aš kalbu lietuviškai.

So I’ve realized that I have really only described my travels and the fun stuff I’ve done without talking exactly about my life here in Klaipėda. I’ve mentioned coffee and the SALTy gang, but not actual cultural experiences which I should probably start doing. So here we go!

During SLI in the summer, I hardly learned any Lithuanian, which makes sense considering how rarely I went out and when I did, it was with Hannah who knew how to speak Lithuanian. Eventually I learned how to order coffee (mažas latė ačiū) as well as say, “I’m sorry, English?” (atsiprašau, angliškai?), but that’s really only good enough for minimal interaction with the outside world. Sure, it impressed my fellow SALT members for the first week, but I soon found myself wanting to say actual sentences and after being back in Bosnia and France, I wanted to prove that I could add another language to my list. Another motivation was that I had learned such poor Bosnian and felt bad that I took so many things for granted in Bosnia (like the two host family members that spoke English, an English speaking school, an English translation at church, and friends who all spoke English). This time, I wanted to make sure I was speaking Lithuanian whenever I could. Staying on campus makes this difficult as, yet again, everyone speaks English.

Therefore, I’ve made it my goal to go off campus by myself as often as I can. Whether out grocery shopping or to coffee or to the mall, it’s nice to be away from fluent English speakers and more immersed in the language and culture around me. This has resulted in plenty of interactions – good, bad, and hilarious.

As everyone should know, I’m a regular at probably three different coffee shops. They all know I’m American now and so interactions go one of two ways. The first is I walk in and greet the barista, “Laba diena!”

“Oh hey! Welcome back!”

“No, gosh dang it, I’m practicing Lithuanian.” And then they laugh and ask me how classes are going.

The second goes more like this: “Laba diena, prašom maža latė” I order, feeling pleased, until the barista asks me a follow up question and I stare blankly. I reluctantly huff out a “kalbate angliškai?” and the barista smiles pleasantly and asks “for here or take away?”

“Oh, for here.”

“Okay, that’s čia in Lithuanian.” Bless your precious souls. Whenever a Lithuanian is eager to help me fill in the blanks, I always get excited

For another interaction, we started ordering in Lithuanian and the worker just cut us off completely and asked us to speak English.

Probably the funniest interaction (at least to me) was trying to order pizza for ten people and I started listing the order and the worker just smiled at my attempt at ordering in Lithuanian when she could clearly hear my accent when I said “pepperoni” and “Hawaiian”. Nevertheless, she let me do my entire order in Lithuanian and only corrected me once because of a grammatical error.

Despite some of the challenges, I’ve embraced every moment to speak Lithuanian. We did presentations in Lithuanian class on our families and I enjoyed each small sentence that was successfully constructed. I then went to the mall by myself a week or so ago and managed to do an entire transaction, even after I miscounted my change and she had to ask me for ten more cents. Even at LCC, I try to find a Lithuanian and talk about my day (although I still don’t know past or future tense and I end up asking how to translate something anyway).

In any case, I’m determined to learn as much Lithuanian as I can and get out into the world every day. Which is typically getting coffee, but it’s still good enough practice for now.

With all of this going on, I’ve managed to see more of Lithuania! Just two days ago, the study abroad kids split into groups to attend Russian Orthodox services in preparation for our Russia trip this Saturday! My group went to a church in Palanga and I spent nearly the entirety of the two hour service staring at the pretty walls and listening to the choir that I couldn’t understand. I also mainly tried to focus on anything that wasn’t how my feet ached from standing during the service. After the service, we had brunch at an adorable restaurant in Palanga, before hopping on the bus ride home to Klaipeda.

The SALTy ladies went out for a girls night in Klaipeda and it was such an enjoyable evening of food and chick-flicks and dressing up. We tried to be the least annoying people at the restaurant, even though the group was so large. Our waitresses were at least very nice and helpful, so that made it better.

Kinzie and I also took a bus down to the beach last week to watch the sunset because fall is slowly turning into winter and it gets dark around dinner time. So with the last days of fall, we’re taking advantage of the sun and slightly warmer weather.

And then, surprise surprise, we’ve kept up with our weekly family dinners! It’s apparently so favorably talked about that even the recruiters and coordinators and our roommates want to join us, so soon enough we’re going to need a new building to host our meals. In any case, I am so happy with our SALT groups and how we all still get along. They keep warning us it’s all going to change after we get back from Russia, but I can only imagine we’re going to become closer.