Blog 7

Hello everybody, I kept you waiting for a long time for this blog, sorry for that. It is because I didn’t know what to write about. Maybe you guys want to know more then just the things I do. So this time I am going to tell you what I did and how the schools in Lithuania are., and about the differences with schools in The Netherlands.

Last month was kind of chaotic. In my last blog you might have red that I officially made my debut in the Lithuanian basketball competition. That seemed to be not correct, my coach asked the opponent coach if I could play ‘illegal’ in the game and she said yes. This week I finally received my documents after 4 months being in Lithuania and I saw that they wrote my “name” wrong on the player ID. They wrote Lotte Maria Wilhel van Malsen, hopefully that doesn’t matter because nobody uses those extra names. I was kind of done with the fact I couldn’t play. At the moment we don’t have any games because it is Christmas break. So I will hopefully start 2018 good.

December 2^nd I woke up, and I thought would be a normal Saturday. I had to go to basketball practice and to a Neptunus game. I went to my bathroom and who did I met, my parents! No not my Lithuanian parents but my Dutch parents! I was really surprised because I didn’t know anything about it. My parents talked together about this because they felt basketball license was still not “ok” and they hoped to be able to sort some things out and put some more pressure on getting it solved. I showed them some things in Klaipeda were I come a lot. Because so far I could only show photo’s you guys see everything though my pink glasses. I show you the things I want you to see, you guys don’t see how it ‘really” is which is kind of weird for me. I had kind of busy weekend, so I just took our for a typical “Lotte weekend”: basketball practice, Neptunus game, eating in Akropolis, seeing a game from my own team and we ended the weekend with going out for dinner with my both families.

8/9/10 December some exchange students from other cities in Lithuania came to Klaipeda. They are from Chile, Australia and Germany. Also 2 of my teammates joined our squad: Saule and Kotryna. We went for pizza and chilling on Saturday night. We showed them the sea and some other ‘beautiful” things in Klaipeda. Furthermore I noticed that meanwhile I can understand already “a lot of” Lithuanian. Only the step to talk back in Lithuanian back is hard, it is really easier to talk in English. With the exchange students we talk in English but in my eyes this should be Lithuanian. We agreed that we have to meet more often, an unofficial YFU meeting, because we have so much fun together.

16/17 December was as well busy but also nice. It started on Saturday morning with my first appointment at the doctor. I needed a health statement, so I could prove to school that I was ill the last week and that I had recovered. After that I went to a game from my team, which we won from Kaunas. Then I went to the bus station to sit 4/5 hours in the bus to Vilnius. We would have a Christmas party from YFU, I would be to late for this. But we stayed with the “Klaipeda squad” overnight. It was so nice to see everyone again, as I had not seen everyone on the last YFU meeting or last weekend. I also met 2 new exchange students from other organisation, they are from Canada and The United States.

Differences on school

Maybe these things described below are just for my school, because I can only compare my old school in The Netherlands with my school in Lithuania. I start with school uniforms: every school has its own school uniform, mostly consisting of a jacket. My school has a purple/ Bordeaux red jackets and sweaters. As I already told my school starts at 8:00, lesson take around 45 minutes and between each lesson they have a 10/15 minutes break. Furthermore I got the question what about the technology in class: we don’t have digital boards, we have green chalk boards. In some classrooms we have protectors. For a listening test we have cd’s and listen to it with a music player. Normally you eat a hot meal at school during lunch, where in The Netherlands everyone brings in their own sandwiches. Also how people travel to school is different because in Lithuanian people mostly come by bus or car, and in The Netherlands almost everyone is going by bike. Another weird thing for me was that you have 2 notebooks for each lesson, 1 for tests and 1 for your normal work. So if you just made a test you give this notebook to your teacher. They write there name, school and subject not on the front like we do in The Netherlands, but inside, on the first page.

If you have more questions for me about school or different subjects, just text me because I need some more blog inspiration. Hopefully see you soon.

Lotte