A day in my life (at least in January)

I am posting this, even though i wrote it a long time ago. But if you want to get a glimpse of some of the incidental things which happen to me in a day in Lithuania, read on....

Hello all, and Merry Orthodox Christmas. As I write, instead of celebrating Christmas with their families, many of my students are on board trains and buses, for 30 hour journeys crossing the wide expanses of Ukraine and Belarus, floating by aging apartment towers and the endless rolling plains that make up most of eastern Europe. Others are slowly grinding their way across Latvia or lithuania on ancient German buses, whose temperature gauges are permanently stuck on “Sahara” and frequent their favorite watering holes, owned by some friend of a friend to imbibe caffeine while their passengers get ripped off, even if it means getting their two-story bus stuck in the 20 cm of wet thick snow that have fallen in the last few hours. Not to worry though. People here are impossibly patient, as I am becoming. I think the biggest thing that hits me when I do see Americans again, is how terribly impatient they are.

My parents thought it would be nice to send out a letter, that is a little more personal in tone, one that describes more of my daily experience. I agree, but trying to answer the question of “ a typical day” is as hard in a foreign country as it ever was in the united states. This world has become my real world and my home, and consequently I don’t notice the many small details that you may notice, or I may have noticed at first. I don’t feel much like a missionary anymore, as I feel just like a regular person, living a real life in a real city, that although on the surface may look quite different than Lansing, Michigan, is really a city just like any other city, and in which live 200,000 humans. Although these humans may be Lithuanians, and Russians, and on the surface live totally differently than you may live, I remain firmly committed to the fact, that that which makes us human is still much more significant than that which makes us Lithuanian or American or Catholic or Methodist or Liberal or Fascist or whatever… Cross-cultural understanding is valid and important, and yet all human hearts are at their root the same. We are all the great-great-great..-great offspring of Noah, and all have the same hunger for relationships, the desire to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, have the same memory of being created for a world in which we were in perfect relationship with God and others and the world, and the haunting of that memory and the disappointments of the reality which faces us attend all humans.

Nevertheless, I will try describe some of the little things about me as I am here, things I might never otherwise stop to write down, and things which may in some way, interest some of you.

I wake up very often in the dark. The dark this time of year feels omnipresent. The hope that comes from the lighting in the spring is something felt to a degree I never felt even in northern Michigan. Buses begin rolling down the cobblestone streets at 6 am, ever more frequently. Each passing car on the cobbled Janonio street shakes our building, but I have learned to sleep through them as faithfully as the trains at my beloved MSU. The blinking red lights of the Casino Pokervegas sign flit through my curtainless window as the traffic slowly increases. As I stare through the perpetually fogged up window of my bedroom I can usually see students gathering outside the dormitory across the street, forming a circle of cigarette smoking, the most communal of all lithuanian experiences. I still have no idea what is in that dormitory, as all kinds of people come in and out of that building, and I can see such things as a cafeteria, a car repair shop, a beauty school, odd rooms with large piles of random wood, and the Spartan-at-best decorated rooms filtered by soviet-era gauze curtains. I head to the shower… often the washing from the day before is still in our german washing machine, the shampoo in my shower, like almost every product in my apartment, is written in 4 languages (the breakfast cereal is written in 15! I know now how to say “ingredients” in just about every imaginable Eastern European language- handy, no?). As I am usually in a hurry in the morning, my typical breakfast is dark bread, the kind that can only be found in eastern Europe, and may be the single most important culinary contribution of this region to the world’s pantheon of great cuisine, and as I just enjoyed a lovely visit in an old wooden house in the heart of Russian Liepaja, Latvia, I have homemade black currant jam, fresh from the dacha, to put on it. The milk here is either what you would call fresh-from-the-cow, or irradiated so that you can leave it out for weeks without a perceivable change. Just as well, as I like both kinds equally.

Many mornings, if it is after 8:00, I just stop by the House of Buns, next to my own Stalin-era building to have one of many assorted freshly-made buns for breakfast, purchased for 20 American cents each. My usual order is one with forest berry or chocolate, and one with chopped fat pieces. Nothing says breakfast like chopped fat pieces in dill butter baked inside a fluffy fresh pastry! My daily dilemma is how to go to school- the 20 minute walk through the frigid morning air; past the giant great dane in front of the canary yellow cement house, up over the railroad bridge, and down the elm-lined Kretingos street, past a stately array of gray 5-storey soviet apartment towers, mixing with the school children headed to the German-specialty school, across the under-construction national highway to lcc. It is cheap, and good to work off the extra calories I have obtained by ingesting such light and airy dishes as potato meal soaked in potato starch, formed around a pork and onion ball, deep-fried bread with garlic and mayonnaise, fried pork and onion balls, inside dough or independently, etc… It is a surprise that I haven’t gained any weight in my time here. The big difference is I think in the quality of the food. Everything I eat is unpreservatived, unchemicaled. Your stomach really feels the difference when you eat what you are supposed to.

Anyway, on days where I am feeling I don’t need the exercise, and I can afford the 30 cents, I walk to the bus stop in front of the Navalis hotel, past the soviet “Lowland” movie theater, and the mega-dentist-plex, about a five minute walk, in order to wait at the bus stop to take the faithful No 3 bus. Or, on mornings where I am feeling particularly rich (50 american cents), or pressed for time, I can take a “marsrutka”- a wonderful invention which I believe would solve all of the United States’ public transportation needs. It is basically this- take a van, say 15 passenger van, make an aisle down the middle. This van drives back and forth along a regular route through the city, and you can stop it by standing on the side walk and holding out your hand. Once inside, and once you’ve passed your 1.50 to the driver via a bucket-brigade of passengers, and received your change, via the same bucket brigade, one can stop the van by a simple set of commands “stop here” “after crosswalk stop” “after driveway stop” “here let-me-out!”. Add a driver who has a virgin mary dangling from the rear-view mirror, a passion for Russian wedding music, a deep seated need to prove his masculinity by passing every other vehicle on the road, and voila! The marsrutka! It is the fastest and closest method, but unfortunately the most expensive. Some experiences are worth paying for.

Another thing that is a part of my daily life is shopping. I am on the European plan of buying groceries every day, just for that day. Now when I think about it the thought of loading up a minivan full of groceries seems so strange to me. I buy what I know I can carry. The supermarkets here aren’t THAT much different than at home. Of course you find different foods in them, but they are clean and every month more foreign foods appear. The list of things that I really want but can’t get has shrunk considerably, and now consists of corn tortillas (or at least tortilla flour), fresh coriander, lavender, dr. pepper, and not much else. Klaipeda is in a new trend now- the hypermarket. They just built two new hypermarkets, shopping malls basically each centered around a mega-grocery store. Actually as much as I hate shopping malls, I think it would be interesting for someone to see what the Lithuanians have done with the concept of the mega-mall. As I walk past the battlements of various pizza parlors overlooking the indoor ice skating rink, and boutiques selling the latest fashions from Helsinki, Berlin and Stockholm I can’t help but think what the Soviets would have thought in 1990 if they knew that after fifteen years their beloved socialist state would look like this. Many good things were lost with the Soviet Union, many bad things gained. But still as Lithuanians celebrate 15 years of independence this week, it is only a small minority I think that really regret their spectacular revolt in Vilnius 15 years ago.

Which brings me to another topic- outside my kitchen window, I can see the lithuanian third army headquarters. Watching the ongoings of the lithuanian military has become a humorous part of my life. The main building looks pretty nice, but out back (the part I see), there are a few soviet buildings which are slowly being dismantled and mined for bricks (literally brick by brick). And then there is a row of “military vehicles” which is basically non-matching soviet made pick up trucks with various assorted colors of tarp covering the bed to serve as transport carriers. The soldiers occasionally are standing in the yard smoking and chatting, and periodically an officer comes by and tries to line them up, but neither the officer nor the soldiers seem to take this too seriously. I think it is a good thing that Lithuania joined Nato, because if a new Russian empire under Putin ever decides to invade, I have a hard time believing that the Lithuanian third army is going to be able to do much about it 

Once I am at school, my life seems pretty boring. It is basically sitting in my office grading papers or trying to prepare lectures, or catching up on emails or news, or, when I am desperate to procrastinate, I have a new vice called maps.google.com. Sometimes I will be sitting there and wonder “I wonder what the beach front of Tripoli, Libya looks like?” and the crazy thing is you can zoom in and scroll around Tripoli, Libya, and see every tennis court and car and tile roof. One could almost see Mohamar Qaddafi! And you can do this for anywhere in the world- as a geography major, this is a great temptation. If I manage to resist that temptation, my office is in the busiest part of the school, and there are always people talking outside my office in Lithuanian, Russian or English. I always hear such interesting conversations going on outside my window, that I often can’t resist popping out and joining. I will occasionally also hear uproarious laughter from the staff lounge across from me, and of course you have to find out what’s so funny. I am amazed I get anything done.

My favorite part of being at school is the passing periods- between classes things become a zoo. I know most of the students at our school after 3 years, and you can always get in such good and short conversations. My very favorite thing is it is rude in this culture for a male to walk by another male without shaking hands. Therefore on my way to class, about a two minute walk I usually shake hands with about 30 people. I feel like one of those spider monkeys, swinging from one hand to the next. When I have my laptop and homeworks and handouts and books, then it becomes a well-honed balancing act (literally) of greetings in many languages. In general I find my students in lithuania to be extremely motivated. It is a joy teaching here, and I am getting very very spoiled teaching eager and motivated undergrads from many different countries. Teaching in an American State University would be very frustrating for me after this experience. Especially the students from “east” of here, meaning Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova, seem so hungry to learn anything that you can give.

Sometimes between classes, if I have a break, we will brave the cold run to the other building at our school where the gym and cafeteria is. The frigid temperatures encourage one to make that walk quickly. You pass the flagpoles, where if it is the independence day of any of the 22 countries represented at LCC, there will be a flag raising ceremony, like the Olympics! Speaking of Olympics, I am sad that this is the first Olympics I won’t get to see. I don’t have a tv and getting cable is hard for just one month. I will be either bumming off friends who are lucky enough to have Eurosport, or checking on the internet. It will be a good test for me, a confirmed Olympaholic. Life just isn’t the same without curling!

All is not lost though, because in the near future I will be going probably to the great Soviet bobsled in Sigulda, Latvia, where in addition to seeing four castles in one city (Sigulda was the border between the livonians and teutons for many centuries), one can bobsled down the soviet bobsled for only 2 Latvian lats! So my Olympic dreams can live on.

I had a very typical Lithuanian experience the other day. On the bus to Germany me and my co-teacher friend Jen sat behind a Lithuanian family. In our conversation it turned out that they said they would be really interested in coming to our church. So we went over the other night in order to renew the invitation to church the next day. Thus we got to spend what is a typical Lithuanian weekend evening, the kind of thing you can’t buy for money. The family, the Jonuzsai, were at home, and also had another old family, very old friends, over to spend the evening. How do typical Lithuanian families spend the evening? Well it involves Svyturys beer (the best beer in the whole world), dried fishes of various sorts, many strips of smoked pig ear, and lots of long tales about travels in Sweden, Oman, about Soviet pioneer camps, about the independence demonstrations back in 1991, the vagaries of trying to learn English and adapt to the rapidly changing world of the European Union, fishing stories, and general hilarity. And at the end of our long unhurried evenings (Lithuanians rarely pack their schedules, and a dinner suffices for the evening entertainment- waitress would never try to kick you out of a restaurant or hurry you away- they are salaried and not tipped, which makes the service, well distant, but it is nice to enjoy an evening without waiters coming by every five minutes…)