[insert your life here]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOLLY SUE DEVER!!!

Welcome to the realm of 19 yearolds.

It's terribly exciting and only lasts a year so enjoy
it while you can!

I love you friend!

There was something... it always starts this way.. but it's true: There was something so terribly beautiful about this night. Eleven sojourners enjoying a picnic 100 yards from the Baltic Sea discussing delicious food and eating it; discussing depature and preparing for it. My heart has made a home of this place, it took 2.5 months but my heart is at home here. And now it's time for being at home here is nearly up and I am presented with another cross-cultural experience: crossing back to my own culture.. or what I once knew as my own. It's another arrival: "Re-entry adjustment will, in some ways, parallel your adjustment when moving to Lithuania. The more successful you have been in adjusting here, the harder the adjustment going back may be. Along with the usual symptoms of re-entry and adjustment you will find that you are different and have been changed -- you have developed new attitudes, values, perceptions."

I guess the thing that dismays me most is the fact that people are telling me to expect others not to care what happened here: they just want to hear that I had a good time and will be satisfied. They don't know the people I've come to love, the places, the experiences, the food, the way of life... I am supposed to prepare some stock answer for the masses and divulge the heart of it to the few that will give an ear. It's a gross reality that I couldn't imagine being the case with my own friends and family. Everyone else seems to accept it as fact, and I seem to be the only one in denial (and the only one who hasn't had the chance to experience it).

Happy Birthday Granda!

or as we would say in Lithuania:

Su.... um... I'll check on that. I think it's Su Giemo Diena!