American night

Last night we had a student life gathering, and those of us from the States cooked American food for everyone. We made fried and barbequed chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, biscuits and apple pie. It was all very good!

cooking fried chicken (in my apartment)

me, Susie and Alisha

 waiting for everything to cook

a picture of (almost) the entire Student life team from earlier in the week

Happy (half) Birthday, Ira!

Last week when we celebrated Ausrius' birthday, we found out that Ira's birthday is on July 25, and realized that her half birthday was on January 25!!! So we planned a surprise all week for her! We bought a very fancy coffee tablespoon with amber for her (she loves coffee!) and I made Thai green chicken curry and Thai iced tea for dinner. She was very surprised!

singing "Happy Birthday"

(the candle is in a scoop of rice!)

Ausrius likes to tease Ira by saying "I love you", and so he delivered her present through a fake proposal! The funny part was that last week while we were preparing stone soup, Ira actually (jokingly) said "I will marry you!" after tasting Ausrius' brownies! It was a perfect set-up that she didn't even realize in the moment!

another green video...

Here's the other video that was made for our promotions and education during Green Week. Made by Josh Garber (Neumann East RD) and two of his RAs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTxe4w3L2ug&feature=youtu.be

Stone Soup

Tonight we had our big event - we started cooking at 3pm, and somehow everything got finished by 7pm! We made a huge pot of soup (this is where most of the "random" things went), a huge pot of fried rice with 30 eggs, three trays of open-face sandwiches, and 5 cakes! There were around 100 students and faculty that came - and everything was eaten much quicker than I expected. We showed a short video as well about food waste. You can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCxx7ej5JNc&feature=youtu.be 

We had a great time together as a team - it was awesome to cook, laugh, and work together - I am really proud of how we pulled off the evening!

 first up: cutting LOTS of vegetables (Ira and Kirill)

Ausrius, the cake master, and Natallia frying vegetables

Kirill and Ira making sandwiches

Natallia with all the completed sandwiches
(it looks like a Rachel's Bread open house to me!)

so many yummy treats made by our resident baker, Ausrius

(the apron he is wearing is his birthday gift from us - he turned 21 this week!)

 in action... 

the calm before the storm...

Tonight we had a presentation by two faculty members on going vegan and making green choices in every day life. (However, I forgot to take pictures!) My team is also organizing a "Stone Soup" event for tomorrow evening for the "Green Week" finale. After tonight's presentation, they went through both residence halls to collect food donations from each room - a great way to advertise, and also to get some food that might normally be wasted! (It took them 2 1/2 hours - good job, team!) Tomorrow I will go to the store for a few ingredients we need (sugar, flour, butter, bread) and we will make a meal out of all the food we collected tonight. We'll start cooking at 3pm, and hope to be ready to serve everything by 7pm! I'm in charge of making it taste good, so hopefully my experience at the bakery will pay off!!!

a list of everything they collected!

dry goods and some vegetables

a full fridge!!! (including 59 eggs!)

Carbon Footprint

Today in the main building at LCC, we had computers set up where students could find out what their carbon footprint was. The figures are based on how much water you use, how much you consume, where your food comes from, how much you travel, etc. 

Check it out yourself! http://www.earthday.org/footprint-calculator

Happy Birthday, Ausrius!

Tomorrow is Ausrius' birthday, so we surprised him tonight with a cake and candles! He's turning 21!!!

Green Week

It's been a busy but good week, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming one even more! This week Residence Life is organizing "Green Week" which is an effort to educate our campus about all things related to caring for the environment. We are having a variety of different activities: a carbon footprint survey, a documentary viewing, a panel discussion, and a "Stone Soup" event. Keep checking back this week for more updates on how the week is going!

Below is a picture of the advertisement we made for the week. We used recycled newspaper, and spray-painted each one with a stencil made out of an old place mat. We are trying to use recycled paper or supplies that we already have for the week rather than creating more waste or using unneeded resources. I think the posters look AWESOME - each one is different!

 If you can't tell, there is a factory on top, and roots on the bottom, and it says "Whose side are you on?" This was our "test" poster, but ended up being one of my favorites!

Riga #2

The other interesting thing we saw in Riga was a bunch of Christmas trees! They had various trees made out of different materials all over the city. We took pictures of the ones we came across, but there were many more that we missed (I think almost 50 in total)!

this one said "Merry Christmas" in many different languages

musical pipes

a whole forest!

a big stack of pieces of glass

Did you know that the home of the first Christmas tree was in Riga, Latvia in 1510?!

break/Riga #1

I have had a restful break, even though I've done a little bit of work almost every day. I watched a lot of movies, slept in, and read several books to pass the time during Christmas and New Years.

 On New Year's Eve, I got together with some friends, and we celebrated by making our own sushi and watching fireworks. (This is Bethany with all the sushi rolls we made!)

Earlier this week, I got to take several days off and traveled to Riga, Latvia with another friend from LCC. We saw a lot of things, and were also able to read, relax and recharge.

 We had some awesome food - first meal - INDIAN!!!

 Another meal - the "Garlic Pub"! Almost everything on their menu had garlic in it! For dessert, I had ice cream with honey-garlic sauce - YUM!

Another day we went to a tea house and had fancy tea and cookies while sitting on cushions and reading/talking.

We also saw many different sights...

This is the freedom monument, which honors soldiers killed in the Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920). Latvia's history is similar to Lithuania's in that it was occupied by the Soviet Union beginning in 1940, but the Soviets could not take away this symbol from the Latvians - it remained standing all through the occupation.

Riga has several different types of architecture which can be seen all around the city. This building is medieval style (small, rounded windows) from the 15th century. 

Other buildings were influenced by the Swedes when Riga was part of the Swedish Kingdom in the 17th century. (The shutters are painted on - it looks like a fairy tale house to me!)

Riga is famous for its Art Nouveau architecture (19th century), which is characterized by floral motifs, gargoyles, and naked figures all around the outside of the buildings.

We really enjoyed exploring the city... Tomorrow I will post about all the Christmas trees we saw!