a normal week....

This week was fairly normal - food, time with RAs, and more food! Here's a few pictures to sum up the week:

 On Wednesday, we had a potluck organized by one of the students.

(I'm in the background) We ate delicious stews, soup, and salads!

 And played Dutch Blitz afterwards!!!

Tonight we had an RA party - we ate lots of food again, and played Taboo

I made cinnamon swirl bread!

(Check out the recipe in "Simply in Season" - it was delicious!)

Inauguration

We have a new president: Dr. Marlene Wall! On Saturday afternoon, we had the official Inauguration ceremony, and then a faculty/staff reception afterwards.

 Marlene giving her inaugural speech

After the Inauguration, everyone processed through a tunnel of flags from all the countries represented at LCC!

The Student Life department (and other departments as well) gave our congratulations to Marlene during the reception. We sang a song about her!

 The mayor of Klaipeda also gave his congrats - he plays jazz trumpet, and he and Marlene did a spontaneous duet together! It was awesome!

Community Day

This past weekend LCC had a bunch of events in order to celebrate and officially inaugurate our new president! On Friday night we had an all-campus celebration with food, a live band, games and dancing. Student Life was in charge of planning everything, and overall it went really well. My RAs and I were in charge of the cake walk game. We spray painted numbers on the grass for the game, and had collected 18 prizes (cakes, cookies and more) to give away! We had to guard the goodies closely, because a lot of students came up to look before the game started! :)

 The evening started with a 5K run/walk - here are the runners!

And the walkers and 2 bikers

spray painting the numbers

(L-R: Ausrius, Ira, me, Kirill and Natallia)

guarding the goodies!

getting ready to play Twister

lucky number 7

Ausrius handing out the prizes!

at the official end of the evening, we lit paper lanterns and sent them into the sky

(like in the movie "Tangled")

the unofficial end: DANCING!!!!

RA fun night

I'm planning to have a fun night with my RAs once a month in order to do something not work-related and just to build our friendship! For this month, I planned a scavenger hunt for them! I made lots of food for a picnic supper and put clues and parts of the meal around the area (on and off campus). My RAs then collected all the pieces before finding me and we enjoyed a picnic and Taboo together. I had another RAs' help in making the clues, and I think it was a little bit confusing at times for them! But with a few text clues from me, they made it to the finish! Here are some pictures they took along the way:

I locked up one clue in the lockers at the grocery store, and kept the key for the day so it could be part of the clue!

 In the storage room finding ham and cheese pinwheels.

(L-R: Ausrius, Kirill and Ira)

Ausrius, Toms (an East side RA), Kirill and Ira at the last station (deviled eggs)

and here is what they found at the end of the hunt!

I took a few pictures of the sunset while I was waiting for them, and this is my favorite.

a few pics from the last week

I have a few more random pictures to share....

Last week I invited one of my RAs over to make chocolate muffins and ganache frosting for someone's birthday. We saved some for the party, but of course we had to try some to make sure they tasted ok!

 Natallia

Today I went out to eat at a fancy restaurant for lunch. They have a daily special and a well-known chef. The meal started with french bread with garlic butter spread. Then we had a fish soup, and beef with barley, tomatoes and parsley. Both were very very good!

Allison, who also works at LCC, getting ready to eat the fish soup

the beef dish - so delicious!!!!

Ugly Duckling

The last week or so has been somewhat normal, which is why I haven't posted anything. But we have also been busy getting ready for the annual Ugly Duckling Cup, which is an LCC tradition. Four teams (three from the residence halls, and one faculty/staff) each build their own boat and race it across the LCC pond! This year the students were super excited about building boats - in Enns we had been working on ours for three days! 

The evening consisted of the following events:

A recycled material fashion show

A scavenger hunt

A game in which teams could have only certain body parts touching the ground at once

Team cheers, slogans and flags

And of course, the actual race, which included a 3-part relay

And racing the boats across the pond

This year we also had a pirate, who tried to sabotage the boats in the middle of the race!

(He pulled me into the water!)

I was dressed for the first part of the evening as the "Enns Queen"

And then quick took off my costume to help the faculty/staff boat across the lake!

(That's me with my crown still attached)

And here is the winning team: Neumann East!

I have so many pictures - I asked one of my residents to take some for us, and she did a GREAT job!!! Thank you Kristina!!!

to market, to market

This morning was the first time in over a week that work has not been the first thing on my mind - so I went to the market! I love going there to see all the fresh produce, flowers, honey, and more. Ira, my RA and I walked together, and enjoyed the fresh air and good conversation. Also, everything is really cheap at this market - I got cucumbers, tomatoes, pumpkin, green onions, carrots, a red pepper and flowers all for 17 litas, which is less than $8! Amazing!!! I was so excited that I took a picture for you!

WOW!!!

I like to have cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes always on hand, and I'm planning to make Thai peanut pasta (for the RAs) and pumpkin bread with the rest of the vegetables!