V-day and Smelt

This week we had several big events to plan and execute, but they were very funny and enjoyable. One of the events was called Blind Date - it was a game show where couples matched during the show compete to be the funniest by playing different games. My RA team was in charge of advertising, so we did several things to make sure students knew about the event. One of them was dressing up as Cupid and delivering Valentines to many residents.

Dima and Kirill dressed up... they were actually excited to do this!

Another thing I did this weekend was go to the Palanga Smelt Festival. Palanga is a town about 20 minutes away from where I live. Two friends and I took a bus there, and went to celebrate the Smelt Festival with other Lithuanians. Smelt (stinta in Lithuanian) is a small fish; apparently it is plentiful in February, so why not have a festival?! Today there were craft and food booths and live musicians. It was cold but we enjoyed walking around and eating fried smelt and smelt soup. The other crazy thing that happens during this festival is a "polar bear run" into the sea. We didn't get there in time to see this, but I found this picture of the run from earlier in the day. Crazy people!!!

BRRRR!!!!!

Birthday #2

And tonight we celebrated Nastassia's birthday - she is turning 20 tomorrow. She requested Thai food, so I made a green chicken curry with rice and spicy pear chutney. Also, for dessert we had the infamous carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. We also learned that both Kirill and Nasta were born in the afternoon on their birthday, which is uncommon - apparently most babies are born in the morning.

The birthday girl with her dinner. She said her hair was in two braids because this is her last chance to be a "child" before turning the big 2-0.

Vika and Nasta

Birthday #1

Tonight we celebrated Kirill's birthday - he is turning 22 tomorrow! On his request, I made orange chicken with rice, and chocolate peanut butter cake. Everyone including Kirill enjoyed the food very much, and they left with full bellies! I learned how to say "Happy birthday" in Russian as well, but I can't write it so you'll just have to ask me next time you see me! :)

Kirill getting ready to taste the first bite...

Everyone enjoying... L-R: Dima, Kirill, Vika and Nasta

I'm pretty sure Dima's face is just a joke!

Green Week

Last week Residence Life organized a week dedicated to educating students about choices they could make to help the environment. We had different activities every day, which included making your own reusable shopping bag, eating food made from (almost) exclusively donated ingredients and taking a survey about your environmental footprint. We found it more difficult to find information about environmental issues that dealt specifically with Eastern Europe, and so it was interesting to see how students responded to this topic and what their opinions were on the issues facing today's world.

As usual, I was not very good at taking pictures, but here are a few I pulled off Facebook to share. They are from the "Stone Soup" event where we collected food from each room in the residence halls, and combined the ingredients into something to share with those who came. We made a big pot of soup (with a LOT of different random things), fried rice, sandwiches and fried potatoes. Students were excited to come to this event because there was food, and they had donated something towards the meal. We also had videos about recycling and a trivia game during the event to help people be more educated about their choices.

These RAs helped me cook and serve the food to hungry students.

This is Hanna with fried potatoes...

Sasha with a HUGE pot of "stone" soup...

And Renata with fried rice. Everything was gone afterwards, and I think we served around 85 people - hooray!

Here are the winners of the trivia game - actually all students from the States who are studying abroad for one semester.

Hopefully there will be some videos to share next week about recycling.

finals week

During finals week, Residence Life hosts a coffee house for the students to give them a study break and some caffeine. I planned one for my dorm by myself, and hosted in this past Sunday night. I made lots of coffee, and the toppings we had were whipped cream, caramel sauce, cinnamon sugar, cocoa powder and milk. I also made (48) homemade lemon poppyseed muffins! The students seemed really happy to have the coffee - there were around 65 students that night, and I ran out of everything!

here is the photo I posted in the Facebook event page as one way of advertising the coffee house... i think the homemade muffins brought a lot of people!

The deal I made with my residents was if they liked a post in the Facebook event page by Monday morning, we would have ANOTHER coffee house. They followed through, so I spent my Tuesday afternoon baking more muffins - this time I made 56 buttermilk spice muffins. You would think that 

here is the photo I posted again on the Facebook event page for the second night.

I am pretty tired after both coffee houses and all that muffin baking, and glad that it is almost the end of the week. Tonight, however, I have had several knocks on my door - since it is check out time, this is not a surprise. One of them, though, was some very sweet girls who delivered a plate of yummy looking banana-filled, chocolate-topped pancakes! They said it was a thank you for doing all that baking for them, and I was so surprised I didn't know what to say! How sweet!

I promptly ate some of the pancakes after taking this picture, and they were delicious!

I will be heading to the States for two weeks to celebrate Christmas with my family, so this will be my last post for a couple weeks. Enjoy the holidays with your friends and family as well, and see you in the new year!

Christmas program

Last night (Friday) was the annual LCC Christmas program (and Christmas fair). Student Life plans this program, and does all the work to make it come together. My boss, Alisha, was in charge of most of the parts, and each of the RDs led a musical group. Josh led the band, Alicia directed the bell choir, and I did the (vocal) choir. The musical groups and actors have been practicing since the beginning of November, and we were excited to perform. I worked really hard at arranging some pieces for the choir, and even wrote an accompaniment for the bell choir on one of our songs. I am also sore from helping move all the set-up equipment (stage, couches, lights, choir risers, etc), but I really enjoyed the program and performing with the choir in particular.

The premise of the program was a family who told different versions of the Christmas story. The dad told an updated version with all the traditional characters.

See a part of the dad's story here.

Part of the dad's story included musical numbers from the choir and band.
See one of the band's songs here.
See one of the choir's songs here. (I arranged this one myself!)

The mom told a story of her friend Gladys, who was our new Chaplain (a guy) dressed up as a woman. My camera battery ran out, so I don't have any videos of this, but it was hilarious!

Christmas cookies

A couple days ago, I needed to make some Christmas cookies to donate for the Admissions Christmas fair and as a prop for the Christmas program. The Christmas fair is held right before the Christmas program, and there are lots of booths with homemade items to buy, as well as hot cider and cookies made by the staff/faculty. So, I made sugar cookie dough and invited some of my residents over to help me decorate cookies. It was good to have them there, because we all inspired each other to be very creative in decorating!

helpers - my RA, Nasta, Ania and Lera

more helpers - Sasha and Shafa

some very detailed cookies!!!

Here are all the cookies we made for the fair and program. Note the Lithuanian flag colors on the star in the top left corner - one of my favorites.

There were LOTS more cookies, so we ate some and the girls took the rest back to their floor to give to other students.

Two students (Evaldas and Andrej) enjoying the cookies that the girls brought to them. Apparently they really liked them!

The decoration is something the whole floor made together, and of course it's quite ironic for this picture in particular...