Blog 3 The first month

When I am writing this, I am sitting in the bus and it is 9:30. I am on my way to our 3th game for the final four in Alytus. This is 3 hour trip with our bus (comparable with driving from Tilburg to Maastricht and back). I have to travel really long to basketball game because the other basketball schools are quite far from each other. They are located in the bigger cities in the east and Klaipeda is near the sea (the west).

18 September: I am a month in Lithuania. The first month went so fast and it felt like a holiday. Hopefully this will change fast, because I don’t have holiday I have to go school and do homework.

You probably want to know what I did in the first month: I biked to the island, which is close to the sea. Here we visited the beach and drove around with our bikes. What I also did was going to school and I even celebrated the first school day (1 September). You maybe ask why should you celebrate your first day of school. (Welcome in Lithuania) I have no idea either, but they celebrate it by going to school in fancy, giving flowers and chocolate to the teacher and after te first day having dinner with friends or family.

At the moment I have 4 times a week basketball practice with my team and 1 game, but I am also training at school, around 4 times a week with shot- and dribble exercises. If I don’t have practice I try to go jogging twice a day for 30 minutes, so each day I am active. In my garden there is a basket were I spend my spare time.

What also happened this month was my birthday. This was maybe the hardest day till now. It was so nice that I got so many messages from all you guys. But because of that I realized I really miss you all. It helped that people started to make me happy: my classmates, my basketball team, my family in The Netherlands, USA and here, and of course all the sweet people in The Netherlands.

I have also undergone a new "tradition"….. My basketball team made me sit on a chair and they pushed me 17x times in the air for my birthday. After this experience I felt already a lot better. After a few days I realized that Lithuania is such a cool country with so many beautiful and sweet people and that it is really nice that all your guys are still thinking about me.

Kinds regards Lotte