I Made It to Lietuva

I made it. Not too many stories about the plane ride. I do suggest flying KLM though if you ever go to Europe. Sure, everybody on the plane speaks Dutch and broken English, but the service on the plane is fantastic. You can pick your own movies to watch, I watched King's Speech for the first time. The food isn't all that bad either. The Amsterdam airport is nice too. You know it's a classy airport when there's a casino, Ralph Lauren store, a section for smoking cigars, not cigarrettes, and there's an 'invite only' lounge.

Once on the plane to Lietuva from Amsterdam, I decided to play a game. I'm going to see how many people won't recognize I'm from the United States. So far, I'm doing okay. The first guy on the plane read me like a book. The lady at the baggage claim (yea, my luggage was left behind in Amsterdam), asked where in Lietuva I lived, I smiled. I think I'm at 2-3 right now, 3 being people who knew I'm American immediately. After dealing with the baggage claim fiasco, I found my Godfather who I haven't seen in I think over a decade. We went out to lunch and it was fun.
Afterward, we went to Sv. Kazimiero to drop me off. The sight immediately put a smile on my face, it is nice. We met Kun. Simkunas, the priest who gave me the room at Sv. Kazimiero. He's a younger priest and seems really cool. After unlocking about 5 doors and an elevator, we made it to the top floor where the students at the Vilnius Jesuit High School stay. He opened my room, apologized, and gave me the key. It is a quality room. There's a window where if I were the average height of a male Lithuanian, I could see the skyline of senamiestis, the old part of Vilnius. I had to stand on a chair to look out. The bed is nice, there's wood floors with a nice carpet, a desk, a bookshelf, and it's fairly large. He simply apologized I have to walk down the hall to share a bathroom and a TV room with 2 other students. Typical Lithuanian. Basically, I'm excited to stay there. I also met Kunigas Saulaitis and Kunigas Vidmas? on the way out. Kunigas Kijauskas is apparently in Chicago replacing Saulaitis for a little bit according to Kunigas Simkunas.
Even though I have a bit of jetlag, I decided to go out for a walk. Hey, it's hot here and I'm in a fairytale land, so why not? I walked the path I needed to take to get to Senior Experience, and I think I took the long way, but I did not notice any time go by. I passed up the Cathedral where St. Casimir is buried, the main shopping street, and some of the oldest buildings in Vilnius. Most of the streets are difficult to get to by car, so many people just walked in the middle of the stone streets. For dinner, I went to the famous 'Cili Pica'. It was good, and I think the legend will live on in the States. I then went in search for an internet cafe. After asking several really nice people, I finally walked several blocks to the internet cafe that is about half a mile from my senior experience. For all of you late-night skypers, I have skype and I actually have a camera too.

It's fun being here and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow when I actually start doing things with p. Simenas and I meet some of my room-mates.

Sorry there are no pictures, I somehow left the chord in my room several miles away, so all the nice pictures will most likely go up for tomorrow's post. The pictures were going to be my 'fun post of the day', but since I can't think of anything else, here's another really popular song that's traditionally sung. It may have come from Russia originally, but it doesn't matter, Russians are allowed to make good music. This version is sung by Andrius Mamantovas, a huge Lithuanian star.