by Rebecca Cooper
Christmas time! With the Halloween season officially over and Thanksgiving not existing in Lithuania, Christmas is my next official holiday. This means that the rest of the teachers and I have started playing Christmas music whenever we get a chance. We have had several mini parties where we just blast the music while we make our meals. I am the type of person who doesn’t like to hear Christmas music until the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. That usually marks the start of Christmas for me. However, I made an exception this year just because, as another teacher describes it, “Christmas is the light at the end of the tunnel for us”. It has almost been three months since we first got here. Most everyone is ready to go home and move on from teaching. I, personally, am not ready to go home but I am ready to get out of Lithuania.
Lithuania is a cold, miserable place and I’m not just talking about the weather. The people here for the most part look like they are digging their own graves. No one smiles or laughs in public unless they are drunk. The other teachers and I constantly get weird looks and aggravated glances because we may be smiling while getting on a bus or while simply walking. We have been not so kindly invited to “Shut the @!$% up” by some angry guy and told by a lady that “…we are silent on the bus. I think you need to know that.” I have been laughed at for pushing my host siblings on a skateboard and letting them catch me in tag because I look to much like a kid. This, apparently, is a valid reason for people to call the cops on you as I have been told by two separate people. This explains why parents never play with their kids. I also stick out like a sore thumb when I am in public because I wear sneakers and jeans instead of heels and tights. It just makes me laugh because I know these women’s feet hurt while I’m walking on Dr. Sholes in comparison.
The realization that people care WAY too much about what other people think of them in this society is rather depressing. It is soul sucking to have to become a different person when I leave the apartment because my personality and being does not fit in the steel two inch by two inch box of what is considered acceptable. My coordinator says the people are this way because Lithuania was ruled by the Soviet Union for so long. I am confused by this because everywhere that talks about Lithuanian history says that the Lithuanian people pride themselves in maintaining their spirit and values throughout the invasion. If this is so, what is their definition of spirit because I surely can’t find any in the people around me.