5 years!

A family at LCC, the Brubakers, celebrated 5 years of being a family this week.  Gregg and Sharon adopted their sons, Erik and David (who are biological brothers) 5 years ago this week!  They invited many of us in the community to celebrate with them.  We broke up into teams and did a scavenger hunt with the boys and then celebrated with a light dinner...and CAKE!  :)

Scavenger Hunt fun!

Chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting

The happy family...

Erik, Gregg, Sharon, and David

Accreditation visit...check!

LCC is in the process of renewing our accreditation with the Lithuanian government.  We had a site visit from the accreditation committee for three days.  It was an intense week of high stakes meetings.  We had a pizza party the day after they left to celebrate our good work!  Now we just have to wait for their response...not likely to come until some time in January.

President Wall expressing her appreciation to us all.

Henry and Kristen are in the background.

John, Mark, and Ray

Colleagues

More colleagues

FYS lunch

There was one FYS class session where nothing was on the schedule.  I gave the class the option of cancelling the class or getting together to have lunch and visit during that hour.  They chose the lunch options.  Here are some photos of our time together!

Martynas and Artem

Elvyra and Luicija

Iki and Natasha

Olha, Iki, Natasha, Elyvra, Luicija, Erika, and Matas

me, Aleksandr, Sasha, and Olha

Iki enjoying his first taste of GBC!

SURPRISE!

Josh turned 30 and Alisha threw him a surprise party!  

Surprise!

Josh stands amazed at all the fun stuff she planned for him!

Kate helps Josh open his gifts

Tom & Jerry sparkling cider!

Josh & me with the Belgian magnet I bought him for his birthday!

LOTS of candles!

All Saint's Day

November 1 is All Saint's Day.  Lithuanian's go to the graves of their family members to leave candles and flowers in remembrance.  We went to a cemetery in Kretinga to see what it looks like.

flowers and candles for sale outside the cemetery

Kretinga cemetery 

Some graves were decorated with minimal decorations.

While others were overflowing with flowers!

A Christian grave

lots of candles

I liked this broken headstone.

Lithuanian ribbons on the headstones

LOTS of candles!

Afternoon at the beach

While Deanna was here we spent an afternoon checking out the beach.  It would have been a shame for her to come to Klaipeda and not see the Baltic Sea.  Here are some photos...

Self portrait!  :)

Another visit to the hospital.

The day after we got back from Belgium, I ended up at the hospital again!  :(  I was cleaning up after breakfast and all of the sudden started having horrible pain in my left side.  I had no idea what was going on, so I called my Lithuanian co-worker to come over so we could call the ambulance (I needed her to translate).  The ambulance ended up taking me to the hospital for all sorts of tests.  It was a pretty horrible hospital experience.  Thankfully they were able to fairly quickly figure out that it was kidney stones that were causing the pain.  They gave me a shot for the pain and sent me home with a prescription for more pain meds.  Amazingly, I never had pain from the kidney stones again!  I don't know if I passed them quickly or if they are swimming around in my system waiting to cause more pain again.  Either way I keep my pain meds on me at all times and continue to drink LOTS of fluids!

Praises:

1. I am thankful that the experience did not happen the day before when I was travelling back from Belgium.  I can't imagine how I would have navigated the experience while travelling.  ugh.

2. I am thankful that while the hospital experience wasn't very fun, it was pretty short in length and I didn't have to stay overnight this time!

3. Sodra is our social insurance and it covered 100% of my expenses, which I am VERY thankful for!

This was a photo I snapped with my phone of the ultrasound machine 

that discovered my kidney stones.

I hope this was my LAST visit to a Lithuanian hospital for a LONG time (better yet, EVER!)