A Very Lithuanian Christmas

After an amazing ten days at home for an early Christmas with my family, I headed back to Poland to spend my first Christmas with D. When we got home from the airport, he surprised me  with a huge Christmas tree in our living room. Anyone who remembers my experience last year trying to find a Christmas tree over 2 feet tall in Lithuania knows how frustrated I was. Growing up, my family was known for having the biggest tree with an obnoxious amount of lights and I had been so accustomed to this that it was painful for me last year to claim the bush-shaped-two-footer as my own.  Somehow D was able to find a nice 8' tree for us and managed to get it up four flights of stairs into our apartment. It was really sweet and his lighting job was pretty much the cutest thing I've ever seen (see below).

He had to cut a good foot off the top of her to get her to fit :)

D ended up getting a few days off so we were excited to be able to go to his parents house in Lithuania for the Holidays. Between travel times to the airport from our house and theirs, it's actually quicker to drive so we got in the car for a long 8 hour trip. Our Google Maps lead us to take a rather unconventional route and I would estimate that I felt either: a) scared for my life, b) like we were driving on a road made of the spikey things used to enter rental car lots or c) that we were very, very lost for 7 hours and 45 minutes of the journey. Some of the small towns we stopped in even had me questioning whether or not I went back in time 100 or so years and didn't know it. 

Anyways, somehow we made it to D's parents house in one piece and we began prepping for the Christmas celebrations. My sister-in-law arrived the following day and informed us she had invited her French friend to spend Christmas with us as well since he was in Lithuania alone for the holidays. I couldn't have been more excited to have another English speaker in the house and someone who was even more oblivious to Lithuanian Christmas traditions than I. 

If you are unfamiliar with Lithuanians, it is imperative you know how much they cherish their traditions. This is one of the things that I love most about Lithuanian culture. Our Wedding Rehearsal Dinner was full of these traditions which my friends and family all loved being a part of. Christmas is no exception and I was in for a big treat. D's mom, sister and I spent all day Christmas Eve preparing dinner. Lithuanians do not eat meat or dairy on Christmas Eve, an old Catholic tradition I think the majority of other countries don't follow any more. On Christmas Eve you must try 12 different dishes , most made of herring or other fish. The 12 dishes represent the 12 Apostles and it's considered bad luck to not try a little of each. Before setting the table, D's sister spread hay around the edges symbolizing the hay from Jesus' manger. She then covered the hay with a table cloth and at the end of the meal, everyone was instructed to reach underneath and grab a piece of hay. The size of your hay represents how long/short/stable/fragile your life will be. Lucky for me, I had the longest piece at the table :) 

The hay being placed under the table cloth

Some of the 12 dishes

Before the meal, D's grandfather blessed our dinner and cracked a large piece of communion bread at the head of the table. Each person had to crack their own piece off then pass their piece on to their neighbor. You had to eat a piece off of everyone's wafer at the table. I thought this was interesting and I recalled the last time I did this sort of thing out of Church was when my brother played Priest and we practiced for my First Communion with sandwich bread at home. My mind then wondered to "where does one purchase communion bread" and my thought train was cut short when we began sharing wishes for one another around the table. FYI- if you ever find yourself going attending a Lithuanian meal, know for sure you will be required to make some sort of a speech. Luckily, D always has to translate mine so if it's bad they ill probably just think something got lost in translation..

On the table sat a pitcher of a pink-colored drink which I was hoping would either taste like Kool-Aid or Sangria. I took a big gulp of it only to realize I was drinking a thinner type of jello. Had I have been prepared for the drink's consistency, I don't think I would've been so taken back but lets just say I would've preferred Sangria...Speaking of Sangria, I was happy to notice the absence of shot glasses and vodka bottles on the table for Christmas Eve. Apparently wine is all that is drank on this day and I was pretty grateful I wouldn't be speaking the universal language of vodka with D's grandparents that evening. 

After dinner we played some interesting games, each of which told you something about your future and your luck for the coming year. Christmas Eve in Lithuania is a holiday full of magic and kids are taught that animals can speak on this day (in my mind animals speak every day so I was pretty down with this tradition). The night is also filled with all sorts of superstitions like you cannot sit at the corner of the table or you will be single for 7 years, and single people should hug a fence and the amount of fence posts they touch will determine if they will stay single that year (even= you'll meet someone, odd= shit outta luck). 

When our games were over, we headed to the local church for Mass. Now I know how crowded American churches are on Christmas but believe me when I say I have never in my life seen anything like this. We arrived early enough to get a seat and within minutes the entire Church was packed. People were standing down on the sides, down the aisle and even outside of the Church. The woman next to me was practically sitting on my lap and I thought for sure I was going to have a claustrophobic fit in the middle of Christmas Mass. I couldn't even make eye contact with D without completely losing it. D's best friend Lukas was in the back of the church and we told him to take a picture for me to show you all of how crowded it was. Not only did he forget to turn the flash and sound off while taking pictures during the opening hymnals, the pictures didn't even really come out. The peaceful mass was followed by a mass exit of everyone out of the Church. The way people were plowing each other down a few minutes after praising God reminded me of Americans on Black Friday, acting like lunatics one day after giving thanks for everything they have. The Church was beautiful and it was a neat experience, but for fear of me passing out from anxiety, I think I'll try to live stream the service next year.

After Mass

On Christmas Day we woke up and exchanged gifts. I got some really special things including a hand-knitted scarf made by mother-in-law. We then got back in the kitchen to prep an early dinner for the night. D's mom roasted two ducks and we had an amazing meal with his whole family. By the grace of God I was somehow spared a shot glass at the table and couldn't have been happier to see that the Frenchman was D's grandfather's shot partner of choice for the evening. After dinner, D's mom played Christmas songs on the Piano while his grandparents sang and danced. It was so precious and I couldn't help feeling like I was in an actual Lithuanian Hallmark Holiday Film. 

The girls in the kitchen

The go-to potato peeler

Grandparents on Christmas

With my Lithuanian Teacher, Rentata

Deividas spent several Christmas away from his family so I felt really grateful that we could all be together for this one. Although I definitely felt a noticeable absence being away from my own family, I was happy we were able to celebrate a week earlier. I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and that 2014 is full of happiness, good health and prosperity <3

Our First Christmas <3

I Wanna Gdansk With Somebody....

Every time D gets a day off I know he secretly wishes he could spend it on the couch playing Xbox (or Nintendo as I call every gaming system ever created) or laying in bed catching up on TV shows. Of course, instead, he selflessly succumbs to my desire to travel the country and we always end up taking a road trip somewhere.

There's an area North of us on the Baltic Sea called the TriCity area. It's made up of three cities: Gdansk, Sopot and Gydnia, which are all located just a few minutes apart and sit on the coast with a population of over a million people. I've heard Gdansk is the prettiest city in Poland so naturally I've been wanting to visit. If the Polish people wanted to make any of our lives easier, they would spell it DONSK, as that is how the word is pronounced. For some reason, I can't find it in me to drop the G and continue to refer to it as "Ga-dansk", as it looks. 

Gdansk is an easy two hour car ride away from us and we spent it taking turns replacing "Gdansk" with the word "dance" in popular songs. After two hours of "I Wanna Gdansk With Somebody", "Just Gdansk", "You Make Me Feel Like Gdansk'n" and "Tiny Gdansk'er" we had finally arrived in this beautiful town.

I was in complete awe over how gorgeous this city was. It was so different than anywhere else I'd ever been before. Never in a million years would I think to visit Gdansk, Poland before moving here, but it is easily just as stunning as some of the most famous places I've been around Europe. Everyone we met was so friendly, too. There were a ton of foreigners in Gdansk and I didn't get the constant stare downs from people in the streets like I have "AMERICAN" tattooed on my face as I get when walking around our town. It was quite refreshing. After walking through Gdansk's Old Town, we got back in the car and drove to the next town over, Sopot.

Gorgeous Old Town

Sopot is a smaller, resort-style town right on the beach with a long pier for people to walk on. It's a really cute, quaint, town with a lot of cool shopping, restaurants and nightlife. Sopot is famous for this "Crooked House" built in the middle of the shopping area. I don't know much about it except that it looks cool and the guy who built it was almost certainly on mushrooms. Nonetheless, it made for a great photo op.

We had such an amazing day exploring this area and can't wait to go back. I feel so lucky that we can just jump in the car and drive to all these cool places and I can't wait for our next adventure.

In other news, I've started mentally preparing myself for Thanksgiving. It's my absolute favorite holiday and I want to make sure D's American teammates all enjoy it since they can't be with their own families. My grocery shopping experience is probably a bit different than most people at home. Sure, usually you make your list and may have to go to a few stores to find all your ingredients, but my preparation requires quite a bit more steps. First, I write down everything in English that I need. Then I translate these words into Polish, if they aren't simple enough to spot just by looking at them. It's then necessary to convert any recipes in cups/oz to ml and grams. Thankfully I don't use recipes, except when baking, because honestly I've never been too good at the math there. To really prepare myself for this shopping endeavor, I have also "google imaged" pictures of some of the products that I need that will be more difficult to find so that I'm not whipping out my iPhone in an attempt to show the grocery store person what a Pecan looks like. Here's an example of how part of my shopping list looks this year:

One of most difficult aspects of Thanksgiving Preparation is figuring out the logistics of everything. This becomes quite a bit more complicated with a European size oven the size of my childhood Easy Bake. In my fairytale mind, I had envisioned myself making friends with all the neighbors by Thanksgiving, and simply thought I could ask them to use their ovens in addition to my own.  Hey, maybe I would even invite them to attend their first Thanksgiving Dinner?In reality, I have still yet to even see any of my neighbors besides the one woman who didn't speak English and still managed to yell at me for taking my dog out behind our apartment. Somehow I'll have to make do on my own.

This week's edition of  "Is This Real Life" came when D and I walked to this coffee shop by our house. He ordered us two cappuccinos and a pastry for himself and we sat down at a table until they were ready. There were only 1-2 other people in this coffee shop at the time and after a few minutes, the barista yelled something to Deividas in which we assumed she was telling us our coffee was ready. He took the two coffees from her and told her he was still waiting on his pastry. She then went and gave him his donut and he brought the coffees to our table and we started to drink them. Moments later, the lady was at our table telling us that the drinks we were having, weren't in fact ours. I told her it was no problem, that we would drink them anyways and not to worry about. Little did I know she wasn't worried about our satisfaction, whatsoever. She continued to yell at Deividas for taking the coffees (keep in mind, she gave them to him in the first place) and then said we would have to go pay the difference as these cost more than the cappuccinos we ordered! Coming from the land of Starbucks where your drink is free if it's too hot or too cold, we were shocked. She said it wasn't her fault we didn't speak Polish and I had to take a moment to myself to do some mental meditations so I wouldn't say something I might regret. Eventually we got to a point where we laughed it off but I still couldn't believe that happened. (Side note: The overwhelming majority of Polish people have been really nice to us, customer service is just completely different than what we're accustomed to).

I will continue spending my week preparing for Thanksgiving and hopefully finding all my ingredients. The other day in the grocery store, an older woman came up to me when I was getting sweet potatoes and asked me a question (I'm assuming about the sweet potatoes because they aren't as popular here). I told her I only speak English and she giggled and gave me a hug. I'm hoping my grocery store experiences this week have a lot of those type of encounters and less of what I experienced in the coffee shop :)

Polish Pedicures and Other Weird Things...

I've yet to have a successful pedicure in Europe. In fact, I've yet to even go through with a pedicure over here without walking (or running) out before they could get started. My first attempt was in Riga, Latvia where D and I walked into a place that said "pedikuras" on the window. After trying to describe what we wanted to the receptionist, she eventually lead us down a small, narrow hallway into a 6'x6' "room" with a dentist chair and some power tools. I immediately gave D the "lets get the hell out of here" stare and the woman asked us who wanted to go first. Deividas is good at many things, but going along with me when I am lying to get out of an awkward situation, is not one of them. I whipped out my cell phone and pretended I got an emergency text and had to leave and D just gave me back a blank stare and volunteered me to go first. I told the woman I had to reschedule and made a run for it.

Since then, I guess you could say I've stayed clear of pedicures. It's the first thing I do whenever I go home and the last thing I do before I leave. I've also somewhat mastered the art of in-home pedicures  for those times in between. So, when Deividas came home from practice yesterday and told me he made us pedicure appointments, I was more than slightly concerned. 

We arrive at the spa this afternoon and are greeted at the door by two young women wearing all white medical uniforms. They lead us up the stairs and into a room cut in half by a divider. One side had your typical dentist chair, and the other, a normal American-style pedicure chair. One of the women instructed D to sit down in the dentist chair and I simultaneously exhaled a sigh of relief and stuffed my jacket over my face so they couldn't see how hard I was laughing. I walked over to my side and realized it wasn't much better. Sure the chair looked normal but the set of tools sitting next to it didn't scream "this is going to be a relaxing experience" to me. The woman began taking off my old polish and told me my feet were "beautiful,  immediately leading me to question what type of services my husband had signed me up for. I took the remote control in my hand to start my chair massage and quickly learned it was broken and that these two knobs would be stuck in my back for the remainder of this experience. It wasn't until the two women exchanged a few words in Polish, having me wonder if they were discussing my dry feet or polish choice, that I finally felt at home. 

Just imagine D in here..hehehehe

my "sanctuary"

I promise you, this really isn't a doctor's office..

So although my pedicure experience more closely resembled a trip to the doctor than a relaxing spa oasis, I walked out of there with some great looking feet. The pedicurist was an absolute doll and although she didn't speak English, I will pretend she knew exactly what she was saying when she called my feet beautiful. Of course I miss American pedicures, but to be honest, it was refreshing not to be asked if "I have boyfriend" or if "I want diamond on my nail" for once. 

Another quite interesting experience happened when Deividas was at practice last week. We live right next door to a huge church with a seminary and convent attached. I heard a loud noise coming outside so I opened my window to see what it was.  Our street is usually pretty quite so I didn't think twice about sticking my torso outside the window to see what was going on, even if I just had a sports bra on from working out. What's the worst thing that could happen when you are hanging out your window in a sports bra, you may ask? How about a Catholic Parade of over 1,000 Priests & Nuns, chanting bible verses down the street with candles...at night...in the dark. How do things like this happen to me, and always when Deividas isn't home.

Click here to watch the video of this on my Instagram

In other news, D's team has had some really unfortunate injuries so far and he has had to fill in and play starting Point Guard (he has only played Shooting Guard for the passed 6+ years) . Regardless, his team ended up winning Wednesday night and he was the leading scorer. I'm so proud of him :) 

After Wednesday's Game

My mom just sent me a huge package filled with all kinds of things including some Thanksgiving decor so I am getting ready to host Thanksgiving dinner for the Americans on the team. I'm sure it'll be interesting :) I understand Poland doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving but I wish they'd cool their jets a little when it comes to displaying Christmas decor this early. They've even started playing Christmas music in the grocery stores.  I'll continue to ignore it and pretend everyone else around here is just as excited for Thanksgiving as I am. Happy November!

Couldn't resist this beautiful sunset out our window the other night...

Halloween...Kinda

Since arriving in Poland I’ve been optimistic about the country’s feelings on Halloween celebrations based on the numerous carved pumpkins scattered throughout our city. Before leaving Vilnius, Deividas and I decided to carve pumpkins one night and put them outside our door to spread the October cheer with our neighbors. Our cleaning lady proceeded to throw them out the following day and I’m not sure if I was more offended that she thought our pumpkins looked like trash or that she thought I would leave random garbage outside in the first place. In their quick stint as decorations outside our door, our pumpkins brought many smiles to our neighbors and even more questions about why they existed. Needless to say pumpkin carving isn’t an old pastime in Lithuania.

So you can see why the frequent carved pumpkin sightings in Poland excited me. I immediately started brainstorming what I would be for Halloween and wondered what what type of candy to buy for my little Polish trick or treaters. After some research I discovered Halloween wasn’t quite as big as I thought here...or at least the version that I’m used to. In America, Halloween is synonymous with girls dressing scandalously, heavy alcohol consumption and as a result, a drastic decline in morality. In college, every girl would wear the exact same micro-dress pattern manufactured in a multitude of designs, representing everything from a “sexy cat”  to “a “seductive Starbucks barista”.

In Poland, everyone has off work on October 31st and November 1st to celebrate the Catholic Holiday “All Saints Day”. This is a rather somber holiday where they pay tribute to the dead by bringing flowers and candles to the cemeteries that hold their loved ones.  Needless to say, there were not going to be any little Polish trick or treaters to pass out candy to. Upset that I wouldn’t be dressing up or attending a Halloween Party in my usual fashion, I did the next logical thing.. made Deividas get in the car and drive me to the cemetery. Now, I must preface this by saying I meant no disrespect by this. I take cemeteries and dead people just as serious as every other Catholic, but I was genuinely intrigued by this holiday and wanted to feel like I was a part of the action. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. Outside of the cemetery there were hundreds of vendors selling every type of flower arrangement and candle imaginable. It was so beautiful. Additionally, some stands were selling what appeared to be a dozen bagel-like pastries tied together by a string (some people were walking around with these around their necks or swinging them by their hands). Still not sure the significance here, but I’ll do my research and get back to you. Against Deividas’ will, we entered the cemetery and had a look around. There must have been over 3,000 people inside just this cemetery and there were flowers and candles EVERYWHERE. It was incredible. After stating my desire to buy some flowers for the few graves sites that didn’t have any, Deividas told me I was being weird and that we should probably get going. I bought a bouquet of flowers for our house on my way out, making me the only person there walking away from the cemetery with flowers.

The grocery store selling things for All Saints Day 

Vendors outside the cemetery selling flowers

Just one small ally of the huge cemetery

The "bagels" on strings...

All Saints Day is a pretty neat holiday if you think about it. Sure, it’s a bit creepy but it’s nice to take one day out of the year to officially remember and pay tribute to those you’ve lost. I know I said my prayers for those special people of mine. 

In other news, we have finally moved into our apartment! We’ve been living in a temporary apartment until the family moved out of our new place so it feels good to be finally situated! Deividas’ dad is driving over to visit for his game on Sunday and I’m so excited to see him! 

Our New Apartment 

Exploring the park behind our house

Out our window at night

Hope everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween, All Saints Day, or whatever you celebrate :) 

Warsaw

Well, a lot has happened since my last post. We settled into our little city of Wloclawek and we've been living in a temporary apartment until we move into our place on Thursday. D had two days off this weekend (which never happens) and they just so happened to fall on our five year anniversary weekend (really, this NEVER happens) so we decided to make the two hour drive to Warsaw.

Warsaw is such an amazing city. Researching about the history of Warsaw and discovering that 90% of the city had been demolished during WWII, I kept reading people's opinions that it isn't a particularly beautiful place. I'm not sure what I imagined but Warsaw by far exceeded my expectations. I kept saying "Wow, I don't feel like I'm in Poland" or "Wow, I don't feel like I'm in Warsaw". Why do we say things like that? How would I know anything about what Poland is supposed to "feel" like (after living in just one small city)? It's funny to think about all the preconceived notions we have about places we've never been to.

At the largest shopping mall in Central Europe

Warsaw City Center

Gorgeous Old Town

We stayed in the most beautiful, modern hotel right in the center of the city and spent the weekend eating amazing food and walking around the Old Town and the City Center. Warsaw has such a different look to it than any other European capital I've been to. You can definitely tell it has been through it's fair share of turmoil, but I think this only adds to the beauty of it all. I loved walking through the City Center with its skyscrapers, designer stores and massive shopping malls and then only a few kilometers away being in the middle of the Old Town with its cute cafes, gorgeous old buildings and cobblestone streets. I really felt like I was in two different cities at once. It was an amazing weekend and I can't wait until D's next day off because my list of Polish cities to visit is growing extensively long. (Friends, feel free to come visit and we can make this happen as well).

Sofitel Warsaw

Amazing Meal at Nolita, Warsaw

Video of the Old Town Square

On another note, I've noticed some hilarious things about Poland so far. First off, I went to dinner with D and some of his teammates one night and we all ordered a draft Polish beer. I thought it was odd when the waiter delivered the beers to our table and mine was served with a straw while all the other guy's beers were not. I didn't think much of it, I just took out my straw and made a funny face. It wasn't until this happened to me 3 MORE TIMES, at 3 DIFFERENT RESTAURANTS  that I realized, apparently girls in Poland are expected to drink their beer out of straws? I find this really odd, and I'm not quite sure the reasoning behind it but it is hilarious, nonetheless. I will continue to feel like a badass by removing my straw and drinking beer like the guys.

THIS IS A REAL THING, GUYS!

Another funny thing about Poland is how absolutely impossible it is to properly pronounce any Polish city name just by sounding the word out. As difficult as the Lithuanian language has been for me, at least words are spelled exactly like they sound, so I don't sound like a complete idiot whenever I read something. Not the case here. The first city D played right when we arrived here is spelled "WROCLAW" which I know you just read in your head as "roe-claw". You, like myself and Deividas, couldn't be any more wrong. This city is pronounced "vrots-waf". Additionally, the city "ŁODZ" is pronouned "woodge" and our town, Włocklawek is pronounced "vrots-wav-ek". I find this all completely confusing and I am constantly wishing Poland could pull it together in the phonetics department.

Unlike in Vilnius, English speakers aren't too easy to come by in our town. I spent twenty minutes in a "CVS-like" store the other day trying to describe to the young girl that worked there that I was looking for a lip liner sharpener. When I finally google imaged "pencil sharpener" she started hysterically laughing. Turns out my charades skills aren't as good as I once believed.

Another interesting moment happened when Deividas was out of town for a night last week at an away game. Of course in the two weeks that we've lived in our temporary apartment, nothing out of the ordinary has happened, yet as soon as he goes away and I'm left alone, the flood gates to weirdness open up. First off a loud, crazy alarm kept going off at the school across the street from our house. I kept going out to my balcony and looking at the school to see what the problem was. My first guess was a fire drill but when I noticed no one was actually evacuating, I dismissed that thought. The alarm continued to go off throughout the day and I still have absolutely no clue what it was for. 

Later that night I got a knock at my door and I peeped through to see a man standing with a clipboard. I opened the door and he of course, said something in Polish to me which I replied "sorry, I only speak English". He kept pointing to some badge around his neck and I just kept shrugging and telling him I didn't get it. He then knocked on my neighbors door and had him come over to try to translate for me. I've never met my neighbor and frankly, if he's the best English translator in our building than this place could really benefit from some Rosetta Stone. After about twenty minutes of charades, I somewhat understood the man worked for the city and needed to check the numbers on our heaters. I let them both in and realized that I was standing in my living room with two Polish men, having no idea if they're here to kill me or not. The neighbor tried to make some small talk with me which went something like this..."Deutschland"??? he kept saying, asking if I spoke German. When I kept telling him "no, only English" and that I was American, he replied "AHHHH......Iraq...twenty years...ooohhh..hmmmm" and I found myself really questioning what he could possibly be telling me. Was he voicing his political opinion on the Iraq War or is something extremely lost in translation here? Just in the knick of time, mustached-cityworker was done with his business. I happily signed his paper, realizing I could be promising him my first born, but all the while ecstatic he didn't turn out to be Ted Bundy. Needless to say Deividas didn't find this story too funny and insisted I don't open the door for strangers anymore.

The weather has been absolutely amazing lately. For it to be almost November and still warm enough for only a light jacket, I'm in heaven. D's team is now 3-0 and they upset one of Poland's best teams last week. D led the team with 9 rebounds which was awesome and kind of hilarious at the same time. Feeling thankful for a great month, optimistic for an even better November and missing friends and family at home a whole lot!

From D's first home game