One Week (Almost)

Tomorrow marks my first week in Lithuania! It's been amazing and I'm so happy to of had all the experiences I had. 

   My day of travel started at the ungodly hour of 2am where I got up, showered, got ready, and took care of last minute things. Also, I had to say goodbye to my pets which I already miss (Love you Tony [my dog] and Gizmo [cavy]). After that we left the house and headed to the airport. I was surprised when I didn't fall asleep in the car, because I was only running on about 1-2 hours of sleep and I always fall asleep in cars. After a short 50 minute drive, we arrived at the airport where i checked in, checked my bag, waited, said goodbye to my dad and sister, and headed through security with my mom. Trying not to cry, I said goodbye to her (who was crying [thanks mom, I still love uou]) and boarded the plane. 

   On the plane I put in my headphones and let fatigue take over. That only lasted about a hour. Then I alternated between looking out the window, calculating the time left, and reading. After almost 5 hours of travel, I arrived at Dulles in Washington, D.C.. 

   Upon my arrival, I was having a hard time navigating through the airport and finding where to go. I also proved how much the letter Z sounded like B in a loud train while I was trying to find gate B but ended up at Z. Thanks to some help from Emma, I found my way to my gate. There I finally got to meet Emma! We talked some and then our U.S. Coordinator, Skye, came and joined us and talked to us. She collected our paperwork, took our picture, and then sent us off onto our boarding. Once we found our sits we found out that our luggage was too big to fit a certain way into the overhead luggage and had to put them way in the back in empty spot, which caused us to take up more room. We then sat in out sits and talked some more. Takeoff time had past and we still hadn't left. We then kept being told that it would be another 20 minutes 2-3 times. Finally we took off, 1 hour after our initial takeoff time, which I was worried because we only had 1 hour 25mintues originally in Vienna and now we were going to have like 30-40 minutes. 

    The plane ride was long and I couldn't sleep very well or much. So I watched a few movies and tv shows while trying to pass the time. After our planeride, we landed and had to wait for everyone to get off the plane before we could receive our bags. From there we run through border patrol, security and to our gate. We made it with a few minutes to spare. We then got on a bus and headed out to our plane. It was a propeller plane which scared me at first but was kind of cool in the end. After a short ride we arrived in Vilnius, got our bags and then headed out the Exit door. We didn't know where the customs was but apparently there wasn't one. We found Kevin, one  of our coordinators, who took out big bags and headed us to his car. From there we went to a back, had a snack, looked at shoes, got our 'super high-tech €25 phones", and then went to the office for an orientation. It was good but I was falling asleep half the time. After that he took us to our host family houses. We dropped off Emma first and then he took me to mine (which I then started to fall asleep in the car). We arrived I got to finally meet my family! I was so nervous and scared that I didn't want Kevin or Lena to leave but then I started to talk to them I felt a lot better. After dinner, I unpacked, gave them their gifts, showered and headed to bed. That was my first day (and travel) for ya! I'll write more about my first week some other time because this is already quite long... 

  

The Paths We Take

This is just one of my random posts with some of thoughts, it doesn't really have anything to do with my current exchange other then kind of talking about my high school journey. I may also ramble a little and attempt to be inspirational so I apologize for that.

   In high school and pretty much my whole life people have been asking what I want to do when I grow up or what my plan for college is (you know the drill because everyone gets asked this) and when I answered I always had a straight answer that I was sure I was going to end up doing. In  early middle school I thought I wanted to pursue a career in dance and was looking at dance schools and settled on a school in North Carolina. Then in eighth grade I decided that I wanted to go into physical therapy and started to look into schools for that. After I found out I would need six-eight more years of schooling after high school and I wasn't for that so I decided to look elsewhere in the medical field and settled on radiology and or lab work my freshman year. Completely thinking that my mind was made up I started looking at all the body and medical classes I could take at my high school and learned what I could outside as well. My mind was set.

    The end of freshman year came and my advisor made us draw maps of what we think the rest of the educational life would be like and to make sure we put road blocks in there in case we changed our minds because we didn't know if a summer camp would change our minds on what we wanted to do or if we went on a exchange (and the like). My friends and I laughed at her friends because we thought it was funny that she was questioning our already made up plans and I knew for sure that I would NEVER go on an exchange that would change my mind about going into the medical field. Man, as much as I don't want to admit it, she was right... The summer after that was the one that I spent in Argentina and ended changing my mind about everything.

   I guess what I'm trying to say is that as much as we try to plan ahead, something can always pop up and cause us to change our minds. We may not expect it but it happens and we have no control over the situation that we are now in, we can only go with it, change our minds, and see where in life it takes us.

         And it's always okay to change your mind.

  I may say right now that I want to go into the international field and become a Foreign Service Officer or Ambassador but I could always change my mind to go back to the medical or even environmental field. What I'm trying to say is that it is okay to dream and that it is okay to plan your life ahead but roadblocks, hills, potholes, and flat tires can always bring us down or change our minds (or we could change them on a positive experience as well) and that is okay. If your life was perfectly planned out it would be so boring because you would know exactly what is going to happen, the joy of not knowing what us coming next will be gone, which would personally, in my opinion,  would make life bland. 

   So get out there. See where the world will take you and what it will bring. Take a chance, you just might find our passion. Try what you have been wanting to try nobody is here to stop you, only yourself. If you crash and fall, it's okay because that's life.It's your life so get out there and live it!  Remember that you can't change the past but you can always change your mind and path to do what you enjoy or what you believe you want to do. As long as you're happy, that's all that matters.