For the sake of my own degenerating brain, i shall fervently write down in as much details as possible the things i experience since day 1 till day adios of my stay in lithuania. One day i will look back and realise that it's worth every ounce of effort being just that tad more hardworking.
After staying in sheer shock shivering in the snow spreaded city for 2 days, the weather finally showed some mercy and hence i can now blog proper and give blogging what it really deserves.
Day 1 - Pre-Arrival
The whole process was nothing but surreal. It was like traveling through time and space between two different realities. The stay on the plane was really like a medium in which i travel from one plane to another. I tossed and turned attempting to get some sleep which i eventually thought to be just 4-5 hours max of tossing and turning and being half-asleep, but i woke up bewildered wondering how actually 9 hours had passed by. i kept counting and counting and it just didn't make sense how i just got cheated without knowing how 4 friggin hours of my life went by. As if sensing my dismalness for that, i soon was magically bestowed 6 hours more to spend for the day, and instantly, 1pm became 7am.
Somehow, it has became a bad habit of my to never expect good things to fall upon myself, so even as i was just 1 plane ride away from vilnius, excitement didn't quite sink in yet. not until seeing what i saw on that plane ride from frankfurt to vilnius.
What i saw made up feel so spiritually uplifted. I saw snow. just vast vast vast land of snow snow snow and NOTHING but snow. it was absolutely amazing!! initially i thought that i was flying above the clouds, but it occurred to me that it can't be since it was white entirely. i was in absolute awe as soon realisation struck me. i couldn't help but just stare into that eye-piercingly bright snow where land meets heaven and heaven meets land - land with snow baked golden under that orange sun. i just kept staring staring and staring.
no pictures of lithuania yet! bag was too packed and hands were tied.
care bear cookies and floewrs from dillon. ♥ shane shane.
moo moo and care bear on the flight to frankfurt! pudding the traveling dog was in the checked-in lagguage.
Day 1 - Arrived
Met our mentors, got to dorm, paperwork, unpacked (room is nice, roommate is the epitome of irony of fate in my life), dinner, shopping.. ..
I was sad. Really really sad by the end of the day. Of all things, i arrived on the coldest day of winter as of that day. it was brrrrr cold. guess i underestimated the cold and was mercilessly punished. I instantly became homesick and wished to be back home right there and then. I miss everyone!! People that i love and people who loves me. I felt stuck and imprisoned in thic city in which people stare at you curiously like you're from the land of mars and people speak in thingies you are completely clueless about. worse still, they spoke their thingies to me and what can i give but a blank look and a helpless huh? People hardly spoke in comprehensible english. For one, i met someone who speaks english with incoherent slurs and mumbles. i honestly thought that i'm bad enough in speaking phrases like a single super long word, but i guess i met my match - that guy says chunks of paragraphs of chapters in one uber super long word. I was honestly so ready to go home!! argh!! english pple!! english!! ENGLISH english please!! cold, miserable, lonely and craving for love from home. as though that wasn't bad enough, my web cam can't work via windows live!! argh!! skype skype.. gotta remember to set that up.
anyhow, before that, laurynas, my mentor, took us to this mega mall called akropolis.. we had dinner at this german looking restaurant. the guys had cepelenai - i'm not sure if it's spelt correctly- a lithuanian national dish with beer (like crazy.. BEER during winter), and i had bavarian chicken stew with veggie and rice with HOT latte. yummy! slurpslurp! it was like 20 litas (10 sgd) in total - plus tipping, but considering the environment and serving size, 20 litas is pretty cheap.
as mentioned, i completely lost my sense of time. owing credit to the harsh weather as well, fatigue was so out of my mind. was so not jet lag. slept at 6am singapore time and woke up 6 plus hours later.
that restaurant in akropolis
Day 2
think my roommate and 3 polish neighbours from next door so wanna kill me. i woke up at 7am to do all my crap. wash up, breakfast and what not. kept going in and out. opening and closing the door. locking and unlocking the door. hehe! wore more today. being caught wearing too little when the temperature drops acutely was the last thing i needed. our mentors brought us to the university. it has an amazing exterior but the inside is bit dark and gloomy. i like it. (: the university is situated in the centre with plenty to see. shops, restaurants and churces. plenty of churches. still no pictures. cold, slow and might-as-well-not is the best description. (:
we did some registrations and what not but there was problem with our student visa, so we had to wait for asta, who is in-charge of us exchange students. i've been wanting to meet her in forever. she has been nothing but nice in helping me prepare for my exchange. sadly, she called for leave today. ):
we soon parted with our mentors and went shopping for necessities and found a post office to send out anna's birthday gifts.
when we got back to the dorm, we cooked the instant porridge aikhui brought from singapore and added the sausages that we bought earlier. pretty decent.
what happened next is thus far the coolest thing that happened. in the kitchen, we met 3 students from krgystan. they speak russian! (: it's really really cool. unlike lithuanians, they actually like russians. yay!! (: plus, that guy azamat is soooooo funny. i gave them durian candies in which the girls sabina and sycal didn't finish (it's understandable), but that guy finished it even though it was quite a torture for him. lol. the way his face grimaced in contortion was absolutely hilarious. in the end, he finally concluded that durians should be called binzin, and binzin, is what he is going to remember them as.
the polish neighbours tried the candy too.. they think it tastes like garlic, onion and what not mixed together. apparently, it tastes like a kind of medicine they make when they are sick. interesting.
basically, the night was spent merry making with the 3 really nice new friends. we later joined a mini party in the other kitchen, in which i broke a promise with my mom and downed my first vodka, BUT it was 1/5 vodka 4/5 redbull. i will definitely still hold that promise of not going to pubs and clubs. so not into that anyway.
somehow, the effect of vodka was as what the amount of intake indicates. i was freeeeeeeeeezing in my room as i typed a blog entry on my live spaces. it was one of misery, pain and sadness. nothing positive at all. then anna had to go and make me all jealous by saying that it's 15 degree celcius at where she is at. that toots!
i turned in at past midnight in which soon after my stomach started to growl loudly. cause it can be accountable by 1.) hunger - porridge is sooooo not filling much less to say, a meer 10 table spoons of that, and 2.) tap water - boiled but still.. my skin and stomach are prone to sensitive reactions. i expected the latter, so i already did down some chinese medicine for stomach upsets. hence, i just went to bed on a crazy hungry noisy tummy. like last night, i gained comfort from my moo moo cow in the pink. (: i love my moo moo!! (:(:(: she looks retardedly cute.
moo moo lands on akropolis
moo moo eating porridge. doesn't look decent still tastes decent.
coke!
it's still cny!
After staying in sheer shock shivering in the snow spreaded city for 2 days, the weather finally showed some mercy and hence i can now blog proper and give blogging what it really deserves.
Day 1 - Pre-Arrival
The whole process was nothing but surreal. It was like traveling through time and space between two different realities. The stay on the plane was really like a medium in which i travel from one plane to another. I tossed and turned attempting to get some sleep which i eventually thought to be just 4-5 hours max of tossing and turning and being half-asleep, but i woke up bewildered wondering how actually 9 hours had passed by. i kept counting and counting and it just didn't make sense how i just got cheated without knowing how 4 friggin hours of my life went by. As if sensing my dismalness for that, i soon was magically bestowed 6 hours more to spend for the day, and instantly, 1pm became 7am.
Somehow, it has became a bad habit of my to never expect good things to fall upon myself, so even as i was just 1 plane ride away from vilnius, excitement didn't quite sink in yet. not until seeing what i saw on that plane ride from frankfurt to vilnius.
What i saw made up feel so spiritually uplifted. I saw snow. just vast vast vast land of snow snow snow and NOTHING but snow. it was absolutely amazing!! initially i thought that i was flying above the clouds, but it occurred to me that it can't be since it was white entirely. i was in absolute awe as soon realisation struck me. i couldn't help but just stare into that eye-piercingly bright snow where land meets heaven and heaven meets land - land with snow baked golden under that orange sun. i just kept staring staring and staring.
no pictures of lithuania yet! bag was too packed and hands were tied.
care bear cookies and floewrs from dillon. ♥ shane shane.
moo moo and care bear on the flight to frankfurt! pudding the traveling dog was in the checked-in lagguage.
Day 1 - Arrived
Met our mentors, got to dorm, paperwork, unpacked (room is nice, roommate is the epitome of irony of fate in my life), dinner, shopping.. ..
I was sad. Really really sad by the end of the day. Of all things, i arrived on the coldest day of winter as of that day. it was brrrrr cold. guess i underestimated the cold and was mercilessly punished. I instantly became homesick and wished to be back home right there and then. I miss everyone!! People that i love and people who loves me. I felt stuck and imprisoned in thic city in which people stare at you curiously like you're from the land of mars and people speak in thingies you are completely clueless about. worse still, they spoke their thingies to me and what can i give but a blank look and a helpless huh? People hardly spoke in comprehensible english. For one, i met someone who speaks english with incoherent slurs and mumbles. i honestly thought that i'm bad enough in speaking phrases like a single super long word, but i guess i met my match - that guy says chunks of paragraphs of chapters in one uber super long word. I was honestly so ready to go home!! argh!! english pple!! english!! ENGLISH english please!! cold, miserable, lonely and craving for love from home. as though that wasn't bad enough, my web cam can't work via windows live!! argh!! skype skype.. gotta remember to set that up.
anyhow, before that, laurynas, my mentor, took us to this mega mall called akropolis.. we had dinner at this german looking restaurant. the guys had cepelenai - i'm not sure if it's spelt correctly- a lithuanian national dish with beer (like crazy.. BEER during winter), and i had bavarian chicken stew with veggie and rice with HOT latte. yummy! slurpslurp! it was like 20 litas (10 sgd) in total - plus tipping, but considering the environment and serving size, 20 litas is pretty cheap.
as mentioned, i completely lost my sense of time. owing credit to the harsh weather as well, fatigue was so out of my mind. was so not jet lag. slept at 6am singapore time and woke up 6 plus hours later.
that restaurant in akropolis
Day 2
think my roommate and 3 polish neighbours from next door so wanna kill me. i woke up at 7am to do all my crap. wash up, breakfast and what not. kept going in and out. opening and closing the door. locking and unlocking the door. hehe! wore more today. being caught wearing too little when the temperature drops acutely was the last thing i needed. our mentors brought us to the university. it has an amazing exterior but the inside is bit dark and gloomy. i like it. (: the university is situated in the centre with plenty to see. shops, restaurants and churces. plenty of churches. still no pictures. cold, slow and might-as-well-not is the best description. (:
we did some registrations and what not but there was problem with our student visa, so we had to wait for asta, who is in-charge of us exchange students. i've been wanting to meet her in forever. she has been nothing but nice in helping me prepare for my exchange. sadly, she called for leave today. ):
we soon parted with our mentors and went shopping for necessities and found a post office to send out anna's birthday gifts.
when we got back to the dorm, we cooked the instant porridge aikhui brought from singapore and added the sausages that we bought earlier. pretty decent.
what happened next is thus far the coolest thing that happened. in the kitchen, we met 3 students from krgystan. they speak russian! (: it's really really cool. unlike lithuanians, they actually like russians. yay!! (: plus, that guy azamat is soooooo funny. i gave them durian candies in which the girls sabina and sycal didn't finish (it's understandable), but that guy finished it even though it was quite a torture for him. lol. the way his face grimaced in contortion was absolutely hilarious. in the end, he finally concluded that durians should be called binzin, and binzin, is what he is going to remember them as.
the polish neighbours tried the candy too.. they think it tastes like garlic, onion and what not mixed together. apparently, it tastes like a kind of medicine they make when they are sick. interesting.
basically, the night was spent merry making with the 3 really nice new friends. we later joined a mini party in the other kitchen, in which i broke a promise with my mom and downed my first vodka, BUT it was 1/5 vodka 4/5 redbull. i will definitely still hold that promise of not going to pubs and clubs. so not into that anyway.
somehow, the effect of vodka was as what the amount of intake indicates. i was freeeeeeeeeezing in my room as i typed a blog entry on my live spaces. it was one of misery, pain and sadness. nothing positive at all. then anna had to go and make me all jealous by saying that it's 15 degree celcius at where she is at. that toots!
i turned in at past midnight in which soon after my stomach started to growl loudly. cause it can be accountable by 1.) hunger - porridge is sooooo not filling much less to say, a meer 10 table spoons of that, and 2.) tap water - boiled but still.. my skin and stomach are prone to sensitive reactions. i expected the latter, so i already did down some chinese medicine for stomach upsets. hence, i just went to bed on a crazy hungry noisy tummy. like last night, i gained comfort from my moo moo cow in the pink. (: i love my moo moo!! (:(:(: she looks retardedly cute.
moo moo lands on akropolis
moo moo eating porridge. doesn't look decent still tastes decent.
coke!
it's still cny!
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1) There are only 3 countries in the whole Europe where English is an official language, and Lithuania is not one of them;
ReplyDelete2) It is not THAT cold out there now. I hope you will not get to try -25.
3) You should definitely try cepelinai. And what's wrong with beer in winter? Alcohol warms you up!
4)You will get used to it that Lithuanians eat a lot less (and at different time) than Singaporeans.
5) There is no wonder that we do not like Russians - show me a nation in the world which would like their occupants.
6) You shouldn't have expected too much from a country which was just like North Korea less than 25 years ago.
Oh, and people in China were staring just as bad at me as people in Lithuania at you.
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