If you don't know already, I've been on a 10 day trip to Lithuania among a group of 3 egyptians as part of a youth exchange project organized by the EuroMed.
I have posted before about the trip to and back from there. So this one is about the actual stay in Lithuania.
This was actually my first youth exchange project so I had little to no expectations. Only hoping to enjoy the stay at least a bit, not get too homesick, and to come back not regretting it. Little did I expect to have this so-much-fun, so-much-educative, and enriching experience.
We had people coming from 6 different countries. Lithuania, Poland, Malta, Italy, Jordan, and Egypt.
So going back in time to Saturday the 13th of August at 10:30pm when I set foot in vilnius airport. Our lithuanian host Vidas had come to take us to the small village Upyte in Panevėžys where we should be staying for the most part of the next 10 days. He drove a 270Km round trip just to take us from the airport and back.
First impressions were that it's much quieter than Egypt, 10pm over there seemed like 4 am in Cairo. I began worrying that it'd be boring, but I was too exhausted to even think about it seeing that I'd been travelling for 24 hours (thanks to 12 hours in transit in Prague)
An hour and a half later we arrive at the school which had been prepared for our stay. The jordanian, polish, and lithuanian group had already started in the morning. We get out of the car, carry our bags, only to be greeted in true Egyptian fashion by a group of people we can barely see in the pitch black darkness. "Masr Masr Tahya Masr" (Long Live Egypt), "Belady Belady Belady" (the national anthem), and "El Ged3an, El Regala" were all being shouted and sang. Turns out the jordanian group (knowing arabic) had led the welcoming and the polish and lithuanian were repeating after them the sounds they're hearing. It felt amazing, all my fears of not having fun, not communicating with people, not being welcome instantly vanished and a big smile was drawn on my face and was to stay there for the next 10 days.
A few minutes later and the Italian group arrives. They had driven all they way from south Italy, a trip of around 2700Kms over 3 days.
Someone's photo of my face right upon my arrival
We go inside to unpack, and then start to get to know the place and the people. We were introduced very quickly to everyone, and to my amazement I find everyone sitting around a shisha (water pipe)! Turns out the jordanians brought one with them and so almost each night we'd sit around it, have a multi-national conversation and smoke shisha all together.
Now this is getting too long and taking too much time so I will just append a Part I to the title and publish this now and then continue to write tomorrow in Part II.
Stay tuned because things are about to get exciting.
P.S.
This is a picture of the cafe I was using in Prague airport to post the previous two posts on the blog. Just thought you might wanna see it:
1 comment:
That sounds interesting.. waiting for the rest.
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