basketball mania

As you may have guessed, most of my time lately has been spent watching basketball, celebrating Lithuania's wins, and recovering from the celebrations. I watched the last game (where Lithuania beat the US for the first time) at the Forum Palace, where Adamkus' victory party was. The crowd was pretty evenly split between Americans and Lithuanians, since the event was at the invitation of the US embassy.

-dr-

photo from china

My mom came back from China yesterday. She brought a ton of souvenirs back, but my favorite was her photos, especially this one. I mentioned back on 07.29.04, that I came up with the idea for Vilnius Mayor Arturas Zuokas to give a basketball signed by Lithuanian basketball legend Arvydas Sabonis to the mayor of Beijing. Well, the picture is of that mayor spinning it on his finger.

I'm getting my photos ready from the LiCS camp this past weekend, so stay tuned for those.

-dr-

jamboree

holy cow. left vilnius at 6am to go out to plateliai (a town near plungė) for the Liberal Center Union sąskrydis (jamboree). basically a woodstock-ish weekend of drinking, bball tournaments, and so on in the middle of nowhere by a lake. we left Vilnius in a big bus with a bunch of Vilnius LCU people on Saturday at 6am. at 6:01am, a fine fellow was pouring baltas (literally - white, or vodka (as opposed to brown, i.e. whiskey/brandy)). by 6:30am, the majority of the bus of about 50 old town chapter party members was wasted. our fellow was actually offering white, brown, beer, fried bread, and a whole trough of cheese. our first pitstop came at around 6:45am. the bus had no toilets, so we stopped a total of 3 times during the 4-5 hour journey. needless to say, we showed up an hour late, and everyone was wasted (11am). i had been signed up to play bball, volleyball, and soccer on the bus, but none of it ended up working out because everyone from that chapter was too drunk to do anything at all.

thank god i joined up with the lazdynai chapter upon arriving. they drank their fair share, but at least they were in somewhat control (at least some of them).

the star of the jamboree was supposed to be zuokas, the head of the party. he cut a trip to china short just to make it, and even took a helicopter from vilnius to get there in time. in the end, no one cared that he rushed back, and the press had a field day comparing him to the scandalous Paksas (former party chair and then impeached president).

that night there was a concert that was pretty cool and a huge campfire. i got back to a tent i was sharing with rasa at around 6am, and she had found some guy to sleep with (in our 2-person tent). seeing as i was drunk enough to not care, i crashed in there anyway. only problem was that i was sleeping on the ground, next to an inflatable mattress rasa had set up. it slid down on top of me during the 3 hours i tried to sleep, making it impossible to breathe. i ended up roughing it for the last 2 hours of sleep before the camp DJ (in raspy voice) woke everyone up from the stage.

the rest of the day was very lazy. did a bit of swimming and basically waited for the end and the hungover ride back to vilnius.

-dr-

camping in elektrėnai

went about an hour out of vilnius near elektrėnai to go camping at this beautiful lake. the only problem was a power plant that ruined the view at the other end of the lake. but no problem, just look the other way. the water was incredible. the camping itself was the highest-class camping i had ever done. chairs, wine, salad, etc. the best part of it all was that this one british guy in our party (alex) had met an italian guy (francesco) in budapest a week earlier. francesco was on his way from italy to estonia riding a 50cc vespa motorbike. francesco was full of stories and played guitar for a bit. all along, we did a good amount of drinking, enough to learn the next morning what the british term "piss holes in the snow" means (how your eyes look when you wake up after a night of drinking.

the next morning we cooked eggs in a frying pan over a campfire, did some swimming and some of us then left to come back to vilnius (with a slight delay by an old lady collecting hay on the dirt path that fit only one vehicle at a time and she refused to move until she was done with her work), while some stayed out at the lake for another night. i'm leaving for the liberal party "jamboree" tomorrow at 6am, so had to get back somehow tonight.

-dr-

Decided not to name these blog entries when I don't feel like it. So There. Going to go camping tonight with the British First Secretary to Lithuania (who is actually now the ambassador since the ambassador is away). Should be fun. 8 ppl going all together. Hopefully there will be some good pics going up soon...especially since there's a Liberal Center Union sąskrydis (jamboree) this weekend out in the wilderness which I am also going to.

-dr-

Last day of the Liberal Youth camp. Since we told the bus that we had gotten there with that we didn't need it to get back, we were almost stranded out near Anykščiai. We were about to give up and start hitching, but we found someome who was about to leave for Vilnius with an empty car. Score! So we got home. That's all.

-dr-

LJ camp

Left Vilnius on Friday to go to the Liberalaus Jaunimo (Liberal Youth) camp. And by youth they mean anyone, but mainly high school seniors through college grads, but there were even people 40+. But I get ahead of myself. My friend Neringa invited me to go, saying that a ride, tent, and even sleeping bag would be provided...I just needed to bring food/drink, clothes, and 8lits for the camp fee. Turns out the bus driver actually wanted to charge money to drive us out there (imagine that!), so that cost 17lits. No big deal, just unexpected.

Our destination was Lake Rubikiai not far from Anykšciai, about an hour and a half north from Vilnius. Beautiful. The lake and surrounding area were gorgeous. Total, there were about 50 people there with tents and music blasting from their cars. I was surprised to get an actual printed schedule on arrival, but turns out it really was more or less a joke. Not much of it was followed.

First night consisted of meeting new people, sitting around campfires and playing games like charades. Some guy was going around to each campfire instigating fights, and he eventually got what was coming to him, which turned out being a trip to the hospital. Someone beat his face in after he started picking on them. Well, the Anykšciai cops eventually came around to make a half-assed attempt at figuring out who was involved. No luck. Whoever was involved stonewalled them.

One interesting thing was that everyone naturally set up their camps according to city. Vilnius, Kaunas, and all the rest...they camped totally seperately.

The next day was a little better. There was a DJ, and there were different competitions like basketball and soccer. I played soccer and scored 3 goals in one game. Go me. Oh yeah, and there was an intellectual quiz game, where 10 or so teams would have to try and answer questions like "what is the ground in the lowest level of hell covered with?". Our team came in 3rd. Afterwards, we played a bit of volleyball, and then there was a "dance." The DJ blasted Lithuanian pop songs. The music wasn't so bad, but I was beat, so I crashed.

-dr-