I have joined Postcrossing. For those of you who don't know, it's this nifty thing where you send a postcard to some random person in the world, and then you get a postcard from some random person in the world. Thus far, I have received postcards from Russia, the Netherlands, Finland, Romania, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and the U.S, and have sent postcards likewise. Being me, I try to write poems on the postcards I send. One of my recent postcards flew to a young woman in Russia who said in her profile that she was pretty sure she was Sherlocked. For those of you haven't seen BBC's latest stroke of brilliance, this is a reference to the excellent adaptation of C. A. Doyle's original stories (which I just finished reading this August--three books for three summers). It's created by Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss and stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as a modern day Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. I've heard some complaints about the idea of modernizing Sherlock Holmes, but in my opinion, it works. And it works because the people who created it are true Holmes fanboys who trust the audience to be likewise. Though their versions of the stories include some serious rewriting, they stay true to the characters. Sherlock is as much an egotistical smartass as ever and John is the ever reliable sensible best friend who keeps him from tipping over the edge. And the series is peppered with references, some rather obscure (like the unsolved case about the boy who went back for his umbrella, which is also, apparently, a real case) and others not so much (such as Lestrade invading Sherlock and John's flat on a "drugs bust." I could go on and on. But I'll stop. Because as much as people on this side of the internet know not to get me talking about this, you probably don't yet (not that you have a choice.) Anyway, I thought I would share what I wrote on the postcard I sent her. From one Sherlock fan to another:

I was excited as Watson on first meeting Holmes
He's a whiz with a microscope, and he cracks codes!
When he faced Moriarty, I was scared as could be
And I waited a year to hear the Bee-Gees?
That's okay Moffat, you brought us Adler and the Hounds.
It makes perfect sense Sherlock fever's goin' round.

Perhpas this title should be changed to "graduate cooking disaster," but to quote Avenue Q, "I wish I could go back to college." Yes I want to live in a residence hall again, so I can have (drum roll please) privacy. At least there, I only have to live with one other person. Wait, you ask, hoe many people are you sharing a room with? Well, no one. Only, the annoying part of my resident advisor position is back--I can be awakened at any hour of the night, for an undeclared amount of time--and I don't even get the game night's that went along with that. We do play games, but we play the same game every night and my dad doesn't like strategy games, so I am Pandemic starved. The conversations that occur over pinochle in this family could be scripted. It's the same thing every night.

So, people can come into my room whenever they please, and there is no part of the house which I can go to without bothering anyone else or risking serious dehydration or other heat-related problems. (This is not an exaggeration. It has been 90-100 degrees F here since I got back from Lithuania.) My computer is in the hottest part of the property.

I also miss the mobility, which I apparently got WAY too used to in Albuquerque and Klaipeda, where I could walk everywhere. Now I'm suddenly eight or so miles from the nearest grocery store with no car. I MUST depend on someone else to get anywhere. And I am not inclined to cook unless I can buy the ingredients myself for the reason of today.

My dad asked me to find Spinach Artichoke dip and in his infinite wisdom (don't get me started on his cooking wisdom--he doesn't know brown sugar from turbinado sugar) bought powdered cheese, which no one in this family has eaten pretty much since I left for college. So why powdered cheese all of a sudden? Well, it's cheap. It's easy. IT'S FRUSTRATING AS HELL! Quite simply, powdered cheese does not melt. Nor does pre-grated cheese. Yes, it will melt if you cook it long enough, but if you grate the cheese yourself (I don't care if it takes longer) it melts much faster and steadier, so your other ingredients don't overcook. Also, powdered cheese usually messes with the texture of a dish. Yes, there are sime dishes it works fine for, but most of the time, you want to stick with the real stuff, you know the kind that isn't coated with some kind of preservativegour body doesn't need anyway.

And I said I wasn't going to complain anymore. But there you have it. I'm just sick of my lack of independence. I need my own place. With a job. In a city. Or at least a car. I guess mom and dad won't have a squatter very long.

Before we begin this little tour, I want to explain a couple of similarities between Albuquerque and Klaipeda. Geographically, they are designed differently, but they both have multiple universities, a short bus ride from a large mall, multiple monuments and scultptures dotting the city, and a river which slices it in half. They also both have a sort of main street down which lies shopping, groceries, food, entertainment, and, if you go far enough, an "old town" area. It is down this street (Manto Gatvė--street in Lithuanian) we will begin.

As we walk, I don't want you to look at the student center, the bridge over the road as we enter the main part of the city, or even the concrete bricks the sidewalk is made of. Instead, watch the people. Look how normal they are. See there? That could be me, the carless college student who busses everywhere. Julie, Flit, and Emily are on their way to the bookstore. Courtney and Quinn usually go with them, but today they went shopping instead. Maybe that's them behind the manequin. That's certainly Lily and Susan in the window of the coffee shop across the street. Rose and Violet are racing each other home on their bikes. Simon is jogging somewhere in the woods, passing Jody on the way. Jody is walking her dog. Piper has found a quiet place in the sculpture park to work on her novel, and Zoey walks hand in hand with her sweetheart along the beach. Krysta and Cassandra are filming in Theatre Square. Krysta is director. Cassandra is head make-up artist. Somewhere, in one of these houses, is Bailey--the real Bailey--but the rest of them are only figments seen in passersby. The people are so normal you could imagine you are still in Albuquerque. I saw my sister today, in a green dress and sunglasses which hid most of her face. If you look carefully, you might even find yourself.

Now, if you listen to a passing conversation or glance up at a sign, you will remember you are not in Albuquerque. But let us not shatter the dream we have so cleverly built around us. Let us ease out of it more slowly. You might glance at your watch and find that, at five o'clock, the sun is still not sleepy. Better yet, notice the foliage across the highway, the bike lanes, bricked in a different color, the locks on the bridge crossing the river. Slowly, the petals of familiarity fall away as a new sensation blossoms. You are so lucky to be here. How did it happen? And why? These unanswered question marks are what makes life worth living, and in the moment you realize the ensuing silence is unimportant, you find yourself in perfect contentment, both at home and in awe of everything around you. This is the traveler's mindset.

Last time I was here, I tol my mom that I was dissapointed in the dorm. As Peter Pan might say, "I thought my roommates and I would join together like drops pf water." Turned out that most of the kids were from Virginia, and had been in Klaipeda for a couple of weeks already. They were already cliquing. The non-Americans in the hall mostly kept to themselves. Mom told me I had a special dorm, made of people who liked to sit around and talk about pi. Most dorms aren't like that. But I've noticed a few structural differences.

First, an examination of the UNM residence halls: I told Chloe a few months back that the apartment style aren't good for what RAs call "community building." This is because each aparentment has five people sharing a full kitchen, living room, and bathroom. And each of these five people has their own bedroom within the apartment. The suit style isn't much better--five people share a bathroom. The kitchen is public and only one of the five has his or her own room, but the real problem is that each set of five is its own little corner, away from the others. Inly the traditional halls which have (1) public restrooms, (2) public kitchens, (3) double rooms, (4) public study areas, and (5--most important) a shared hallway which means a resident passes many another room on his or her way to any of these places or outside, are well built for the natural formation of a community.

Now a bit about the halls at LCC, or Nuemann at least: the rooms house four people. They share a bathroom. Within are two two-person bedrooms, which do not have doors on them. This and the public kitchen area makes for a pretty good community set-up, but five ofthese rooms form a "pod," which is sectioned off from the other pods in the hall. Therefore, meeting anyone but the other nineteen (or fewer) in our corner requires going out of your way. Cultural and language barriers may also cause some differences, but I feel that different arcitechture could make a world of difference.

Anyway, the masters students seem to share a pod. When I got in, I accidently went to the other 3rd floor pod first, which was decorated with floor decs and door decs. The pod has a sports theme, and the lounge has a cleaning schedule. Then I made it to the right place--no door decs, no floor theme, no lounge cleaning schedule, no RA. I guess it's because we're masters students, so they trust us to be more mature. Still, the bleak look of the hallways made me want to go to Iki and buy some markers to mKe door decs. But after a day or two, I changed my mind. Of course, had I made door decs, they probably would have been the IPA ones I made for my residents, which would have been fitting, since our first class is an introduction to linguistics.

Yes, classes have started, which excited me because I LOVE linguistics! I seem to have more backgroundthan the other students, so thus far, the material is mostly review. I hope three things with this: (1) that I don't get cocky about it, like I did at UNM, (2) that I don't make the other students feel rushed. There is no reason they should feel like they have to progress faster just because I have a minor in linguistics. That would be like me thinking I'm behind in learning to make lesson plans because some of them are teachers, and that's just silly. And (3) I hope that if I understand it better than they do I can help them. This is a teaching program, after all, maybe this will help me get expereience. Just like reading a book again, even review has something new.

I also got a roommate last night. She and Annie and I had lunch together, and she talked to me about my religious background. You might not know much about it because short of an extended dicussion about Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy about five years ago, I haven't talked much about religion on Xanga. But I'm liberal, politically and religiously, and I think Wren might be conservative, based on her comments (and lack thereof.) So I wonder what she's thinking...

Anyway, back to residence halls: Despite being a masters student, and not needing an RA, there's still a point of contension upon my level of adulthood. We were provided no baking pans in our kitchen, nor a skillet, nor a cheese grater. The skillet and the grater I can mostly get around, but you can't make brownies without baking dish. So Annie and I ventured up to the sixth floor, where the staff and faculty are located. I asked if I cold borrow some cookware--I would use there kitchen, instead of taking it back down, and wash it afterward (the washing was implied, but I figured it went without saying, just like me having my own ingredients.) Anyway, I gave the person I talked to permission to say no, and she didn't she seemed quite nice, until she came in later and tried to tell me that the stuff up there was for staff and faculty only. First of all, she had the chance to tell me in the first place. Second of all, I don't think it fair that only staff and faculty should be allowed touse the ovens in their lounge. It really limits what we can cook. (No pizza, fritata, lasanga, spinach cheese dip, etc.) and we're limited enough by what we can and cannot find (or translate!) in the store. Look at me, here I am being a negative complainer. I told myself I was going to stop doing this.

So yes, in otherness, I have read 1 and been transformed. I have a goal to make the world a better place, and I am going to start by overhauling my attitude. I like to complain. So I'm determined to stop. Okay, I can't stop having negative or judgmental thoughts. But I can start emphasizing the positive. This is my goal. So if you catch me doing otherwise, you should chastise me. Anyway, I found a pan, I wasn't sure if the resident of the pod I talked to was comfortable with my using it, so I will try to ask another resident of another pod if they have such a pan in the future. Or buy one. It's only money, after all, and if I can fly all the way here, it's likely I've got the funds for a baking pan.

Goals for the trip: (1) befriend non-American classmates, (2) write poems for all classmates emphasizing their strengths and what I like about having them as classmates (distribute) (3) try to make a general difference by maintaining a positive attitude and friendly demeanor.

I took a class last year called "Travel and Contact" about the process of traveling and what makes traveling different from tourism. So, I hope I'm a traveler, not a tourist. But I certainly didn't feel that way walking around Nida with Annie the other day. First of all, Nida is a touristy town, second there was a lot of running around asking people to speak English, and most of all was the constant use of Annie's phrasebook (which is better than mine.) On the other hand, there are elements of my story here that are far from tourism: regular shopping at the local Iki being the most apparent. (For those of you who don't know, Iki is a supermarket like Smiths or Albertsons.)

Living on camous isn't much different from living on campus in Albuquerque. Annie describes some of the residents as immature, but I mostly think they are like my residents back home. This is not to say they are not immature (residents back home, I can still see you on that scooter!) only that this is not surprising. We all view other countries as different, but short of locks turning the opposite direction, I'm more inclined to see the similarities, at least between students. Watching the Eurocup in the lounge downstairs is exactly what would happen in Hokona if it happened in a month other than June. And the boys constantly playing video games? Just like passing the folks in the Entropy Lounge. The RAs still put up door decs (more on that later) and the desk attendents still get bored at their jobs. Residence Life is the same in every language.

I don't know exactly what this says about travel and contact, but it does make me feel less like I'm in another country and more like I'm... Well... Home. So does living in the same building I was in two years ago. I was trying to decide when it would kick in that I'm back in Lithuania, but I wonder if it will at all. It might just seem like business as usual.

Of course, that's not the way to travel either. It's about being open to new experiences and rissing yourself of self-concsiousness, which I also did in Nida, marvelling at the incredibly colorful houses and not worrying about just when we will get home. I alos did that today as we walked along the Baltic, taking in the sea air, watching the boats, getting covered in sand (and getting violently sunburned--another thing which is not new) and trying not to get hit by bicycles (Klaipeda is a very bicycle friendly city. This makes me happy.) my calves are a little tired, but they can rest on Monday, when classes start and my brain takes over.

Goal fro traveling: eat new food. Start with desert.