A week worth writing home about

Well hello.

Sorry it's been so long since we've updated, but we have been BUSY. It is currently 2am, and I am still awake, updating the blog. It's alright though, because tomorrow is Saturday, and we can sleep in a little bit.

The last time we updated, we had just gotten done with community day. It seems like ages ago, when really it has only been a week and a half.

Last Friday was a busy one for me. The first leadership seminar of the year was that afternoon, and then that evening was another leadership event for current student leaders.

The leadership seminar went well. There was a great turnout, about 80 students came. The leadership summit went well, too. I gave each leader an opportunity to take a test to see which style of learning they most lined up with (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), and then talked about leadership with them in those three ways: first a movie clip (for the visual people -- myself included), a group discussion time (for the auditory learners), and then an activity (for the kinesthetic learners). We did this three times, and then took some group pictures, and then the evening was over.

Here is everyone at the end of the Leadership Summit in front of the paper "quilt" that we created.

And then the week was over, I should say. It was a really busy week for the both of us, and through it all, we were both sick with a nasty cold. Needless to say, we needed the weekend to recuperate.

Here's a brief summary of what we did last weekend:

1. Slept a lot

2. Laundry

3. Went on one walk

4. Went to church

and...

I can't think of one single other thing. It was great. It was just the weekend we needed.

Here are a couple of pictures from the walk we went on.

Steve outside of a business that is obviously a furniture store. (We think)

A cool looking building. I think it's a church.

We walked around a huge sculpture park. Here's one sculpture. I don't know its significance.

A HUGE sculpture of a sword. Look how tall it is in comparison to the trees.

This past week has been more relaxed feeling...but somehow just as busy. Just with different things going on.

My first year seminar class had its first "big" paper due, and so I got the privilege of reading and grading them all. So that took some time. While I was grading papers, I thought that it would be good idea to multitask and do some laundry. In a freak accident I ended up scraping off the side of my arm when reaching into the laundry basket for the clothes. There are a couple of pictures of that here. I am going to have a nice scar to accompany this story.

The first dorm event was yesterday (Thursday), and it was a success! There is a pond on campus by the new dorm that has swans in it. So the obvious event to have is one where students build boats and race them across the pond! It was called the "Ugly Duckling Cup" and was the first annual race. There were three boats racing, one from Neumann West, one from Neumann East, and one from Karklu (our dorm). Karklu is about a 25 minute walk (when you're not carrying a boat) from campus, so it was quite the sight for people to see us parading the boat all the way over there! Here are a few pictures from that (I took millions more, and someday, if I make a photo album of them on facebook, I'll post a link here):

Notice Steve is dressed as a pirate. Our dorm color was Green.

Crossing a busy street.

Walking toward Neumann Hall.

The sign for the event.

Karklu taking the lead right away, and dominating.

Three "ugly ducklings"

The ugly duckling trophy sitting on what was left of Karklu's boat.

Now we're back to the weekend again. Hopefully we can do more relaxing. The weather for this coming week is going to be an Indian Summer, and may even get up to 20 degrees Celsius! A very big deal. 68 degrees for those of you who don't speak Celsius.

In other news, we learned a new verb in Lithuanian class today. "skubėti" means "to hurry"

"Skubu" means "I hurry"

"Skubi" means "you hurry"

"Skuba" means "he/she hurries" and "they hurry"

"Skubame" means "we hurry"

"Skubate" means "you (as a group) hurry" or "you (formal) hurry"

Just a little trivia, if you're sitting around later today and there's a lull in the conversation, you can teach everyone some new words.

Well, I'm going to go to sleep now. It is the weekend, after all, and I've been dreaming about this for days.

Here's one final picture:

Most every place we go to knows how to make such pretty lattes. And they taste good, too!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!