Summary

This may be lengthy, but I'll try to split it into the experience in Lithuania vs. the experience in Seimas.

Lithuania:
The people in Lithuania are culturally different from the people in the United States. In many ways, I felt like it was in a good way too. There was really only one thing I would question in Lithuania: Some of the service is a bit rude in restaurants, but only if you're not willing to admit you're from a different country. Once I said 'I'm from America, I'm a bit clueless', the quality of service dramatically increased. Otherwise, I have no complaints about Lithuania, and the 'complaint' I do have is no big deal.
The biggest difference I noticed between Lithuanians and Americans is the level of hospitality. In Lithuania, it seemed like the duty of every person to make me feel as comfortable as possible. Almost all the time, this duty did make me feel more comfortable. There is the traditional persistance of offering more food, even though I've eaten too much, but that was expected. Another sense of hospitality I felt was the incredible ability of small talk. Nobody here talks about the weather to start off conversations, but there is always a long list of things to talk about. One of the first days here, I was with Linas and Tomas. Even though I still wasn't comfortable with my new surroundings, they were able to make small talk with me for a long time. My sentences were short, the grammar might have been a bit off, but we were still able to consistently talk for a long period of time. I noticed that with every family I visited.
Maturity: I feel like in Lithuania, people mature faster. The hospitality was felt not just from adults, but also from people my age. People my aged seemed to be more cultured too. Here, people also listen to classical music, go to 'modern concerts' and classical concerts, and some of my friends here even go to plays and operas by themselves.
Handshake: Everybody here greets with a handshake, young and old. I've gotten lots of practise here and I'm eager to show off my new-found skill in the United States.
Phones: I don't think Lithuanians have  gotten used to the fact that they have phones yet. Every call is picked up, phones are never on vibrate, and nobody texts. What many people here have done to try to conceal the fact that they're talking on their phones is covering their mouth with their hand and making a 'channel' from their mouths to their phones so they can talk while nobody else will notice. It's basically the same thing here with phones as it is in America, only Americans text.
Pride: It seems like everybody here wants to show off what they have to me. P. Rita, the one that works for p. Simenas, wants to show off Seimas. This is Lithuania's government, and this is the product of an independant Lithuania, that's what p. Rita wanted to show me. The other p. Rita, the one that brought me to the dvaras, invited me to her apartment last night. She was full of pride for her kids and her apartment. When I was with the Jakaitis family, they showed off their home they're building in the country, their apartment, their kids, and even the artwork that Mrs. Jakaitis painted. Overall, I think that this is an effect of still being a post-Soviet era country. Under the Soviet Union, there wasn't much freedom to have your own property, government, or even control over your own life. Now, with that freedom, everybody wants to show me, a westerner, how they are able to thrive in a free environment.
The West: It may be propaganda, it may be the truth, but many people in Lithuania look in awe at the west. The west includes Western Europe and the United States. Part of it I'm sure is economic and the greater ability to make more money in the west. According to the Department of State website, the average monthly earning was $832 per month. I'm pretty sure that is in Litai. That means that in a year, the average Lithuanian would earn around 10,000 litai. Not too many families are well above that average. Most of the families I talked to weren't afraid to tell me how much they earn, and 10,000 litai a year is normal. Life is difficult for those earnings. One girl I met is a chef at a Pizza Hut in England. She earns about the same as an American Pizza Hut chef, which to American standards isn't much, but she can live. That may be another reason many people love the west.

Politics:
The first modern Lithuanian government lasted  18 years. Of course, there were extraordinary events such as WWII that were beyond the control of Lithuania, but it was still 18 years. The Lithuanian government right now is 20 years old. I know I do not understand everything, but I do know there is a presence from the East that is heavy in Lithuania's government. I just hope that the government is not too weak to stand up to this presence. This apparent weakness is what bothers me most about Seimas. Although I have not witnessed it directly, I've been told that whenever there is a small protest, Seimas immediately votes with the protestors, even if it isn't in the best interest of the country. I've been told many nariai take bribes for proposals, and that is another weakness I am afraid of. There is also the economic weakness and dependance on foreign energy I mentioned earlier. While this may sound isignificant at first, we must remember all those that fought or died for an independant Lithuania, for a government run by Lithuanians, and this Seimas is one of the organizations people fought and died for.
Effects of the weakness: Many people are leaving Lithuania to go west. Since independance the population dropped from 3.7 million to 3.05 million. If this continues consistantly as it has since independence, I am afraid there won't be a Lithuania. If everybody is gone, and say Russia decides to come play with the world again, who will fight in Lithuania for Lithuania? Is Seimas really too weak to deal with that problem of emigration? There is hope and there are strong leaders within Seimas, but I feel like they are young and in the minority. There is too much of a force against these leaders that recognize the major problems in Lithuania.

Conclusion: I want to go into politics.

You Have 30 Minutes To Save Lithuania

This morning I knew it would be the last full day with p. Simenas. Tomorrow he leaves for the port city of Klaipeda. Therefore, we planned 30 minutes for us to review the last two weeks. This morning, I was dreaming that I would inspire him in those 30 minutes to stand up for the Lithuanian people and to reform Seimas, therefore saving Lithuania. Of course, none of this will happen because the interview did not happen as planned. I'm still keeping the title because that was today's plan.

I feel better about Seimas after today. I did not feel good about Seimas until about noon when I was approached by Kristina, one of the secretaries. We talked about Seimas as a whole and my thoughts, which sshe agreed with some, then after a while she brought up one of her projects. It is nothing significant, just a piece of legislation that will provide rules for building homes that will house more than two families. Today, this project which she had worked hard on was going to be voted on. She got a call saying there will be a meeting about some of the specifics at 2 and that there was going to be a vote at 3 allowing her to move on with the legislation. At the meeting, she kept everyone straight, and kept making sure everyone stayed on topic. At Seimas, most politicians say what they want to say, but she kept things straightforward. She got more done in that meeting than most meetings I was in. During the vote, I could tell that every single narys that was under the age of 35 helped Kristina with her legislation. By the way, I'm pretty sure Kristina is in her mid-twenties. While the legislation was not that important, I was proud to see all the youth on all parts of the aisle working together for this one piece of legislation. There was a bit of celebration from the "youth" after the vote passed 77 yay, 0 nay, and 6 'i don't know'. This gave me hope that when these members are older and in control of Seimas, Seimas will be better.

Then I had the interview with p. Simenas. I brought up the fact that 350,000 Lithuanians moved out of Lithuania in the last 10 years, and 60% of high school seniors are going to college outside of Lithuania. I told him that I've been told that Seimas is being blamed. He said the issue is completely economic. Seimas has no money, and a lot of money is being given out for energy to foreign countries. If Lithuania could provide energy and make money from energy, there would be more jobs and more money for better education. I see where p. Simenas is coming from, but there was one issue I brought up: it would cost 14 billion Litai to purchase new energy, and the new energy will provide 19 billion litai. This sounds great, but it would take atleast 10 years not reach that point. In my opinion, that's another 300,000 lost Lithuanians. (1990-2001, 300,000 Lithuanians emigrated). Tomorrow will be a summary of the impressions of the last two weeks, and without hurting anyone's feelings, I will try to be as honest as possible without leaving out too many details.

Politics the Way It Should Be

Today, it felt like politics was carried out the way I believe the American Founding Fathers believed it should be done. Today involved a real marathon of meetings within the environmental protection committee. In all of the meetings, there was real discussion, disagreement, progress, and even laughter. First there were discussions about beuracratic rules, the final ruling on the CO2 discussion, and even the foresters' proposal was brought up. After two hours of meetings, there was a quick lunch break and another meeting. Naturally, everyone showed up late, except for one person who is part of an anti-corruption federation. I talked with him and I have more hope for Lithuania's government. Yes, it is recognized that there is wide-spread corruption, but there is a system in place to deal with it.

I feel better about the Lithuanian government now, but I still have many concerns.

Yesterday I had dinner with the Jesuits at the house. All were really nice and pretty funny. Also, I forgot to mention that two days ago there was a soccer game among the people staying at Sv. Kazimiero. The game was fun, but the soccer players in Lithuania are no Ecuadorians.

Also in the news: Germany closed two of its' airports because of the volcano in Iceland, but it seems like the ash cloud is becoming smaller and won't affect my flight too much.

It's European Politics

After entering yesterday's blog entry, I went to a meeting about CO2 capture and sequestration, only this time companies that have an interest in winning the contest were there. By being the first to respond to the official contest announcement, a company has the right to bury CO2 collected from Lithuanian factories, and bury it in the ground. At the meeting, a man from the deep south from U.S.A. was there. He is the CEO of an oil company in Lithuania. He provided an incredibly clear argument stating the costs, effects, and benefits of him winning the contest. The Environmental Protection committee listened to his arguments, but there were members from other companies that kept arguing the points and they were hard to follow. Afterward, I talked to this man, and he basically has no hope or faith in Lithuania's government. I've been thinking a lot about what he said because he wasn't far off the truth. I would rather not say exactly what he said on this blog.

This morning I learned that European politics is different from American politics. At first I read the following article from the 'Economist'. It talks about how Americans hope their politicians are perfect while Europeans are more forgiving.
economist article
After reading the article, I asked p. Lygis, another person working for p. Simenas, what he thought of the phrase "Seimo nariai will not be touched by the law". He completely disagrees because he says people become nariai and do whatever they want for the four years they are nariai. Then I asked p. Simenas, and he believes that court cases can distract a politician, especially if the politician is innocent, which has happened before. I respectfully disagree, but that is the kind of seimas that exists in Lithuania. There are many nariai, and I don't believe p. Simenas is one of them, that are doing many illegal actions, but they can't be touched by the law.

Next was the general meeting with all the nariai. Minimum wage was not increased from 700 litai a month to 1000 litai a month, and social security will be voted on a later date. At the end of the meeting, there were discussions about alcohol advertising. In about an hour, there will be a vote as to whether or not alcohol can be advertised during the day. There was a group of activists who showed up in favor of the bill, meaning they don't want alcohol to be advertised during the day.

Weekend in Siauliai

The weekend started off with a trip to Kaunas on Friday seeing the same family having a good time in the medieval festival. According to the commercials, it was the 'biggest event in Kaunas' history'. Interesting how an event commemorating history is the most significant event in history. Either way, Eimantas and I were kind of bored, so we went home and hung out.
The next day, I took a bus to Siauliai to hang out with Domas Dielautas. His mom and my mom were good friends from the time our family used to live in Lithuania 15 years ago. We hung out with his neighbor, Domas, in Akropolis, one of the shopping malls in Lithuania. We originally were looking for something to do since we were going to go to nature with a bunch of his friends, but they bailed. Then he got a call inviting us to participate in an old Lithuanian wedding tradition where there are distant friends who block the road to the after-party and require pay for the bride and bridesmaids to go through. There was a whole series of traditions with that, and it was really fun. Then we went to a birthday party for one on Domas' friends that was really fun. These were all seniors and the house big and on a lake. Eventually we did go home and went to sleep.

The next day involved touring the countryside and visiting the famous Hill of Crosses. It is basically one hill of over 50,000 crosses, but it seems like more. In America, we always hear about this place, but it was interesting actually being there. Then I had my 5,000 calorie meal of 2 cepelinai in a restaurant nearby. I'm still full, and it was absolutely delicious. I wanted to stay in Siauliai, but alas, I had to go back to Vilnius.

Of course, it's raining today for the 2nd Monday in a row. Since officially, Mondays are meant for officials to visit their districts, and Simenas doesn't represent a district, I did nothing today, and neither did p. Simenas. I read many newspapers and I think I know everything that's going on in England, Lithuania, and the United States. The only thing that's happening is that a volcano erupted in Iceland. Hopefully I'll make it to graduation, but we'll see. Maybe nothing will happen, or maybe I'll have a fun adventure traveling around the volcano to make it to graduation.

Note: Whenever I say Parliamentary officials, I don't think this is the actual Parliament in Lithuania. There is a separate division in the government that officially calls itself 'Parliament', but it has little power or infuence compared to 'Seimas'. From now on, since there is no good American translation, I'll start saying 'Seimo nariai' instead of 'Parliamentary officials' to keep the truth. When I received the explanation of the Lithuanian government last week, that is where the 'mistake' came about in calling the nariai "Parliamentary officials". Sorry.

Fridays are Fun

I enjoy coming to Seimas, but today was a different day. Everybody is in a good mood which is really weird, but it works. This morning there was a committee meeting with just p. Simenas and another loyal committee member who usually has disputes with p. Simenas. Today, there was debate, but it was all respectful. The debate involved who should run a certain project in an area, the local government or the regional government. Then I left to go to an informative meeting about going green. At first, I go downstairs with p. Simenas and some of his staff, but in order to get to the room, I have to go through security. For p. Simenas and crew, they had i.d.s that let them through security and I had to wait until I was free to go. By the time I passed, the whole crew was out of sight. I thought they drove to the conference, so I went outside, but they weren't there. I thought they had already left without me, just like last night. Last night, there was a memorial, and I arrived one minute before they told me to arrive, but they had already left. I hung out with Jaunius and family instead which I would have preferred anyway. So after I felt abandoned again, I go back through security back to my room. I come back, and to my pleasent surprise, p. Rita did not leave for Luxemborg yet. Her plane leaves tomorrow. She knew where the conference was and apparently it was downstairs right next to where I was searching for p. Simenas. The conference was about the green movment. Next week is 'green week' in Europe.

It was about all the latest technology used to save energy, but most of it sounded like a broken record from all the environmental things I hear back home, but here all the suggestions were a bit more realistic since Lithuania already started going green.

Yesterday when I was with Jaunius and family, we rode bikes around Vilnius to finish off the day. At the end, he offered me a bike for the week since he knows how far I walk. Getting a bike here is the same feeling as you get a bike in Pokemon Sapphire or Ruby and suddenly you are able to get anywhere. I cut off half my time getting to work and worked half as hard. The bike was an incredibly 'present'.

Tonight I'm going to Kaunas and for the weekend I'm going to Sauliai. I won't be by any computer until Monday.

First Picture!

This is outside the internet cafe nothing exciting, but it is proof that I have a camera.