Too many events for one title

Last night was the Zalgiris-Lietuvos Rytas game. The basketball itself wasn't the best. The level of play was similar to something seen during a decent March Madness game. My explanation: It's similar to the Brazilian League for soccer. They're not very good, but the good players leave the country. In Lithuania, most of the good players play in Spain. The crowd was incredible. There are many basketball schools in Lithuania, and the Vilnius basketball team (Lietuvos rytas) made something of a student-section. There was a completely other Vilnius section in another part of the stadium. That section was filled with about 7 bass drums that never stopped. There was also a Kaunas section. None of the three sections stopped singing, dancing, screaming, and cheering the entire game. The crowd was incredibly entertaining. Zalgiris won, so no the series is 3-1 Zalgiris, and it's first to 4.

Today I show up and work and realized today would completely be different from yesterday. Within half an hour of my arrival, there was a meeting with around 40 Swedish college students studying to be environmental scientists. Since p. Simenas is the head of the environmental protection committee, he headed the meeting and brought me along. It was interesting listening in. First of all, it felt good to be one of 3 people fluent in english and lithuanian in the room. Then, the discussions were interesting to hear facts. Lithuania recently shut down a nuclear power plant that relied on having the necessary ingredients from Russia. Now Lithuania wants a new one, but p. Simenas and friends are against it while most of Parliament is for the idea. It was also interesting to find out how genetically engineered plants are an incredible problem economically and for the environment. I'm going to have to do my research because I never knew it was a major problem.

Next was a a Parliamentary meeting with all the officials, even though only around 100 showed up out of 141. First up was the head of Parliament from Germany. He talked about how energy policy throughout Europe needs to be the same and how all European countries must work together to reduce energy consumption by 20% by 2020. Up next was p. Simenas. He is headed the proposal to allow houses to be built in the woods. This issue is incredibly controversial in Lithuania. Many people don't want the woods to become privatized by people building houses in them. There's also the worry that Lithuania's treasured woods would be ruined. During the discussion, I realized who was instigated these arguments, the Lithuanian Socialist Party, the ex-communists or the kids of communists. Since they were trying to shut down the proposal, I started to like the proposal. After 40 minutes of voting about specific phrases in the proposal, it was time to vote for the entire proposal. It passed. Afterward, some of the socialists showed how upset they were by screaming and saying all these crazy things about p. Simenas. Most people, including me, found it quite entertaining. The rest of the meeting was fairly boring, but the main topic was social security. The socialists felt a policy had to be set in stone today, but everyone else held them back. By the way, the socialists here are actual socialists, not the 'socialists' in American who are slightly more liberal than their conservative counter-parts.

Tonight I'm probably going to meet someone up since my schedule is quickly being filled up.

Fun post of the day:

The mascot for Vilnius Lietuvos Rytas. The most flexible mascot i've seen. I think it can do the splits in that suit