them. I've seen it countless numbers of times and enjoyed watching it with a fresh perspective - especially as we would pause to explain more American slang English words. :)

I didn't take nearly enough photos, but here are the few that I got...

Erik & Becky working on the turkey & gravy.

Doing the wishbone!

Some of our gal RAs enjoying the pie and whipped cream!

I will be celebrating Thanksgiving two more times this week, so watch for blog updates next week that tell about those gatherings!

Canadian Independence Day!

As I have mentioned before, at LCC we celebrate the Independence Days of each country that our students are from. Canada's is in July, so we pick a day during the school year to celebrate it. The Intercultural Program Leaders chose November 20th as the date to celebrate Canada this year. We have one Canadian student, so he led the evening event. We watched videos clips of hockey, Derek answered questions, had a log cutting competition, and ate poutine - a Canadian delicacy!