Graduation

Today was LCC's 17th graduation. Three of my RAs walked today, and it was fun to celebrate with them. We had a Senior Leadership Awards ceremony last night, where each of the student leader supervisors read letters they had written to their senior leaders. It was a fun and special way to publicly affirm their hard work. Today was Baccalaureate and the graduation ceremonies. I only got a few pictures during the ceremony (and they're not very good since I was far away), but I did get some pictures from afterwards. It is a tradition to give a flower to each student who you've come to congratulate. The students each get a rose from LCC and then their hands fill up with bunches of flowers after the ceremony. By the time they leave, many of them have a huge bouquet!

me, Bethany and Kristen waiting to cheer the graduates into the ceremony

Ana receiving her diploma from President Marlene Wall

me and Iuna

me and Ana

graduates throwing their hats in celebration

New RAs

I finally have a picture to show you of my new RAs for next year! We went to the beach and grilled out tonight to spend one more time all together before the summer. We ate, took some pictures, and talked about zombies among other things! :) I'm sorry that my picture skills are not very good, but at least I got something...

 trying to take a jumping picture

 crazy faces

Ira, Alex, Natallia, me, and Ausrius

Also, after I got home from our gathering, many of the girls from my 2nd West floor came down and gave me cookies and individual notes from them to thank me for being their RD! It was so sweet of them!!!

some of the notes (very nicely done) and cookies in the background

bowling

Tonight I went bowling for the first time since I've been in Lithuania. I took the worship team members (some of these guys/gals):

It was my small way of saying thank you for their help this semester.

our shoes

last RA meeting

Tonight we had our last RA meeting. I wanted to do something special to thank them for all the hard work they've done. So, we went to the BEACH and we grilled hot dogs and had "s'mores" (with cookies instead of graham crackers). Even though we left an hour late because two of my RAs were finishing their last exam, we had a lot of fun laughing, talking, taking pictures, and eating of course. And, the evening was so warm and beautiful! We got there right as the sun was setting, and it was perfect! I will miss these girls very much - it feels weird to be done with the first year already! Some of our favorite things from this year were: horseback riding, eating tacos and pizza, going to the sauna, our apple crisp and blind date events, the retreat in my apartment, and much more. 

 "stupid" faces

 jumping

 the fire

 pretending to be "hot"

 Melisa's butt is on fire!!!! :)

COOKIES

I made around 20 dozen cookies the other night for my West side residents. It took me about 4 hours just to make them (and two hours to hand them out), but I enjoyed talking to a friend on Skype and watching a movie while baking. The cookies had chocolate chips, pretzels and oatmeal. However, we don't have chocolate chips here, so I chopped up chocolate bars. And the pretzels were not very salty (they had poppyseeds on the outside instead of salt), so I put a little sprinkle of salt on each cookie. But even with the alterations, the students were very happy to receive them while studying for finals.

getting ready to hand out the first batch

Sunday's activities #2

This evening, ResLife sponsored pancakes for Neumann dorm to give students a study break for the upcoming finals week. My RAs and I cooked lots and lots of pancakes - with chocolate! :) We used 4 kilos of flour, 8 liters of milk, 22 eggs, 4 bars of chocolate and a little bit of salt, sugar, oil and baking powder. We had a fun time cooking and laughing together, and then serving pancakes to students and eating some ourselves along the way. 

 Iuna and Melisa cooking in frying pans

Anya cooking on the griddle

Ira making sure everything tasted ok

students EXCITED to get pancakes!

Sunday's activities

Today was another busy day....

This afternoon, I learned how to make potato pancakes Lithuanian-style. We grated lots of potatoes, added eggs, flour, salt, pepper and dill, and fried them up. Serve with sour cream, kefyras (buttermilk drink) and extra salt if needed. Yummy!

 grating potatoes

learning how to crack an egg the "American" way - on the side of the bowl

(most students here use a knife and tap the egg open)

 frying

ready to EAT!