News!! (Old and New)

I left off my last post desperately wanting to tell all about the changes that the wonderful experience of the Confluence and Cultures class and Soliya influenced in my life. However, I'm going to hold off for now because I have very exciting news that I have to share (to get somewhat caught up with this blog), and I'm running out of time to share it! I've known about this for a while, of course, but as I had gotten behind on blogging, I hadn't shared it yet.

Mike, the professor for my Confluence of Cultures class, has led a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula during the past several summers. This involves exploring ancient Mayan sites, but also teaching a short summer camp in the village of Yunku. He would have liked to have recruited the entire Confluence of Cultures class, but out of all of us, I was the only one who took the bate. So yes, after much planning, I will be traveling to the Yucatan with about 9 other students for the last two weeks of the month of June. We leave one week from today!


I could not be any more excited about this opportunity. As I am hoping to teach English as a foreign language abroad after graduation, this is going to provide invaluable experience, for one. Add to that the interaction with another culture (which I've discovered I absolutely adore), and this is just an ideal way to spend two weeks of the summer.

Of course, this is also involving a fair amount of work. I'm taking three classes that go along with the Yucatan program, Global Systems, Conversational Spanish, and an anthropology course on Mayan civilizations. On top of that, I'm taking Literary Theory and Criticism (yes, that is as thrilling as it sounds!) for my English major. So currently, I'm working away on school work.

On top of that, I have some more news (annnd this news is newer than the other). I just signed with AmeriCorps last week. I heard about this opportunity through the Center for Honors, Scholars, and Leaders at UNC, and as there were opportunities to serve at either the Boys and Girls Clubs of Weld County or the Global Refugee Center, of course I looked into them and applied. I had an interview the week before last and then signed on my birthday, June 5! Now, for those of you readers who don't know what that is, it's a governmental program that engages people in in community service work with the goal of "helping others and meeting critical needs in the community."

I will be working as an AmeriCorps volunteer at the Global Refugee Center in Greeley for the next year, and my first service day is actually tomorrow. Exciting!!! I will be writing more about the GRC and what exactly it is, but that's all for now.

Life Altering

We were to bring two 5 page papers with us to our first Confluence of Cultures class. One was to be over cultural background and the other over religious background. We sat in a circle in our classroom in the basement of the campus library, and as I ended up next to the professor, I had to share first. Now, I'm not a very outgoing person generally. I'm not awkwardly or painfully shy or anything, but I'm not the person to just open up. So what I shared was fairly limited. I didn't want to share any details at all with this small group of strangers. Little did I know, the sharing we did that first day would only be the tip of the iceberg. This class definitely pulled me out of my shell.

Words cannot describe the experience Confluence of Cultures offered me. I wish I could write every detail about it, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to read the quantity of a book in one post. But in short, it became far more than just a class. Granted, it was still very class-like in some ways. We had several books to read and papers to write during the semester. However, Mike, our professor, also brought in a personal element with several guest speakers and group discussions. Confluence of Cultures was a class to learn about Islam, Arabic countries, "the Middle East," culture, religion, etc. I truly cannot say what all I learned from this class. To sum it all up, this class seemed to me to be about personal discovery and reflection. This personal discovery and reflection for me was partly about religion, partly about nationality, but deeply about humanity, myself, and what social categories and their implication meant to me.

In addition to our in class meetings with the 10 of us and Mike, we had weekly Soliya meetings. Soliya is a web platform that connects students in the "Western world" with students in the "predominantly Muslim world" through video conferencing (think conference call crossed with Skype... or just look at the photo below lol). The first week of Soliya meetings, I had a Thursday meeting at 4:30 am. I basically rolled out of bed and turned my computer on. I have to say, I was very nervous. I was expecting arguments and awkward silences. Let me tell you, that was not the case at all. I had an amazing Soliya group from the very start! With 8 students and 2 facilitators from the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Tunisia, and Egypt who were Christian (of various types), Muslim, and Atheist, we had quite the mix. I know no other words to describe this experience but beautiful and insightful. Over the several more weeks my Soliya group met, we discussed everything from politics to religion to personal stories and everything in between. The two hours flew by every time we met, and from the moment the sessions ended, I began looking forward to the next.

I will discuss the thoughts this experience provoked and the changes it inspired much more in depth in my next post or two, but all in all, I have to say, my Confluence of Cultures class with its readings, discussions, guest speakers, videos, reflections, and Soliya component absolutely changed my life. I cannot say how thankful I am for this incredible experience. I never thought a college class could be so life altering, but this one, through the people I interacted with, was just that.

So for this experience I would like to express my undying and most sincere gratitude to:
Mike, Alessandro, Caity, Corey, Elleanna, Genesee, Ibrahim, Jim, Sarah, and Tracey (Confluence of Cultures class of brilliance)
and Jeanette, Ruaa, Amany, Barrett, Jenna, Jordy, Lili, Roca, and Samira (my Soliya group).
You 19 amazing people have changed my life forever <3

The Drudgery of Life...

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything, and honestly, it's because I didn't feel like I really knew what to say. The opportunities I spoke of towards the end of my last post, "Much Required" seemed small and insignificant every time I tried to write them.

I did try to write them several times. My posts all began something like this:
"The way I see it, if you try to reach a certain goal and it is in the will of God, He'll make sure you have opportunities in place to get you there. Upon returning to UNC in the fall, all of the students who had studied abroad were required to attend a "re-entry" session where we talked about our experiences. It was there that I discovered the possibility of international teaching, or teaching abroad. Immediately, I was drawn to this path for my future. After giving it some thought and prayer, I met up with an adviser about it and started setting my educational path to lead to this goal. To fall right in line with that, I soon got a job teaching in an after school program at an elementary school nearby. I loved it so much, and each and every one of my kiddos meant the world to me. I was excited to see where this would all lead me."

While all that is great, and I had been wanting to share that information with everyone, it hardly seemed sufficient for a blog post (especially when you consider the nature of some of my other posts). So I never posted about it.

I ended up falling back into the drudgery of life in the fall semester. I went to classes, went to my jobs (I also worked at Kohl's), went to church, and went through the motions. It's not like I was depressed or anything; I just wanted so much more out of life. I wanted to squeeze it and get every little drop of wonderfulness out of it that I possibly could. But that wasn't happening.

I felt really alone and empty too. I had given up what I once saw as the most meaningful relationship in my life because I felt like it was what God wanted, and frankly, I found myself pretty friendless. See, I started dating that guy about two months after I first moved to Greeley, so he and his family were really the only people I spent time with up here. I had no close friends at school. And people I knew from church are sprinkled across Northern Colorado. So while I was diving into God, I still felt alone and lacking.

But the semester winded down. I met with advisers about classes to take in the spring, met with my honors adviser to make sure I was staying on track with the program, and signed up for a slew of English major classes that I was sure would eat me alive. My boss offered me a promotion for the next semester from "children's activity leader" to "children's activity director" meaning that instead of showing up and teaching material someone else gave me, I would plan and write the curriculum, schedule the activity leaders, and basically just run the show. I accepted and quit my job at Kohl's.

And then I went home for the holidays. Winter break was so uneventful that it's really all just a blur in my memories, even though it was only a short five months ago. There was one thing I had to make sure to do though: sign up for an honors class. So I pulled out the piece of paper I had scribbled on. "Confluence of Cultures." It sounded interesting. So I went to register for it. I was surprised when the system gave me an error message saying I needed instructor approval. I emailed the professor asking him about it, and he responded that he limits the number of students in the class by requiring that students apply with one paragraph consenting to take on the course work and one paragraph describing why they are interested in the course. So I checked out the syllabus he sent, which entailed one book after another and one paper after another, a couple big projects, several guest speakers, several documentaries, and a two hour a week commitment to Soliya (which I found to be a sort of video conference call online). I replied to his email with the paragraphs and got accepted to the class. I didn't think much of it; it was just a class that met the requirements. But it ended up being so much more...

Much Required

Upon returning to Colorado, I was consumed with wanting to go back to Lithuania. It was my every thought. I'm sure I got on my friends' and family's nerves talking about it. But it's where I want to be, where I need to be, and I have no doubt about that. With this massive goal in front of me, it's difficult not to be intimidated and overwhelmed. I know God will help me get there, but I am faced with the question, What do I do to get there?

During the couple weeks following my return to Colorado that I had before fall semester started, I took some time to relax and do things I enjoy like writing, reading, drawing. I also had to unpack (yes, that was a huge feat in itself... you should have seen my suitcase) and reorganize my chaotic room. Then I had to repack to move back up north to Greeley. After moving back to Greeley is when everything really started...

I began to feel the drudgery of life, as everything within me longed to be back in Lithuania actually doing something that mattered, but here I was in Greeley going to class, coming home, hanging out with friends, going to church. I felt like I was making a difference and doing something when I was in Lithuania. What was I doing here? What was the point? These were not good feelings at all. Soon came a very timely sermon titled "Actively Waiting," and I realized that more than anything, I needed to just stay involved and do all I could while I'm here waiting. So I took a deep breath and decided to focus on the now instead of the later.

However, with focusing on "the now," I began to see some things in my life that needed to be changed if I wanted to get to "the later." The first thing I changed was the consistency of my walk with God. I had a fairly regular prayer life before, but somehow it mattered even more now. I had to keep the communication lines open with God, praying without ceasing. Additionally, I had to get better with my Bible reading habits. I decided that the Bible should be read more than any other book on any day, and as a college student with tons of reading to do, that was a difficult task. However, although not easy, these things have been totally worth it.

The more difficult change came from weeding things out of my life. I began to notice some little changes that needed to be made, and the most difficult things about those was just developing better habits. The more consistent prayer life and Bible reading helped tremendously with that, as good habits took the place of bad ones. The hardest thing to remove from my life was relationships. Honestly, I had a few that needed to become less important to me so they'd be less influential. But there was one that had to be severed completely.

You may see it as drastic, but I see it as obedient. I was in a relationship that was getting more and more serious, and I honestly saw myself staying with him and marrying him. However, it became apparent that I had a choice to make. I couldn't stay with him and follow God's plan for my life. The two happening together was just impossible. As many ways as I tried to make it work in my head, it just couldn't in reality. I'd been praying about our relationship, but my prayers became more consistent, and more desperate as I sought a definite clarity during this time. Few people know the specifics of this, but finally, in frustration, I gave God a kind of list of demands, "If you don't want me to stay with him, do this, this, and this!" I know it's okay to pray specifically, but I did it the wrong way and in the wrong attitude. Still, God answered it in all its specifics within hours (when I had demanded "within a week"). Soon thereafter, I made the decision I needed to: I chose God over him.


Throughout this journey, part of a Scripture from my earlier Bible quizzing years has been constantly on my mind. "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required." Luke 12:48

As I've prepared myself spiritually to move forward with God's plan for my life, I've also been making sure I'm on the right path to end up where I need to as far as with school, career goals, etc. Some great opportunities have opened up to me, and I'm excited for all that's happening. But I'll save that exciting news for the next post.

Home Sweet Home... Alone: Some Closing Thoughts

When I got home on Thursday, August 2, my family was away camping. Although I was more than anxious to see them, I got some much needed alone time.

I know I've already talked about some reverse culture shock, and after my stay in New York and Missouri, I was already reclimatized to the United States enough. But being home though adds something to the mix. I'm having some pretty condradictory feelings. There's so much to say, I hardly know where to begin...

I learned that I'm more capable and independent than I thought. I also learned that there will always be people I need to rely on, especially my church family. I took on traveling alone well enough, and I even thought I'd do alright in London by myself, but I was glad to find church family around the world to be there for me. In Lithuania, I found myself far more bold than I expected. I was okay with getting around, going places alone, and asking questions. It definitely drew me out of my shell. But again, I was greatful for my church family who made my stay incredibly more enjoyable and fulfilling.

I also learned a lot about culture and cultural differences. The program at ISM threw groups together from various countries, forcing us to work together and attempt to bridge the gaps and see eye to eye. This experience definitely helped me understand and appreciate the differences between people.

This leads me to say a little about my thoughts on globalization. I honestly didn't have too much of a positive or negative view of globalization before my travels, and now I can say much the same, only with a little more thought backing it up. I think globalization is a good thing in the aspects for what it can to for an economy. One of the friends I made in Lithuania at the church told me that in recent years, a lot of Lithuanian young people have been leaving the country to try to get a better chance for work elsewhere. Globalization can help this in a sense, possibly bringing more jobs to the country and thus boosting the economy. However, I understand that globalization can be detremental to a society's culture. All things considered, globalization is a good thing as long as the people of a society can hold firm to their culture and its elements.

After this experience and learning about people and places around the world, coming home to Colorado was bittersweet. I love this state, and I've lived here my entire life, but it almost felt like returning to a little box when I have had a chance to explore and venture much further out. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be back, but I feel like a bird that just was made to return to a cage. Nonetheless, I am excited to return to UNC in the fall.

I do plan on returning to Lithuania, and if you want that whole story, read "The Bigger Picture: A God Thing," a post on this blog that you can get to by following this link:  http://growinglobal.blogspot.com/2012/07/bigger-picture-god-thing.html

I'm excited for what the future holds, and I definitely recommend an experience like this for everyone who has the chance.

NABQT

One of my Bible quizzing coaches, Krystal, came to pick me up at the airport in St. Louis. I was greeted by a warm hug, and then we were off to the Renaissance Hotel, where we were staying and where the North American Bible Quiz Tournament (NABQT) was taking place.

I have to be honest, at this point, I wasn't very excited for nationals. I was missing Lithuania more than anything, and although it was nice to see my friends from back home, I didn't want to be back home. Orientation that evening seemed to drag on. Then we got some bad news.

I was on a team of five, and our usual team captain who is our best quizzer, was also on her way back from Europe, was sick and missed her connecting flight in New Orleans. She would not be there the next day for our first quiz.

So Sunday morning, we went in to our quizzing session, prayed, and began. We lost pretty badly. I felt like I couldn't process the quiz master's questions as he was speaking. I felt like I didn't know how to make my thumb hit the buzzer. It was incredibly frustrating, because I know I could've beat the other team to the questions, but I was out of practice, and so we basically handed the other team the quiz.

Luckily it was double elimination, and by the time we quizzed our second quiz, which would be on Monday, Lauren, our usual captain, would be there. It didn't really matter though. It so happened that the Texas team that took first place at nationals last year lost a quiz this year, moved down to what we affectionately call "the losers' bracket," and fell into place on the matrix to quiz against us next. Needless to say, my less-than-fully-prepared team lost, thereby completing my Bible quiz career.

On Tuesday evening, we gathered for "Prayer and Share" when last year Bible quizzers give speeches, and the quizzing community prays together. I have to say, I think this year's Prayer and Share was the best I've ever been to. Even though we had 30 last year quizzers giving 5 minute speeches each, and it went on for quite a while, every speech was great. Every single one of the quizzers shared unique experiences, and every word was from the heart.

Afterward, Bro. Faubert, our national quiz master for the experienced division, spoke on "The Donkey and the Titanic." Although brief, that was a great message to hear at Prayer and Share my last year. He spoke about how we can't be content with being "one and done" and how we have to equip ourselves to make sure we're not. It was a great night overall.

Wednesday was finals. The Texas team that beat us got second place this year, and Columbus, Ohio won first. That night we had our Bible quizzing banquet where awards for teams and individuals were given.
I have to give a huge shout out to our Colorado 1 team from Abundant Life Tabernacle in Johnstown, Colorado. Michael and Elise Schroeder are the best Bible quizzers I know. Not only did they master their material, preparing themselves to be competitive at a national level, and thereby earning 4th place in the country, the highest Colorado has ever gotten, but they are also great examples of what Bible quizzers should be, dedicated to the Word of God, genuine and compassionate people. Michael also got second highest scoring quizzer on the all tournament team and quizzer of the year, an honor he deserved more than anyone.

Although my last year was bittersweet, I'm glad to be done with my years as a Bible quizzer. The five years I had were great ones, filled with memories I'll never forget, but more importantly, they grounded me in what I believe and allowed me to get to know more about the amazing God I serve.

Was I Begging for Reverse Culture Shock?

I arrived at JFK Airport in New York the evening of July 26. I didn't sleep much during the roughly 11 hour flight from Kiev. Instead, I learned 50 more verses and reviewed my Bible quizzing material for the impending national competition.

Upon arrival, my foot was hurting more than it was when we took off. I don't think I mentioned this before, but my foot began hurting and swelling the last day of camp. I wasn't sure what I did to it, and I didn't think anything of it. But it was getting worse and worse, and by the time I got to my hotel in Manhattan the evening of the 26th, I could hardly walk on it.

The next day, Friday, I would have the entire day in New York to do whatever I pleased. I first did as recommended by my mother and grandmother and went to an urgent care center to have my foot looked at. The doctor there sent me to have it xrayed, thinking it might be broken. While waiting to be called with the results, I went to the New York Public Library and blogged. I was overwhelmed as I walked around the city. One thing vastly different about America is that there are people of all colors, shapes, and appearances; Eastern Europe is less diverse to be sure. But the thing that stood out to me most was the volume. I think one thing is that my surrounding every-day conversation for the past few weeks has been in languages I don't understand, and suddenly I could hear everything around me. But another thing is, yes, Americans speak really loudly! Plus, I was in New York city. What in the world was I thinking? Going from Vilnius to New York was not exactly an easy transition. Not only that, I was also going from being surrounded by people I know to being alone in a big city. Reverse culture shock hit me in that I probably looked like a deer in the headlights the entire day. When people I didn't know smiled or spoke to me, I thought it was the strangest thing because that doesn't happen in Eastern Europe. It was all very interesting.
Later that day, the doctor called to tell me my foot might be fractured, but there was nothing that could be done; however, I should stay off of it and ice it.

That was almost funny. I was travelling to St. Louis the next day for Bible quizzing nationals in which we dress up, and I was planning on wearing high heels. I was also planning on playing volleyball. And then I had a long road trip home. Staying off of my foot was not really an option.

As for my evening, I decided to take a walk over to the Empire State Building, which was a short 8 blocks away. I had to do something while I was in New York. What was I going to do? Be content with a doctor appointment and sitting in a library? No, I went to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building where I was met with a great view.


But this view was one that made me miss the views in Vilnius more than anything. Being the exact opposite, a busy, noisy, bright city, this New York view made me long for the smaller, quieter, more peaceful town surrounded by hillsides sprawling with forests in Vilnius.

Upon getting back to the hotel, I received a phone call informing me that my flight to Chicago (where I had a connecting flight to St. Louis) was cancelled. It ended up being a good thing, giving me a direct flight out of Laguardia, to which I could catch a shuttle for $20, instead of my flight to Chicago O'Hare from Westchester, to which I was going to have to pay about $120 cab fare. So I was actually grateful for the flight cancellation.

Saturday afternoon, I got on the plane, excited to see my friends in St. Louis.