100 days left

333 days in Lithuania... Time went by fast and suddenly there are just 100 days left!

When I look back to the beginning I have somehow the feeling it is so long time ago.
My arrival in Riga, meeting my flatmates and other volunteers, slowly getting used to everything, my first travel to Vilnius, Riga and so on, visits from my brother and boyfriend, my first time trying to speak Lithuanian,... everything seems so long time ago because so many new things happen every day.

As I showed you my last month was quite full of travel and I had again so many impressions and experiences that I did not realize how fast the time went by.
It is already again one month that I have not seen my little volunteer family from the other Cities and I have to say that I really miss all of them..

One friend has now been in USA for two weeks, the other in Stockholm, others in Amsterdam,... and I wish to see them soon again. But I think these meetings with them are in some cases already the last once.

Sadly now the time has come to say goodbye to a lot of them. Projects ends and several volunteers already leave back to their country. We are starting to organize goodbye parties but to be honest a lot of us really do not want to think about it.

When I look now also forward to the next 100 days I am a bit afraid. Saying goodbye has never been easy for me and usually I prefer to say "See you". Because I think if it should be you always meet twice in life but this time it is different for me..
With a lot of volunteers I had a lot of fun and they inspired me in so many ways but to stay in contact will be very difficult and also not really the right thing. Everybody is going to have a new life again and should live this and not still stuck in old memories in Lithuania. I hope this saying goodbye is going to be easier then I expect. Nevertheless I am sure that with some volunteers I will meet for sure and they will always be part of me now.

one crazy and unforgetable month

One Month full of traveling is over but for sure I will always remember this wonderful time.
First of all there was my trip to Poland, then to Germany together with some students and finally St. Petersburg.

Here you can read more about all my trips:

Poland 
5 days in Warsaw and Krakow together with6 other volunteers...

Germany
Berlin, Serengeti Park, Bremen, Heidepark and much more...

St. Petersburg
awesome trip which is impossible to describe in another word than BIG!

St Petersburg

St. Petersburg

After two short days in Siauliai it was time for my trip to St. Petersburg. Together with one other volunteer from Germany Antonia I was going to explore the city for six days.

In the evening of 4.April I met with Antonia in Riga. She lives in Vilnius and because of that she came a bit later to Riga as I. From there we started our loooong bus trip to St Petersburg where we arrived totally exhausted in the morning at 8 o'clock. We were unbelievable happy when we met our host Kate. It was a really crazy night with some adrenaline because of the pass control at the border and not to know what to expect.
We brought our stuff to Kate's flat and went together with her to the first little city tour. At this moment we already forgot all doubts from the night and how tired we were. Immediately I felt in love with the Church of Savior on Spilled Blood.

We have been in so many places that it is even hard for me to remember. :)

• HERMITAGE (you could go there every day!!), 
• Faberge Museum, 
• St. Peter and Paul Fortress (Cathedral, Trubetskoy Bastion prison, mint building,...), 
• in the St. Petersburg Mosque (which was once the largest in Europe), 
• on the top of Isaac Cathedral (such a nice view), 
• theater (beautiful place and the ballet was nice. The only problem was that I was reeaaallly tired :P ) 
• Smolny Institut,
• of course in many good restaurants, 
• in the deepest Metro station in the world Admiralteiskaja (Адмиралтейская),...

Believe me I could talk for hours about our special trip to St. Petersburg, but the pictures show you maybe more the real beauty of this amazing city.

St Peter und Paul Cathedral inside!
Just wonderful!!

Admiralty

one of hundreds of beautiful rooms in Hermitage

Smolny-Institut

we even went to the theater to see a ballet

St. Peter und Paul Cathedral, Admiralty and Hermitage

I really enjoyed the City, for me it was the biggest City I have ever seen and also one of the most beautiful once. Nevertheless I was really happy when we crossed the border again and I knew I am going home to Siauliai. This was a really special feeling for me. :)

Germany

I got the opportunity to travel together with some students of our school to Germany. During four days I had chance to visit Berlin, Bremen, Heidepark and Serengeti Park.

We started in the night with the Bus from Siauliai to Poland. It was a pretty long drive but the students were very active and so the time went by quite fast :).
We played some games, talked about everything, listened to music, made several stops, ate a lot of sweets and as you see in the end there was even not a lot of time left to sleep. Because of that I went to bed as early as possible when we arrived in our wonderful hotel in Poland. We just went to a small, reaaaally small store to buy some food and then I went to bed. Of course the students enjoyed their first evening of the trip and so they were a little bit more quiet when we continued our journey to Berlin the next day.

Berlin
We made a short stop at the "Berliner Mauer" to take some pictures before we finally went to the center of Berlin to start our sightseeing tour. :)
Thanks to the History teacher the students got always some information about the different sights and thanks to some students, who were willing to translate for me, I also could learn something. Well the language was again a kind of challenge for me. Not just because I was the only one out of nearly 50 people who can not speak Lithuanian but also because I could speak German again and I realized again how much easier life can be when you can communicate with people as you wish.
For example in Berlin I met one of my friends form Austria who is working in Berlin at the moment. During our break we went together to a restaurant and we had a nice conversation with a couple next to us. Absolutely nothing special but for me it was so nice that I was able again to just join a conversation easily.
So simple as it sounds but for me this experience and hour together with my friend was the highlight of Berlin.

For the students of course it was the amazing city itself. We have seen the Parliament, the TV tower, the "Brandenburger Tor" and so on. Hundreds of pictures where made, some nice moments I could also catch.

After sightseeing we went to Hanover where we stayed in a Motel.

Bremen and Serengeti Park
On Tuesday the 31.3 we started early in the morning our travel to Serengeti Park where we explored "the jungle". With a bus we drove through the different areas of the park and our bus driver told us a bit about the animals we could see. The man could just speak German and so it was my turn to translate. It was a really special experience for me and I enjoyed the tour a lot. We had the chance to see so many awesome animals from normal goats and pony, over Elephants and Giraffes up to Lions and Tigers. Very impressive was for me the white Tigers which are very rare. Our bus driver told me that he had raised one of this unique creatures at home some years ago. He said it happens often that someone from the park had to raise a animal at home. He also had already a Giraffe and at the moment one college has a monkey at home. For me it sounded very interesting but like a huge challenge

After the Serengeti Park we went to Bremen to walk through the city. Sadly we had really bad weather and we were all wet and so happy when we reached the bus again to go back to Hanover to our Motel.
Nevertheless Bremen is a really nice City and really enjoyed the bell song and the cute narrow street "Schnorrstrasse". 

Heidepark
Bad weather and storm warning- not really the best conditions to go to a fun park like Heidepark. We were thinking and discussing long but finally we decided to give it a try and we were lucky. It did not rain a lot and a lot of roller costar were working. I think for the students it was a special and memorable day. I could not join them riding the coaster but still it was nice to walk through the park and see happy faces everywhere.
Not as funny as the park was the bus drive after it because a lot of students felt sick. Fortunately soon everybody felt better and was ready for the long journey back to Poland, where we stayed one night before we continued driving to Lithuania.

Foreigners in Šiauliai

As you maybe know, there are always a lot of Erasmus students in Šiauliai. At the moment I think they are around 50 foreigners.

Czech Republic, France, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Italy, Georgia, India, Colombia, Korea, and so on - People form really all over the world are here and thanks to the library we have the opportunity to learn more about those interesting countries.

As you know we started the foreigner evening in the library and already had several nice evenings together.  Annesophie made the first one about French Literature. Then it was my turn with Tradition in Austria.

Followed by Liudvikas about Politics.
He compared different political topics from Mexico and Spain with Lithuania. He talked about the corruption in Mexico, the monarchy of Spain and Patriotism in Lithuania. In a very good way he showed us with several comparisons the different advantages and disadvantages. 

On 11.February Jungo presented Japanese sports like sumo.
At this time I was in Austria and I couldn’t participate but as I heard from the other people it was again an enjoyable evening with a lot of new interesting stories. 

Czech Folklore on the 25.February

Three girls from Czech Republic – Barbara, Karolina, Nikola and Jana- presented their country and traditional folklore dance. Moreover we saw the traditional costumes in the different regions, listen to the music and saw different special events.
For me it was really nice to learn more about my neighbor country and now I know that I really have to go there one day. 

Sightseeing in Colombia
Yesterday evening Sebastian showed us his country and a lot of places we should visit. Everybody was so impressed by the beauty of this country. Every picture was so special and unique that you should just see it on your own. 

• Sierra Nevada - Sea on the one side, Mountain with snow on the other. 
• Caño Cristales - A 5 color river.
• Millions of lights in the Christmas time. 
• Flowers “walking” in the streets
  
  
  
  
  

Next presentation will be on 18.March about her region Brittany.
So if you would like to meet new lovely people and learn more about other countries, now you know where you can go.