October 5-15 I was outside of Ukraine. That was weird, but the trip was wonderful. It was really strange to have all the travel--so much travel!--go smoothly. No evacuations, no delays, no explosions: I guess that is what normal life is like when you're away from war.
(I will say that planning and setting everything up before I went seemed nightmarish. Again: so many details! And I was doing it all with, as Will said, "children sitting on my head" most of the time, sometimes very literally. Our favorite little people who were our guests for the whole month before I went were with us up until the day before I left. Their family was moving out of our house while I was packing for my trip.)
The purpose of the trip was three days of meetings in New Jersey with the AmblesideOnline Advisory and Auxiliary. (I'm on the Auxiliary.) We have lots of online meetings and work together behind the scenes all the time, but they decided that we needed some focused time together in person to go over the upper years of the curriculum and make changes. Back when I looked at tickets to go, I saw that the cheapest airport to fly out of was Vilnius, which put a visit to Raia into my head, and then the dates of Asya's return trip fit in, too.
So, I travelled all day by bus to Krakow, spent the night there, and took trains all the next day to get to Vilnius. After another night there, I had a little bit of time to walk around Vilnius and see sights from books that our girls and I have read before my flight to Denmark. Denmark was the only place where things were a little tight; that flight was a tiny bit late, but a lot of people were making connections, so they held the next flight, and I made it.
Then I arrived in the USA. That was the only unpleasant moment of the whole trip. I hadn't been there for 7 years, but always before I'd heard that weird-to-me phrase "welcome home" and stamp and through. This time a passport that had never been in the USA and coming from Ukraine meant that I was whisked away to a back room for aggressive questioning. But I got through that, met up with my friends, and made it to the beautiful house in the woods they'd rented for our time together.
The first morning in New Jersey (or New York? we were right on the state line) I saw a bear! Like I said, the house we were staying in was out in the woods. I was drinking coffee on the deck very early before anyone else was up, and I saw a bear walk by. Then I went down to the creek and saw coyotes. There were deer and chipmunks all around.
We spent our focused time together talking, working, and laughing. It was amazing. Really, these women are the best. Any time I get to be with them is like a bit of heaven on earth. We sat around the table inside or on the deck and worked through one AO year after another, discussing books, books, and more books. All too quickly it was over. Saturday morning we packed up and headed to a very iconic diner for brunch. I felt like we were in a movie about small-town America. After lingering there, we went on to the airport and flew off in all directions.
Even then, my good adventures weren't over yet. When I arrived back in Lithuania, I got on a train to Klaipeda, where Raia is. She met me at the train station, made sure that I got to my little hotel (a room in an elderly lady's house), then went back to her dorm. Her days are very full, but the next day I sat in the library and food court at LCC and spent time with her between her classes and meetings and the tour she was giving for guests. That night we went to a poetry reading together. Tuesday I went for a long walk by myself, then sat around again. In the evening we went down to the sea to watch the sun set. Then Raia took me to a little cafe there on the beach. It was all just ideal.
The third morning of this leg of the trip I started out on a set of trains which brought me to Krakow and Asya by evening. It was so good to see her again after her six weeks in the USA! She and I spent the night in a hostel, then got on a bus the next morning. And then we were home.
A bunch of photos, in random order:
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| Yes, very random. Last photo of the group: In the bus on our way home. |
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| Klaipeda, Lithuania |
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| Something we always notice as soon as we cross the border |
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| Entering Lithuania |
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| Lithuania loves us. (Thank you!) |
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| A fun part of Vilnius |
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| No photo of the actual bear that I saw, but this was in the house there in NY/NJ |
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| NY also loves us. (Thank you!) |
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