Liux

Emilija writing...

After a pretty boring weekend, we woke up and got ready to start another week with the kids. Because the president is coming to Zemaiciu Kalvarija tomorrow, we weren't allowed to go into the center because they were cleaning it. Instead of playing games with the kids inside, we were told to hang out with them outside. 

We went to their school's stadium and played soccer for about an hour. After that, we had a picnic outside on the top of a very windy hill. We ate some bread, sausage, cookies, and tomatoes, along with some orange juice. Even though it was a simple lunch, it was very filling.

We then played basketball on half of a court (the other half was taken up by a local flea market) and some local kids joined us in 

our game. After getting our butts kicked by some 10 year olds, we decided it was time to start playing dodgeball. Ohh wait...we got out butts kicked in that game too :( When we first saw them, they looked tiny and innocent, but once they started whipping the ball at us, we quickly changed our minds. We switched between basketball and dodgeball until it was time for the kids to go home. As al

ways, the local kids walked us home.

When we got home, we went to the grocery store and bought ingredients for our delicious and very cheap dinner. It cost us only about $1.50 each!! We bought 2 carrots, one tomato, garlic, an onion, and some rice. It was phenomenal (even our host family liked it!). Even though I spilled some (maybe it was a little more than some..) unground black peppers into the pan, it still tasted pretty good. Because it was our first time making our own real dinner, we're still thinking of ways to make it even tastier. 

Our host family also asked us to make them an American meal. Our thoughts so far include onion rings, hamburgers, chicken parmesan, and brownies for dessert. If you have any suggestions, please let us know. We would really appreciate it. Just keep in mind that our supplies here are really limited and we can't make a lot of traditional American dishes.

Our host mom teaches an English class at the local school and invited us to come to her class on one condition: we can only speak English to the students. It's going to feel really weird because we try to speak Lithuanian amongst ourselves, and we don't speak English to anyone else here. Even though we're kind of nervous, we're excited to meet some people our age!

We need to get some sleep because we have a big day tomorrow: speaking to some kids AND possibly meeting the president of Lithuania!!