When I started posting pictures of my semester, so many people said: “I never wanted to go to Lithuania until I started seeing your pictures”.
I spent my first ILP semester in Mexico and knew I wanted to go back for another. It’s probably one of the best things about ILP — if you volunteer once, you can come back as a Head Teacher which has some serious perks, like waiving your Program Fee (or getting you a serious discount) plus a stipend too. So once I made up my mind to start traveling again, I knew I had to experience Eastern Europe.
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To be honest, I knew nothing about Lithuania before I agreed to go. I knew it was somewhere over by Russia and that it was "one of those Baltic countries". But I just knew that because I was going with ILP, that it was going to be an amazing place.
And it was. I fell in love the first day we got to walk around downtown and see the city. And I fell even more in love when I started meeting the locals and learning about their history.
And by the end of the semester, I was absolutely head over heels for this country for a bunch of reasons. Get ready to just skim the surface of why Lithuania is the underrated spot you just have to come and see for yourself.
What I Wish I Knew Before Going To Lithuania
- All About The Travel Spots
- You’ll Have The Most Amazing Experiences
- The Strong History Here
- My New Friends
All The Travel Spots
Okay, if you’re volunteering in Europe, you’re setting yourself up for a semester full of traveling … that’s one of the main reasons why you chose this part of the world, right?
You can get direct flights that are just a couple hours to countries all over Europe. And weekends look like trips to the coast, sailing around a castle, and wandering through Latvia.
On my semester, it was simple to grab a flight to Sweden, visit Estonia, head to Poland, hang out in Hungary, and more.
Check out this itinerary that another volunteer wrote on how she spent 9+ days vacationing in Europe while living in Europe to get even more inspiration. It’s a good way to visualize what kind of countries you can visit during your vacation time, but you've really got endless options all across Europe from London to Rome to Athens!
You’ll Have The Most Amazing Experiences
I got so many comments on my Instagram pictures from my semester abroad here. Friends and family kept telling me that they had no idea Lithuania was so pretty, or that they didn’t have any desire to see this place until they started scrolling my feed.
I spent a warm day with blue skies sailing around an actual castle. Our Coordinator drove us around a national park that was covered in greenery, enjoying the day in fields filled with sheep. We wandered our city's downtown, full of cobblestone streets, snacking on kabobs and having cups of hot chocolate at cute little streetside cafes, and purchased art from vendors. We played in the sand dunes next to the Baltic coast and bought scarves that a sweet, elderly Lithuanian woman had made. I took a rickety old train ride out to a stop in the middle of nowhere that brought me to a mass grave memorial site for WWII victims. I had the best spaghetti of my life when one of our student's Italian parents invited us over to their home for dinner. It was more than I even imagined it would be.
The Strong History Here
One day my group and I were exploring Vilnius, the capital city we were living in, and we saw a big brick tower high up on a hill. We wandered up to check it out and get a pretty view of the city, but my favorite part was what I discovered inside the tower. Towards the top, there was a bit of a museum — it was a small room with beautiful black and white images lining the walls, with a story posted below each image outlining Lithuania's journey to independence.
To quickly catch you up on what was going on: around WWII time the Soviet Union forcefully seized the tiny country of Lithuania (along with several other nations) and despite Lithuanian opposition to this, it stayed that way for many years. Decades later, in 1989, the current Soviet leader made moves to improve relations with the west by giving the impression that they were loosening political repression and denouncing what had happened years earlier — that they had no right to use force to preserve already existing communist governments.
The Baltic nations took this as a sign that they may be able to finally regain their freedom. As a peaceful protest, two million people stretching 420 miles across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania held hands forming a continuous human chain that ran through the three capitals. This incredible act of strength is now known as The Baltic Way/The Baltic Chain. Their goal was to draw the world's attention to the unlawful actions that had put them in this position in the first place and to gain support for their desire to be free. And in 1990 (about 8 months after The Baltic Chain) Lithuania became the first to officially declare its independence.
I still remember what it felt like to stand in that room, learning for the first time about this country's powerful (and recent) history. I was so moved and that was the moment I fell in love with Lithuania. There's a really beautiful article here if you want to read more about it.
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This act of independence was however was beyond the scope of what the Soviet leader was anticipating and a statement from Moscow was issued: “Matters have gone far. There is a serious threat to the fate of the Baltic peoples. People should know the abyss into which they are being pushed by their nationalistic leaders. Should they achieve their goals, the possible consequences could be catastrophic to these nations. A question could arise as to their very existence.”
The Soviets launched a large-scale military operation and threatened to take action, but the Baltics received support from allies, the Soviet leader resigned, and the rest is history.
My New Friends
Before traveling to Eastern Europe I was prepped a bit on the culture to know that it's typical for the people to be a bit more stand-off-ish in public than we're used to in the United States, but that they are some of the kindest people in person. I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I figured I was in their country and I was going to follow their lead.
Just about every ILP volunteer will tell you that although teaching can be so challenging and exhausting, the one-on-one connections you make with your kids is really what makes the entire experience living abroad so memorable. I was just watching videos the other day of my students explaining to me how to play Red Light, Green Light in the little English they knew, and of how proud they looked singing songs in English for their parents at the Christmas party.
Once I made friends, they really were some of the warmest people! We made friends from church, through the school we taught at, and by waving hello to our neighbors we saw every day. All countries across the world are unique, but what I've learned from traveling is that when you get down to meeting and getting to know the people that live there, you can find you have so much in common.
Just one more thing
When it comes down to it, Lithuania is so much more than I can really fit into this post or with a few pictures. It’s full of things that you can only get if you go there yourself — in a nutshell, Lithuania is unbelievable but you really only get to know that if you see it yourself.
