So blessed.

When I finally open my eyes and see the life that I am living now, I can't help but feel incredibly blessed. Blessed beyond all words I could ever write. And I want so badly to try to describe the emotion I feel when I think about all the people I've met, all the things I've learned, all the places I've seen, but I just can't. I can't seem to find words eloquent enough to paint the picture just right.

All I can tell you is there are times where I feel so lucky that I have to stop and catch my breath because I know that moment was a gift from God just to me. And I cannot believe that only a little over a month ago I was in Greeley, Colorado. Greeley was just as beautiful and a true home but it was my time to see the world. Doors flew open and I was taken to absolutely gorgeous places. And one thing after another has blown me away. I feel myself getting lost in the world and this is a kind of lost where I never want to be found. People are so beautiful. The world is so radiant. And everyday that I live here I discover a new adventure, a new lesson.

And there days when all I wish I could do is see my mother and father, talk to my friends like we used too, or sleep in a bed that is my own. But this experience is worth more than its weight in gold. It's not just the lifelong friends I have met, or the timeless beauty that exists in Europe; it's the experience of seeing very different cultures meet in a new place and compromise. It's learning to see past stereotypes and misconceptions that we have made of each other.  It's seeing that it's not impossible for people with very different cultures and backgrounds to find friends in each other. It's learning simply how to be a better human being.

Last night, my roommate and I just happened to stumble across a group of our Turkish friends locked away in one of their rooms singing together. And we had the honor of just being able to sit with them, listen to them, and learn from them. And as I sat on their beds, swaying to "Ben Seni Sevdiğimi", sipping tea; it hit me and almost brought me to tears. This all a gift. This is all one huge blessing that I was given. These people, this place, this life. All of it has touched something so deep within me that I at loss for words even to describe. This is a moment in my life that moves so deeply within my soul that I know is pure heaven on earth.

And what I have heard over and over again in my life has finally surfaced to my eyes; this is heaven on earth. Within us is heaven.

So, while I take a little more time to think this revelation out, I wanted to just list SOME of the blessings I have experienced while here or learned that I always had.

• An Awesome roommate
• A safe city
• The resources to go to new places
• Meeting the kindest people to walk this earth
• Open hearts and minds
• Deep conversations and everlasting friendships
• The opportunity to learn
• The opportunity to grow
• The chance to live life in Europe
• The opportunity to explore different cultures, histories, places, lives.
• To be a U.S. citizen and speak fluent English 
• Amazing support from my family and closest friends
• Love, deep and everlasting love

And just for good measure, I wanted to share some new goals I have for myself to try to grow even more while I live these moments:

• Travel more (Poland, Greece, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria. Bulgaria. Romania, France, the UK, Turkey, as many places as possible!)
• Become a more educated traveler about places before I go there.
• Learn more about photography to capture moments
• Bless others in my actions
• Learn as much as I can about the new cultures, people and histories I encounter.
• Be fearless to ask questions
• Be patient and gracious
• Be forgiving to others and myself
• Forget about what other might be thinking. 

So here's the youtube of the song our friends were singing and the Turkish and English lyrics. Enjoy my friends! And many blessings to you! Eyvallah (it means thank you in Turkish)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrBGzFt7fZQ


Turkish

Ben Seni Sevduğumi

Ben seni sevduğumi da dünyalara bildirdum
Endirdun kaşlaruni, babani, babani mi eldurdum?

En dereye dereye da al dereden taşlari
Geçti bizden sevdaluk, al cebum.. al cebumdan saçlari.

Kız evinun onine da sereceğum kilimi
Oldi hayli zamanlar görmedum, görmedum sevduğumi.

Yaz geldi bahar geldi oy açti yeşil yapraklar

Ben sana doyamadum, doysun kara doysun kara topraklar.

Estonia annnnnd....surprise! FINLAND!

In short, ESTONIA WAS FANTASTIC!!!

Kim and I have made it a goal to travel to a different country every month. So for the month of September we thought it would be a good idea to travel to some of the other Baltic states and visit our friend Kaarel who we met in Vilnius a few weeks ago. So Estonia it was and we booked our bus tickets (only 179 Litas!) for a weekend of adventure! We found some other friends from the Erasmus program who wanted to go with us: Dora from Hungary and Svenja and Franci both from Germany. It worked out that Dora had a friend living in Tallinn as well who we could meet while there, it was perfect!

We started in Siauliai late Thursday afternoon. Had to miss Lithuanian Civilization lectures, oh well, it's a sacrifice that I think we were all willing to make. And when we told our professor (who happens to also be my Multicultural Communication and Russian professor) that we wouldn't be in class because we were traveling she practically chased us out of the room telling us to travel as much as possible! It was awesome. Then we had about a 2 and a half hour bus ride, in the smallest bus ever (sat next to a man reading a Russian book, good chance to practice reading haha!), to Riga the capital of Latvia. There we just happened to run into our Latvian friend Diana who happened to be visiting home for the weekend. It was a huge "small world" moment that blew my mind! Then we had a four hour bus ride to Tallinn on possibly one of the coolest buses ever. If you are in the Baltic states and in need of cheap but good transportation, go LuxExpress. There's free unlimited hot chocolate on some of their buses, and free wifi. We were living the high life!

Here's a map with all the places we stopped basically. Siauliai is more in the middle-northern region of Lithuania, just in case you wanted to know.

And here we are waiting in the bus station at Riga! From left to right, Kim, Svenja, Dora, and Franci. Haha I thought this picture showed their personalities perfectly.

So lots of sleep and conversations later, we made it to Tallinn!! It was 1:30 in the morning and lucky for us, Kaarel and his family are the coolest people ever, and Kaarel's brother Laur picked us up from the bus station. Kaarel couldn't because he had just had Lasik work done to his eyes the day before, driving was probably not the smartest decision for him. We jammed all our luggage into the back of his rather large Volvo, sat on each other's laps and rode to our accommodations, United Methodist Church. Kaarel and his family attend this church and it was actually a huge blessing! Extremely good dorms for only 10 Euros per night per person. So it came to only about $40 for the whole weekend for a place to sleep, and a good place to sleep too!

The next day Kaarel, foggy vision and sensitive eyes and all, gave us a tour of his home city! We walked around old town, saw cobblestone streets older than the U.S., old defense walls of Tallinn, towers, cathedrals, street art, galleries, TONS of museums! We went to the city museum and was totally blown away by how rich the history of one tiny city was. I totally geeked out over the Soviet history and modern political history. I geeked out SO much that I am going to be writing a blog-post just for history soon, I am THAT inspired! But just for a preview (and because I can't contain myself), we learned a lot about Estonia's fight for independence from the Soviet Union. In 1989, the Baltic States created this 600 km (about 370 miles) long chain of people from Tallinn to Vilnius (!!!!) to protest for independence. And we found out our friend Kaarel was apart of that! He was only about 4 years old but he remembers driving a little out of Tallinn with his brother and his dad and standing holding hands with other people wanting independence from the Soviet Union. I love history, I love it so much. Especially when I can see it touching the daily life of people I know and love. See, totally geeking out over here.

Here we all are! Left to right: Svenja, Kaarel, Kim, Dora, and Franci. 

And here's just a few pictures from our tour of Old Town Tallinn:

The following pictures are of the Oleviste Cathedral. This Cathedral has rich history of preservation against the Soviet Union, Kaarel told me a lot about it. But, for now, I'll save you from that historical torture.

This is the Alexander Nevski Church, one of the Russian Orthodox churches in the area:

AND THESE:

Chocolate Syrup and Ice-cream pancakes from the Kompressor. TO DIE FOR. I'm not losing weight at all in Europe. Not with this kind of food around.

So all day long we were hearing rumors that you could take a ferry to Helsinki, Finland for super cheap and be there in a matter of a couple hours. Kim and I could not resist. We would NEVER get the chance to go to Finland ever again and the thought of passing up even a few hours in Finland was just too sad. So the next morning, after a little bit of a wild goose-case to find the ticket vendor, we were on a ferry to FINLAND!! I learned that I get sea-sick on ferries, which is good knowledge to know for the future probably. We ended up only having about 4 hours to see the sights, which was not nearly enough time but very appreciated no matter what! Helsinki is breath-taking!

In front of the Helsinki Cathedral:

The Uspenski Cathedral, this was my favorite:

Oh! And surprisingly we discovered that Helsinki is a city FULL of music, not kidding. Every street there was at least ONE person playing some instrument. We met this band, Half Day Nation, as they were handing out free CDs and warming up their fingers (Finland is COLD). One was from Australia and the other was from Finland, super cool guys! They played a special concert just for us!

Here's their myspace, just saying, you should check them out  :)  

http://www.myspace.com/halfdaynation

The random Russian guys that pulled Kim into their picture, this happens a lot more than you would believe:

 Then we sadly had to come back but we were looking forward to meeting back up with our wonderful friends and cooking dinner for our wonderful tour guide Kaarel! The German girls have a gift with food, I swear. They made a chicken saute with wine and mushrooms, onions, and cream sauce that made me want to cry. So good!

And on our last day we attended church with Kaarel and made time to stop at the Kumu art museum! Which was so fantastic!!! There will be a future post on art as well, and I can't wait! I have so much art to share with you guys!!!

Haha this is Kaarel in front of his home. He didn't want to show us inside, but I'm sure it's lovely:

Fall is on it's way!

These little birds where EVERYWHERE in Tallinn! I thought it was too cute!

So there you have it! Estonia and Finland in a weekend. It was wonderful and I cannot wait to go somewhere else next! Feeling super blessed and loved here, Europe is like a warm jacket you can just wrap around you. Tons more blog posts to come soon!  :) Seriously, tons!

As usual a song and a quote!

This band Franci recommended to them, they are called Hundreds and Thousands. Maybe they are German? We aren't sure...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb0HGvEWIJc

And a quote that has been on my heart lately:

"Dance like no one is watching, sing like no one is listening, love like you've never been hurt, and live like it's heaven on earth." -- Mark Twain

Viso gero for now!  <3 Sarah

I will be passionate...insert winky face here

Laba Diena to all my far away friends! Well, as usual tons and tons of stuff has happened since I last updated you. It's funny because I think my dear roommate Kim, who hates the internet with a fiery passion, has updated her blog more than I have. To blame something on my lack of updating, I think I'll blame my project 365 I have going on Facebook, it takes years to add all those captions! But, I must say it's top-notch! So since I am not above spineless self-advertising, check it out! Plus, I add photos of Lithuania to that project more than I do on this blog. Or maybe I should blame the fact that I am in freaking Lithuania!!


So I wanted brag about all the Lithuanian we've been learning! I can officially count to 10, impressive, I know. Ahem: vienas, du, trys, keturi, penki, šeši, septyni, aštuoni, devyni, dešimt. Thank you! Thank you! You can hold your applause. 


Russian is a whole other story though. That was a bad day. The teacher just started speaking Russian to us and throw us into writing and thinking of words in Russian. I almost started crying when she had us the sheet with the alphabet. H's are N's and Y's are O's and all kinds of other stuff! I am just so used to speaking with the Latin alphabet that I could generally understand what an Italian or Spainard or French person would say to me just based off the similarities that exist in Latin based languages. But honestly I am almost embarrassed now that I was never forced to learn another language like many Lithuanians were (or all Europeans really)  while growing up. I think it's so impressive when I met people my age that can speak 8 different languages. I cannot tell you how frustrated I get sometimes when I can not communicate with a person because I know only English and they only know Lithuanian or Russian. It drives me nuts!


But it's been incredibly fun getting to know Siauliai and all the Erasmus kids. We are all worlds different from each other but I think this is more of a strength than a weakness. It's been fun just having conversations with everyone about our countries. And it makes my anthropological and historical soul float on cloud nine when I learn something about a culture or country that I never knew before. Me, in all my nerdiness, has totally geeked out on anyone willing to share anything about their culture. It's almost embarrassing...almost. 


Like today, my friend Dora, Franci, and I went to go get coffee together and talk about our presentations we would do for our Language in Multicultural Contexts class. We all have it together, so we would figure that we would try to be on the same page and do the presentation the same way. This was to prevent any over-achievers (me basically) from doing a whole powerpoint presentation. The conversation we had started out as a discussion on the different languages present in our countries ending up as a discussion on the impression of Nazi German historic past in different European countries. It blows my mind how much I am learning from my European friends. It is changing how I see the world and I am so glad that they are open enough to talk to me about everything. Day by day I feel my eyes being opened to a world I was never told about. And the funny thing is, it was never a secret. It's just Europeans living real life for themselves and it just takes asking a question to understand what they feel, think and live. 


And it's not all serious either, I've laughed so much here that I'm going to live forever (apparently, that's what all the Erasmus kids tell me). Take for instance the infamous "Freshman Christening" that Kim and I blindly decided to join in on. After three hours of having eggs chucked at us, running for our lives, crawling through mud, stripping, being covered in flour and ketchup, stripping again, shivering in a freezing cold lake, and swearing our souls away to Siauliai University I think we have officially become LITHUANIAN. If that isn't legit enough for everyone, I don't know what is. We were the first Erasmus kids to ever do the christening. It feels good to know we will go down in Siauliai University history.


So here are some lovely pictures for you and as always a song to accompany it. I've heard this song here more times than I can believe, but I sorta kinda love it to death (it's a guilty pleasure):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEPTlhBmwRg&ob=av3n


"I've got this moment
and no idea when it will end,
but every second of this life
is scripture." --Andrea Gibson

Some of the Erasmus kids at the Golden Archer

Yes, I can walk on water. :)

My love for street art will never die!

That's all of us! (Kinda. We are still missing a few.)

Americans supporting our German heritage! DEUTSCHLAND!

Kurtuvenai

My friend Pauli-D took a picture of crap. Boys.

Educating our friends about American cuisine in all the best of ways, with jell-o shots.

The gnarly cut I got from the Freshman Christening  :(  Hello STAFF infection

Pizza Party in the hall!

Finally! Made it to the hill of crosses!

Until next time my loves! Going to Estonian for the weekend, so hopefully my next post will be very soon and about details from the trip! With all my love!  Capa (That's my name in Russian) 

I love lists!

Labas friends! Oh my, so much has happened since I last spoke with you! I have this long exhaustive list of things I wanted to blog about to you but as it’s getting longer and longer, the less and less I wanted to write all of it. So I am going to do a condensed version in the form of a list! Pictures to follow!

·         Finally arrived to Lithuania, it was 1 am, we were exhausted, and our friend Renata is fabulous.

·         First meal in Lithuania- Italian?

·         Explored the city ALLLLL by ourselves!

·       Saw a museum without even realizing it, a Defense Tower

·         Bought a scarf (…I NEEDED it!)

·         Had some very traditional food- cepelinis and gira, both are very good! Don’t know what that is? Think potatoes, potatoes, potatoes.

·         Also, our friend Radvile is also very, very fabulous!

·         Went to see a castle on a lake!

·         Met a very brave Canadian.

·         Found out that banana and Nutella is a favorite Lithuanian dessert combo.

·         Did a little sight-seeing tour in Vilnius

·         Went to the National Art Gallery- saw work by Blatas and many other Lithuanian artists. I loved this so much I still might devote another blog post on it.

·         Attend a church service that was in Lithuanian, some of it was translated.

·         Had my first Lithuanian beer- Svytury’s Baltas- it was delicious. (Oh! This reminds me, Lithuanians do their quotations so weird! ,,I’m Lithuanian!” First time I saw this I thought it was a mistake on a sign)

·         Ate LOTS of crepes- Ham and cheese, Apple and of course Banana and Nutella!

·         Rode on a train with a crazy Ukrainian who asked- “Can I have your number??”

·         Arrived in Siauliai!!

·         Went shopping almost immediately and found out that Lithuanian stores are very different (they don’t have brown sugar?!)

·         Met a lot of Erasmus kids! They represent tons of different countries, let me break it down for you- 4 Italians, 2 Hungarians, 3 Germans, 3 Frenchmen, 5 Turks, 3 Koreans, 1 Spaniard, 1 Czech, 1 Slovak, tons of Latvians (I’ve lost count of them!) and 2 Americans! And there are more to come!

·         Joined in on a world record! We had to bounce a basketball for 5 minutes, and people from all over Lithuanian were doing it too at the same time. Got a free basketball out of it! Even though it was pouring freezing rain we all had fun.

·         Found a second-hand (or thrift store- no one in Europe calls them that) shop!

·         Went to a huge mall called the Akropolis (twice in one day) to go to the Lithuanian equivalent of Wal-Mart, Maxima (XXX!! How many Xs are in the name tell you how big it is, this Maxima is the biggest one) and to go ice-skating. I was attached to the side of the wall and freaking out. Ugh.

·         Pizza here just ain’t right.

·         Discovered that European clothes are depressingly different sizes. It should not take a person THREE hours to find a bra that fits!!! (sorry if that was TMI) But come ON!

·         Did I mention how much Lithuanians are into basketball? Something called the Eurobasket is going on right now and people are going NUTS! Lithuania has a really good team and I’ve watched so much basketball now my eyes are bleeding. Google it, silly Americans, Google Eurobasket and you will see.

·         Danced the night away! Americans grind, Europeans like their personal space. It’s hilarious!

·         Had a fun impromptu game day in our room!

·         Coffee just ain’t right here either! I cried a little over this. But I just found a coffee shop that has a pretty decent Almond Latte. Margie’s, I took advantage of you and now I want you back…please??

·         Walked around a market on the Pedestrian Street. Found lots and lots of souvenirs!  J

·         Had a much better clothes shopping experience!

 

·         Was in a parade! Woohoo!

·         Danced the night away again (I’m not going out tonight, my feet are going to fall off! How do Europeans do that everynight??)

So that’s just a little bit of all the things that have been going on! It’s been incredible here and I am having so much fun! Miss everyone so very much though. Today’s goal is to find the post office, send off a few postcards, find out my address, drink more coffee, and hold a game night in our room! Classes start soon, Monday I think! I’ll have more adventures to tell you soon!

"The glow of inspiration warms us; it is a holy rapture."--Ovid

A song which I think is perfect for this adventure!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZhQOvvV45w

Also, they don't have dryers here...I think I miss that the most out of everything!!