I arrived home after spending my final two weeks in Kaunas. It was an interesting experience being in Kaunas for the holiday season, in fact what surprised me the most was how similar it felt to the holidays here. The malls were filled with people, shopping and buying gifts, there was Santa Clause, there were Christmas trees and decorations and people baking Christmas goodies. One unique tradition that they have is that the celebration and gift giving is traditionally done on Christmas Eve. Much of Christmas Eve is spent baking and making the evening meal, which normally consists of ma [View Full Entry]

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I am sitting in the lobby of a rehabilitation center just outside of Elektrenei, near Kaunas. Viktorija is here working as an apprentice and her mother is here for one week getting physical therapy for her back. Tonight we will stay here, hang out some, but for now I am sitting and writing. This waiting room is very funny. To me it feels very Russian. The outside of the building is grey brick, similar to many of the apartment buildings I saw in Moscow and to many buildings in Kaunas, including Birute and Juozas’ home. There is an old couple standing [View Full Entry]

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Frankfurt is probably one of the most boring cities I have ever been to. It is the financial capital of Germany, and it did not help that we went on a Sunday because (it would appear that) most people leave the city on weekends. The hotel I booked online ended up being in the Red Light District, one of the main streets near the main train station that was littered with strip clubs, sex shops, peep shows, etc. That could explain why it was so cheap. The final day of our stay in Frankfurt we did manage to find a more [View Full Entry]

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I am sitting on a bus right now with ten other people from all over the world. We are traveling to Schwetzingen, a neighboring town to Heidelberg, where the Freiburg Physical Virus Collective (tommy’s group) will be performing. And it occurred to me, as I sit here with all of these dancers, that there is not one single German on this bus. Let me tell you a bit about the people on this bus, in this company. There is Willy, who is French-Vietnamese, teacher and co-founder of ‘l’Art de Deplacement’ a specific art form that derived from freestyle streetwalking, or, Ya [View Full Entry]

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Tommy’s roommate is a woman named Julianna. She is German, originally from a small town about an hour outside of Freiburg. Julianna is also a performer/actor/dancer/singer. While I was staying with Tommy, Julianna was working on atleast four or five different shows/performances, all at once. One of her performance jobs was playing the role of a tap-dancing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in a holiday show for kids at EuropaPark, a sort of European Disney World (not to be confused with EuroDisney). It is actually more akin to Epcot Center, in that each section of the park is meant [View Full Entry]

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My time so far here in Freiburg has been very fun and interesting. Meeting lots of interesting people, hanging out in coffee shops, working on some dance performances, going running, walking around the city. Some exploring of the Black Forest, which surrounds Freiburg. My ‘savings’ from working in France has been disappearing much faster than I had anticipated, and as a result I have a very low budget right now. About a week ago it occurred to me that I might need to make some extra money somehow, so I began looking for work. Monday I got up early and hit [View Full Entry]

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I have now been in Germany for a bit over a week. Two Saturdays ago I took a train from the South of France to Paris, where I caught a flight to Basel Airport, which is just over the border in Switzerland. When you are exiting the baggage claim you have two choices: there is a Customs desk for ‘Germany/France’ which is stationed in front of the ‘Germany/France’ door, and there is the ‘Switzerland’ Customs desk in front of the Swiss Exit. Outside the exits there is a metal fence separating the two pickup areas, which are mirror images of each [View Full Entry]

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In the afternoon we went to Bordeaux with the Pineuilh baseball club to the ConforExpo. ConfoExpo is a regional trade expo held in a huge indoor convention center that is almost a mile in length. Included in the expo was a sports exposition showcasing all of the sports played in the Aquitaine region of France. I found it to be quite a bizarre event mainly because the sports were presented as a sort of novelty; many of the stands had a station set up where you could ‘try’ the sport, sort of like the games at a carnival or a state [View Full Entry]

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After the ceremony we headed back to Gensac to have pizza and watch the rugby match Chateau Carbonneau (Wilfred and Jackie’s home and winery). France lost the match 47-3. Then after the game, we got into an interesting conversation about youth baseball in France, in particular the 13-15 Year old French championship that took place in Paris a few weeks ago while I was back in the US. The Pineuilh team (us) finished third place in France, but because of a disqualification of the first place team, Montigny, they ended up finishing second. And they only lost to the first place [View Full Entry]

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This first photo is of Harry, Hugh, and Max, and Mr. Guy Fawkes. On Saturday we had a bonfire party at La Girade. It was outdoors, in what will eventually be the backyard terrace of the Tyler’s new house. For the moment it is still only dirt and mud, so all those invited were encouraged to bring their ‘Wellies’ to the party. Wellies are what they call rubber boots in the UK, because they were originally manufactured in a city called Wellington (I think). Trish and Mark cooked up squash soup, sausages (veggies for the vegetarians), and some sort of onion [View Full Entry]

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