I arrived at O'Hare airport in Chicago a little before 12 pm today (Monday) complaining about the 17 hours of travel time I had in front of me. I was looking forward to about 11 1/2 hours of flying and another 6 or so in airports before arriving in Lithuania. Well, here we are half a day later, and I have spent exactly 1 hour and 3 minutes on an airplane. It is 12:03am Eastern time right now, and my flight to Germany is supposed to be landing in Frankfurt in about 45 minutes. That plane however, is nowhere to be found (really, I have no idea what happened to it) and I am writing this from the attic of my dad's brother's wife's brother's house in Toronto, Canada.
I could complain a good deal about how things went down (or didn't) in the Toronto airport, but we've all had bad flight experiences, so I won't waste your time. What I will say is this, that whole thing about making lemonade from lemons, it's really quite profound. Instead of standing in line to be rerouted for 4 hours with my arms crossed over my chest, grunting at the world, I spent 4 hours in line to be rerouted talking to Evan, Cristina, Thea, and Nikola. Evan is 17. He was born in Canada, lived most of his life in Norway, has spent the last few years in Singapore, and is returning to Norway to go to a sports boarding school. Cristina likes to dance in airports. Well, I'm not sure she actually likes it, but after a few hours in line, and no playing cards to be found, she resorted to making her own entertainment. Polish and in her late-4os, she reminded me of Irene, the caretaker who lived with us when my grandmother was sick. The bleach-blonde hair and mismatched painted-on eyebrows really sold the resemblance. Nikola could not stand Cristina. They had been in line together before I joined them, and well, she did talk nonstop. He was in his 60s or so and on his way to visit family in Croatia. He seemed to think that Toronto is turning into the crime capital of the world. Andlast but not least, Thea. She is a Greek woman, need I say more. She'd been in line since 11am, not because she was travelling, but because her husband was and "he doesn't like to get the ticket out of the little machine." She really doesn't like her middle son's girlfriend and her oldest daughter would be mortified that she was telling me all of this.
I chose the right line. While I was last in it, the man standing near me in the next line spent the entire afternoon throwing darts with his eyes and grunting if someone tried to move their baggage. My line mates would have clearly pulled out the vodka and the guitars if they hadn't been lost with the luggage. The minute I stepped into that line, I was adopted by my fellow wayward travelers and we become a micro-support system for each other. I'd put being stranded in an international airport among the top 10 spots with the potential for the worst in human nature to come out, but I got the best of it. So safe travels to my new friends, I won't be joining you tomorrow am, as doing so would just result in me being stranded another night, this one in Germany. So I am staying in Toronto until Wednesday when I can get from here to Frankfurt to Vilnius as originally planned. Now let's just hope they find my luggage....
Monday, June 15, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Beginning...
Today begins the 30 day countdown until my 3rd trip to Lithuania. I'm starting this blog so friends and family can follow my adventures if they so choose, but no one is getting an inbox full of unsolicited mass emails from me. Below is an article I was asked to write for the Lithuanian-American publication, Bridges, just in case you are asking yourself why I've decided to leave our fair city of Chicago for the only 2 months out of the year it's worth living here.
Becoming Lithuanian
I went to ballet lessons on Saturday mornings. My cousins went to Lituanistine mokykla. They always sang “Happy Birthday” as “Ilgiausiu metu,” and I never understood them. My mother was a typical American blend of Irish and German immigrants, making me a child of the melting pot. I grew up dreading Christmas Eve and found the portrait of my namesake that hung in my grandmother’s hallway utterly depressing. I wasn’t Lithuanian. My father was.
After my mother died and before mociute became too sick to travel, my father brought us to Lithuania. Rather, my father dragged us to Lithuania. We protested. It would be a country full of pickled herring, wrinkled relatives, an alien language, funny toilets, and a tantalizing sea too cold to swim in. We were teenagers. We just wanted to go to Paris. As it turns out, Paris doesn’t hold a candle to Vilnius. Paris doesn’t have Dede Vytautus and cousin Andrius. Paris doesn’t have Trakai, Kriziu Kalnas, or the family farm in Kacergine . Paris doesn’t have Saltibarsciai. I cried the entire flight to Paris.
On Christmas Eve, seven years later, over my plate of untouched pickled herring, my aunt’s brother half- jokingly asked, “Hey you’re a teacher, wanna come to Lithuania with me this summer?” Six months later we were on one plane across the Atlantic and another across the Baltic. I agreed to present at the APPLE[i] program at Camp Viltis because I believe in the power of education. I have been working with students with special needs for 10 years and even in our “land of opportunity” in the US, I don’t see them treated equally to their peers. When I learned that students with disabilities don’t often even go to school in Lithuania, I felt a strong tug to get out and investigate and contribute to the change that is beginning there.
As part of the APPLE team that volunteered at Camp Viltis, I spent two weeks working with students with disabilities, their families, and a group of Lithuanian teachers. This was simultaneously one of the most rewarding and frustrating experiences of my life. I immediately fell in love with a handful of the children I was working with. They wanted to play games, ask questions, and sing songs. I couldn’t understand a word they said. I had a translator with me for my lectures, but these were kids, they don’t have time to wait for someone to give your words meaning. They want you to pretend to be a meska and chase them around the lawn. Initially, I felt like a failure. I felt like I had a disability. Feeling disabled, while frustrating, actually proved to be a valuable learning experience. I could put myself in my students‘ shoes for a moment—so much to say and no words to communicate with. Eventually, we found ways to communicate that were language neutral. Smiles, laughter, dancing, and hugs are all sincere ways to express affection and build friendships. Some of the kids knew a few words of English, and I picked up enough Lithuanian to scream “As Meska” as I chased Karolis in and out of the bushes surrounding the dining hall.
While I was content being a bear and singing nursery rhymes, my purpose for being at Viltis was not solely to befriend the children at camp, my job was to teach the teachers. A small team of us from the US and Canada was charged with putting together a program that would bring new ideas and understanding to a group of education professionals from Lithuania who had some contact with students with special needs. I thought this would be easy. I knew teaching, I was full of creative ideas, and I had a translator for the language barrier, what else was there? I quickly learned that many of the women who had come to camp didn’t actually believe that these special children were capable of learning, and most of them were even more discouraged by the bureaucracies of their schools than I. Many of them distrusted us as Americans, weren’t interested in change, and were steadfast in the ways they knew, the ways they were schooled, the ways of the Soviet’s. I now had living portraits to go with the physical pictures of Soviet occupation that I’d known previously. I began to understand. Why grandpa had to leave his oldest children to be a freedom fighter and could never look back when forced to flee. And why he never talked about Lietuva. What it means that Dede was buried in uniform with 3 other soldiers. Why Vytautus’ portraits are so sharp and shadowy. My purpose for being there became all the more clear and important. Our purpose for being there became clearer, and I felt it in my blood.
Education is a huge part of rebuilding a nation. It is an honor the Ministry of Education in Lithuania invites American teachers there year after year to share our educational philosophies and techniques. All I wanted to do was sit with these women and hear their stories, share experiences and ideas, listen to their beliefs, and maybe argue mine a little, but again, I was blocked by language. The translators tried, but it wasn’t sufficient. I understood enough to know that there were big conversations happening there in those weeks. I could translate the emotions and enough words to get the gist, but could only be a silent observer. Sure, I got enough lecture time in and did some activities with the teachers that I’m proud of. They have some new tools from me for their classrooms and a few new windows from which to look at their students. But I wanted to be a part of the bigger picture. I still do.
Something happened to me last summer. Maybe it was the baptism in the Baltic or the pickled herring that finally made its way down my throat, but somewhere between Vilnius and Giruliai, Kaunas and Druskininkai, I became Lithuanian. I have a long way to go, especially in learning the language. But if at 7 years old, Isodorious can be the first student with a disability in his entire town to attend a mainstream school with his peers, than I can do my best to learn a new language at 28. I can’t say how things would have turned out if I had gone to Lithuanian school instead of ballet class, but I can say that my father gave me the greatest gift when he “forced” us to visit Lithuania in 2000. There is something remarkable about being rooted in a culture that truly values its freedom and equally so about the moment I breathed in the Baltic Air and finally felt whole.
[i] A.P.P.L.E is the American Professional Partnership for Lithuanian Education. More information can be found at http://www.applequest.org/
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