Meeting the President of Lithuania: A Journey Through Lithuania's Cities

Here we go again for another month in Lithuania! I have to admit that I am not still fluent in Lithuanian even if I know some basic words. But I am trying to learn more since Jelena teaches me new vocabularies every single day which I am grateful for her. However, I don't focus on learning the language even though I know that I should.

I went to Trakai again for my midterm training. It was the fourth time to go there. And I would go four times more as the city had the most beautiful views and history in Lithuania. I met a lot of good people who were also volunteer. Additionally, the trainers Jonas and Aistė were professionals and so funny that this training was much better than my arrival training. Everyone shared their experiences and issues that they had to deal with their organisations. Consequently, I realized one more time that i was so lucky to be in Sirvintos youth center as they are always kind and ready to fix any issues easily.

It was a Earth Day on 20th March. Therefore, we made activities related to Earth Day in Gelvonai and Musninkai. As it can be seen in the picture that, one of the teenager held our lovely plant ''Groot''. We planted together and named it as ''Groot''. They had a mission that each of them had to take care of Groot for one week. If they could not, there would be a punishment for them such as 1 minute plank or 50 squat. I am sure that Groot won't die soon. :)

In Musninkai, we also planted salad and our beautiful flower Nina. Moreover, we played voleyball and some kind of outdoor activities due to the warm weather. The weather is unstable now. It is always changing. It is raining and then snowing just a little bit and after you can feel the warmth of sun. For this reason, you can not know what to wear. As soon as we saw warm weather, we decided to play together turside with youngsters of Musninkai.

In another day in Musninkai, We had a chance to visit Kernavė which is a city protected by UNESCO due to the fact that there are some historical sites that it is believed that Vikings built to lived. It felt peaceful to breathe. We visited old Church and met the priest that he introduced us Kernavė's infomaus cat. The cat has lots of followers in Instagram and it was a little bit chubby. Jelen explained us she took a role as a European Hun warrior in the Hollywood movie called ''Attilla'' and they took lots of scenes in Kernavė. She even met the actor who played Attilla which his original name Gerard Butler. I know this actor from the movie ''The Phantom of the Opera'' that is one of my favourite movie.

Rokiškis Youth Center invited us to their youth center. Rokiškis is another city which is located in north of Lithuania. We presented our youth center and what kind of activities we had mostly. Also I explained what mobile youth work was and what kind of functions and opportunities we had in Gelvonai and Musninkai. In the picture, you see that I was describing the mobile youth work logo. We learned that there were disco room and professionel dance group that they won lots of competitions. Although they didn't have any internatonal volunteer, they expressed that they would like to have international volunteer with the help of Živile in the future when they met with us.

We also went to Kedanai which is another great city. We visited one of the schools in order to represent our countries and our job as a volunteer. Joao and I were in another class while Kerem and Aydan were taking another class. First we asked students to demostrate a quick presentation about Turkey and Portugal. After them, we presented our countries and explained traditional dances, meals and words. They were eager to listen to us since this was also first time for them to see a foreigner in their city. It was a great time for me to see being a teacher in different environment and different city. Even though the school in Kedanai was a state school, it felt like it was a college or private school since there were a lot of opportunities for the students.

On Friday, the current president of Lithuania came to visit Sirvintos High School and he answered the questions of students related to youth and youngsters. I had a chance to meet with him. I asked him what the most precious things to do for the Lithuanian teenagers was. I appreciated the fact that he had a courage to meet with us and answers all the questions.

This was the month that I personally met with Lithuanian president himself and visited so many cities. It was an unforgattable time for me. I am looking forward to spend a lot of months in Lithuania! See you soon!