Final Day of Introduction

"How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?" -Ernesto Che Guevara from the Motorcycle Diaries.

That is exactly how I feel right now. There have always been the nights before the event, whether that's planning for the first day of school when you see all your friends again, or whether you're lacking for a camp to see friends you've only seen months before, but this is different. I know absolutely nobody in Lithuania. Of course, I have a connection to my Godfather who's picking me up from the airport, I sent e-mails to a few people, and there's a few kids my age who I haven't seen in a decade during my First Communion trip to Lithuania. Yet, I haven't felt this kind of excitement to go to a place before. These are my ancestral grounds. Even though all my friends are here in the United States, I feel like I'm coming home.

Some key points about Lithuanian culture: Many of us Lithuanian-Americans are proud Lithuanians, and many native Lithuanians who have visited the United States are proud Lithuanians. If I started to describe how we all react during Lithuanian basketball games against the United States, I may start losing friends, so I'll let your imaginations run wild. Some of the cultural involvements include our "tautines", or our cultural clothes. Here's an example:

Many Lithuanians do traditional dances, and I also use to dance before I joined Stage Band. Many Lithuanians are also phenominal singers. Every couple years some city in North America hosts either a dance festival or a song festival. Either several hundred Lithuanians dance, or several hundred Lithuanians sing in a giant choir. Festivites occur afterward. Sadly, I missed the gene for being good at basketball and being able to sing.

There are a lot more cultural aspects most of us Lithuanian-Americans know pretty well and many of us went to school every Saturday morning through 8th grade to learn it all. I feel like I almost covered the incredibly basics to Lithuanian culture, and I may give some more lessons later in the blog if it is necessary. The language is cool too. Native Lithuanians have an incredible talent in Lithuanian. The Lituanian they speak is poetic and onomotopeic, and I'm not talented at all. Here's my attempt at it, Lithuanians, don't pay attention to what I say, nobody else in the room understood it. Lithuanian tutorial

Here's some better Lithuanian, as sung in the Lithuanian National Anthem.