Hello From Lithuania!

We made it! It was a LONG day(s?) of travel, but so far the trip has been WONDERFUL, and it is just starting!

I have lots and lots of things to blog about. I've been reading, listening to music, and watching movies while we traveled, and my brain has been in major processing mode, so some of those thoughts will make it to the blog, and some will not. But for now I am blogging as a way to waste time and hopefully make me sleepy.....it's after 4AM in Lithuania and I'm the only one still awake. Probably because I didn't get out of bed until 3PM today after sleeping over 15 hours (to make up for basically missing an entire night's sleep on the way here). I guess I have to force myself out of bed tomorrow (Beav and I are headed into town to explore) to get myself on the right schedule.

We may or may not have eaten McDonald's twice before we were even in Lithuania for three hours (once in Finland and once in Vilinus) but DON'T WORRY....the McDonald's in Finland was more of an "emergency meal" situation (since we were FREEZING and we needed to get back to the airport to catch our flight, so we couldn't do too much looking for lunch) and our McDonald's in Vilinus only came after we had more of an "authentic Lithuanian" meal (chicken and cheese wrapped in a pancake) and we needed to buy an ice cream treat in order to use the McD's bathroom before we got on our four hour bus ride.

We were thankful for smooth and safe travel (pretty much one of the best flights I've ever been on was from JFK to Helsinki). We lucked out with the best gate agent ever in MSP - we originally didn't have seats from MSP to JFK, so at the gate we needed to figure that out. As we approached the agent, I happened to be humming (or maybe singing out loud....) a song, and that made him laugh. Neither my sister nor I even realized I was singing (maybe a sign that I do it too often??) but he thought it was great, and I think he went the extra mile for us because we were pleasant to him. We got the best seats on all of our flights, sitting right by each other, and he was able to get us boarding passes all the way through to Lithuania (something he even surprised himself by doing), which was great, since we wanted to leave the airport in Finland to explore a little. S and L met us at the Vilinus airport to get us back to their home, which was wonderful, since Beav and I were hanging on by a thread at that point and we would have had a difficult time trying to figure out the bus/train/etc.

So we're here, we're exploring, and I'll maybe update as I have a chance.