Christmas + New Year's

Christmas Morning

So for Christmas my sister paid for me to come visit the fam and go on an Eastern European road trip!  It was intended to be a surprise to everyone; it ended up being a surprise to a few people, but that's the reason that you didn't hear about it and that I haven't posted in over a month.   

Being back in LT was a big blessing.  Christmas eve I made a bunch of cookies with a friend and then we sat down for dinner as a family and watched the Grinch and sang carols.  I got to play guitar for more carols at a Christmas party the next night, which was followed by Christmas karaoke.  I can do a pretty mean Burl Ives on Holly Jolly Christmas.  Of course my dad wanted to sing Linkin Park.  :)   I also got to visit with my "sisters" from the local children's home, playing cards and watching a Christmas play in which one of them was an evil mouse.  :)

L'viv, Ukraine

The road trip was crazy fast, but pretty awesome!  We spent New Year's in L'viv and watched the fireworks from on top of "Castle Hill."  We also saw Lublin, Warsawa, Kraków, and Auschwitz.  It was very powerful to stand inside the gas chambers at Majdanek, and to read the names of the victims at Bełżec, names that are very familiar after the time I've spent in Lithuania.  It was also pretty upsetting to see some of the exhibits at Auschwitz creating a "heroic" story of nationalistic resistance that found the stories of Jews less interesting and important because they were killed too quickly to have lived in the camp for very long.

At least 1.3 Million People were Murdered at Auschwitz

Back in Klaipėda, we went to see the Hobbit, sang more karaoke, and I met with various students and friends.  It was very refreshing to meet these people again, and really cool that many of them wanted to talk to me, and they wanted to talk to me about God.  My other sister Kate was a great sidekick and support for a bunch of these conversations.  The youth group gave me an especially warm welcome.  We went for our traditional pizza after church on Sunday, and then had a worship and games night the evening before I left.  That was a time I will cherish for quite some time.

Waiting to go for pizza

As soon as it began, it seemed like it was back to Bishkek.  I arrived home at 11:30pm on Sunday night, with school at 8:00am the next morning.  *yawn*...this is gonna be an intense week.