gerai :)

I just began class!  I've tested into the second level class :)  We learned 3 cases today!  Anyway, I'm meeting a lot of great people in this course who have similar backgrounds like mine - grandparents who fled the country in the 1940s or during Soviet times.  We've been doing several hours of language a day, and we have taken some cultural courses, too.  I like the course and I'm glad I'm taking it.  Ordering food, getting around, knowing what to say, and knowing how to act really works.

I'm really struggling with how to word my observations so far to you - I'm really into constructionist anthropology theory (that culture doesn't "govern" over people, but that people build the illusion of culture around themselves) and yet all I want to do is tell you all of the little "culture rules" that seem to control the behavior I have been analyzing and generalizing.  In my culture classes, we've been doing just that - studying culture "rules" and "how culture here makes people act".  I'll figure out a sensible way to explain things in a later post, but even just a week into the field, I'm really questioning the basics of how I can accurately describe and share what I see!  

Here are some pictures!  These include a rainy day in Vilnius and going out with new friends from class.  Ate - emily

Saturday Night!

I went out with friends J, S, and R to Trakai again.  The opera was playing inside the castle (it was impossible to get tickets - maybe that is a good thing, that it was so popular?)  S and R were making fun of the smoke and the costumes and horses, of course.  Look at how beautiful it is at Trakai in the evening!!

Then we went out to a Greek restaurant, where I met some more friends.  We went out to a club/bar afterwards, where MIA's Paper Planes was a big hit among the crowds.  One friend pulled out his umbrella and began singing "Singing in the Rain" for all of us.  It was a great night!

Supermarket Photos

Here are some photos from the supermarket.  Thought you might like to see the variety of meats, fish, breads, salads, and cakes that are for sale.  One bottle of sparkling Vichy water is about 50 cents (USD).  

The food I love best is delicious delicious delicious surelis.  It tastes like a dream:  pressed sweet cottage cheese that is covered in chocolate.  To me, it tastes like thick ice cream.  One of the pictures in the slide show below is the 20-odd surelis flavors they have for sale.  Also interesting are the Opera and Sonata chocolate bars - I've yet to try them, though.

By the way - "Soprano"...

Some of you have asked about the picture I took of a sign that said "Soprano" on it.  That is an Italian ice cream / gelato place!  "Soprano" is one of those Italian words that "everyone" here knows.  Lots of Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurants at home have the word "Amigos" in them.  Buzz words.  

So no, this is not a music store - but ice cream!   Ice cream in the afternoon seems to be a typical treat for people here.  Yeah, just another example of how Lithuanians eat so much food :)

Oh, this is for Dad:  I tried tongue this morning!  You would be proud.  It was tasty but (like everything here) really really rich.

Puppet opera! Voice Lesson! Television!

Here I am at Coffee Inn drinking an "Icy Spicy" drink!  I'm going to be coming here more often - it is much cozier than Double Coffee, and I really like the drinks.  Check out how cool my layered coffee looks!  

Well last night I had an incredible evening - I had my first lesson with Ms. Sigutė Stonytė .  [Here] is a biography of her in English.   My lesson was wonderful, she is a great teacher and I'm really looking forward to working with her more over the summer.  She is really nice - not in sugar coating her teaching or in her comments - but she made me feel so comfortable to be singing and trying strange exercises.  She loves my voice and she wants to specifically work on bel canto style with me.  

This paragraph is for the music friends:  I know I've been wondering, and some of you have been, too - she "diagnosed" me as a soprano, who may be a soprano for the rest of her life and could attempt to be a mezzo later, but she tested my range during exercises and said I was singing high Ds with no problem (!!!), and that my clarity at the top is characteristic of a soprano.  That's news to me!  Usually singing high is a disaster for me, so that was pretty much magic.  (Tension from schoolwork is gone?  Maybe it is my new yoga regimen?  Maybe that $3 Belgian beer I had two days ago?)  She is obsessed with air, and that really helps with sound.  Singing my recital music with her seemed so easy - I guess I've grown a lot in the last month.  She said I should focus on Baroque/Mozart music now, and she would be disappointed if in my 40s I wasn't singing Wagner.  For now, she wants to "lighten up" my vibrato and get me to finally stop pushing.  Yesterday she was able to get me to sound so much lighter and younger, and fast movement with my voice was not a problem.

Her daughter came to translate our lesson, and so I've made another friend over here!  She also went to the opera last night, where I met her father, an accomplished pianist.  We did a lot of exercises and sang through some of my recital music - it seemed like the hour flew by!  Her voice is absolutely beautiful - she is older and yet sounds so impeccably young.  

My lessons will be at the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy - [ here ] is their website.  This is just another example of my theory that if you put yourself out there, people are willing to help passionate people.  I had emailed the dean's and international relations offices at LMTA with information about myself and my research project, explaining that I am an aspiring singer and that I would like to try to work with a student who could tell me about studying music here.  They put me right in contact with their best opera teacher!  I feel so incredibly lucky to be working with her here.

 So I went to the opera last night - at the Rusu theater in Vilnius.  I've never seen a production like this!  There were life size puppets for both of the productions - this is very hard to explain, but let me try.  The stage itself was blacked out, with strategic lighting on the puppets, and the singers and orchestra were in a "pit" above the stage, looking down on the action.  In the first operetta (about a battle) - there were two sets of armor, each piece held by a different puppeteer.  The illusion was them running to each other to the music, in the battle, arms, limbs and swords flew everywhere in this beautiful sync with the music.  It was funny, too - at one point, arms and limbs were mixed up to create a spider-looking creature across the stage. In the second operetta, cute little clouds floated across the stage as the gods sang from above.  You see, puppeteers were inside of these puppets, so cute dancing human feet pranced about underneath the clouds that crossed the stage.   The gods were teaching humans a lesson (what else do they do?) and so the "people" were larger-than-life elderly women.  They had no torsos - just 3' x 2' disfigured faces, elaborate victorian-style hair, human pupetter arms, and huge skirts attached to their necks.  They whimpered and cackled over the music, and they jump-roped, picked at each other's lice, and danced while the gods sang to them.  Cute little demon puppets came out to play when that characteristic droning of Montiverdi's was played by an organ.  It was just so spectacular.  The whole audience burst out laughing when the flirtatious god puppets batted their big sparkly eyelashes at each other.  It was so fun!  Oh - everything was sang in really clear Italian, and the subtitles were in Lithuanian.  So I picked up a few new phrases from this, too.

What was so remarkable was that the majority of opera-goers were young people.  In my row alone were two girls with Mohawks, five young twenty-somethings, and several pairs of friends who were less than thirty, I'd estimate.  Going to the opera is really a cool thing to do here!  Ah, I love Vilnius.  Hmm, I'll have to post about the dreaded / pink haired Vilnius Hippie culture another time...

Tonight I'm going to go to the movies with my cousin Justa and some of her friends.

Speaking of friends - I've been watching some Lithuanian TV as I fall asleep, and one thing that has been on late at night is Friends in Lithuanian.  I've picked up a lot just listening and watching.  During the opening credits, they say the names of the actors and actresses, adding the appropriate endings to the names to denote gender (Mattas LeBlancas, for example).  It is pretty funny to watch.  They also have their own version of Friends here - the main characters are a slim brunette and a honey-blonde with a "Rachel" haircut :)  Their apartment walls are purple and green, too.

Well, I don't really have enough pictures to post from my camera yet, so I'll do that tomorrow.

Ate, emily

Opera Tomorrow Night!

Montiverdi!  

I just bought a balcony ticket for the opera tomorrow night, and I can't wait to go.  It is in Vilnius.  Check out the English version of the website here ---> click me!  

Once in a lifetime opportunity, right?  Wrong on two counts - One, I love it here and can't imagine I'll never come back (yes, I'm saying this after not even a week of being here).  Two, my ticket cost me 25 litas.  $10.12!!!  It wasn't even a student ticket (they were sold out of those).  

I checked out the Music Academy where I will meet opera singer Sigute Stonyte for a voice lesson.  I'm excited - but I can't gain access to the practice rooms until tomorrow, so I'm a bit nervous that I can't warm up and review my music today.  Tomorrow morning, bright and early I guess.

Video from Trakai --> click me!

Video from Cathedral Square --> click me!

viso gero - emily

Last Days With Dad

Dad and I had a wonderful time last night with our relatives, looking through pictures of family.  We found a picture of my dad's grandfather - it was the first time my dad had ever seen what his father's father looked like.  Duke (short for dadukas, my grandfather) didn't remember much of his father, and had mentioned that somewhere there was a picture of him, with a mustache - and lo and behold, our family had a labeled picture of him!  It also seems that he had a sister - one picture was labeled with the same name, but with the -ite ending, which means "Miss".  Putting two and two together - Dad's grandfather had a sister - my great great aunt!  What a powerful experience, rediscovering roots like this.

Getting dinner tonight with a friend from Harvard :)  For now, here are some pictures from the last two days... Ate!

In the name of my brother!

JONINES FESTIVAL!!!  After an amazing afternoon exploring the castles of Trakai, I went with my dad and my relatives to the festival of St. John (Tuesday night festival, Wednesday was a state holiday).  There was a lot of dainos singing - it was incredible to see and hear what I've been studying all year.  There were bonfires until past midnight, and people gathered to sing, drink, and celebrate.  Young unmarried women (that included me!) made wreaths of flowers - wading in the grass in flowers up to our wastes, picking and tying together flowers using long grasses.  I was supposed to throw my wreath into the Neris River at midnight - but alas, we left when the thunder and rain began to break.  I didn't want to throw mine into the water anyway - it was too pretty!  John, I did it all in the name of you.

[Here] is a video from the festival - just one song of so many that were sung.  At the end, my informants talk a bit about the meaning of this particular song.   

Driving Skills!

Watching Lithuanians drive is incredible.  Lithuanians don't seem to use their blinker (directionals?  I've always called it a blinker) to indicate the desire to turn - they use it to let you know they are already turning and will smash into you at that very moment if you happen to be in their way.  

No, that's not exactly it.  Dad and I joked that Lithuanians must watch 007 car chases and deep down, know they are better than Bond himself.  A car might zoom very fast right up to stopping 1 meter before someone gets smushed or a car crash takes place. Usually in the US, there is way more space between cars.

You see, Lithuanian drivers are EXCELLENT on the whole, I'd say.  They know how to maneuver their cars in the most difficult situations.   I've watched car and car again parallel park (on the left side of the street, Lizzi!!) with only a centimeter of space to share.  Streets that have one lane in the United States seem to fit three or four cars here - no joke.  As long as a centimeter of space exists between two cars, there is no need to slow down and spread out.  Two lane road (remember, the size of a one lane road in the USA!)  with cars parked on each curb?  No problem, two way traffic still fits between them, and it isn't even a stress for the drivers I've ridden with so far.  It's normal!

Another interesting bit about driving - here, there is the flashing green light before the yellow and red lights.  I'm not quite sure what the flashing green light means - but if I had to guess by observing the "behavior" of cars on the roads, flashing green means "try as hard as physically possible to accelerate to 500 km/hour through this intersection, please!"

I've got some videos and photos to share with you!  I'm realizing that I haven't been giving you a good context for the material I'm posting - things are just so exciting and new at the moment, so I can't write about everything.  I've decided that I'll go back when I have time and add information to old photos and posts - you'll see that the text will be in a different color, so you can find it quickly.  Hmm...don't expect those updates for a few more days!

Some of you might be wondering how I've been doing the whole internet thing - of course, now that I'm in the field I want to spend as little time on the internet as I can so that I can focus on ethnography and music.  So, before I left, I created this blog, set up a Picasa account, and freshened up my Youtube account.  I let my pictures upload while I'm sleeping, I don't do much editing of videos and pictures (you are getting the "raw" files), and I am trying to limit typing here on the blog to 10 minutes per post.

Beer Belly? Think again.

My cousin J**** says that the key to the Lithuanian diet is beer...let me explain.

The food here is incredibly rich and - in J****'s words, "realllly fatty". It is delicious but I can't seem to ever finish even half of my food - because my tastebuds are simply exhausted! Imagine, for example, this meal:

Lithuanian beer (skanu! tasty!), with pork ear strips, chickpea salad (texturally like macaroni salad), and fried beer bread, 100% saturated with oil, and dressed in cheese sauce (don't worry, the cheese sauce is mixed with mayonnaise so that it is creamier)

Tricked you! That is just the first course for while you drink. :)

For appetizer - baked potato, dressed with a sour cream, mushroom (grybai), onion, and pickled herring.

For dinner - two stuffed cabbage servings. The meat interior is half pork, half beef, minced together. It tasted an awful lot like a Peking Ravioli from home. To top it all off - literally - a cheesey, runny sour cream dressing with dill. Don't forget the potato on the side.

Of course, more and more beer.

So J**** explained that when she went to the USA for six months (here, JAV), she gained an enormous amount of weight eating the American way. She now is back to her normal, very slender self - and eats like this on a regular basis. Nothing is ever "diet" food for her, and every meal is rich. The Lithuanian women I've seen around town are all very healthy-looking and slender - and when they eat, they clean their plates. After the dinner, I've seen women split ANOTHER plate of beer snacks - with beers 3 times the size I'm used to drinking.

How do they do it? J**** explained the secret: the beer! "The beer has natural yeasts in it that break down the fats and keep us healthy. Every bite you have, drink a sip of beer, so that it mixes". Her fiance, mom, and dad nodded along in agreement. Halfway through the meal J**** reminded me to drink my beer. And her dad, Romas, encouraged me to order another once I was done. Of course this, I'm now remembering, was at the point we were eating our appetizers. Romas told me to not worry about finishing my potato - since "more warm ones are coming!" Ha, they had ordered for me in Lithuanian, I had assumed I was eating my big meal at that point...

And to think that in the United States, the first thing a doctor suggests is to cut back on the empty calories of alcohol! Clearly we've got it wrong - eat as much fat as possible, and drink up! :)

I should take a moment to quickly mention how hospitable everyone is here. Really, people are kind and friendly, they never prod into your business, but you are treated really well by friends here and are shown around and cared for.

The part I thought was most ironic was that J****'s mom scolded her for ordering sparkling water (instead of still). Sparkling water, I learned, is bad for your health.

Here are lots of pictures from exploring Gediminas Castle and the rest of Vilnius - more stories and posts to come! I'll have to explain our excursions so far, including to the Ethnography museum, in some future post.

Here in Vilnius!

Labas!

Here I am in Vilnius, having a kapučinas in Double Coffee (see their website/menu here- they've got a bunch of cool and different drinks).  I'm finally uploading some pictures!  It's only been two days on the adventure, but there are a lot of stories to tell.  Don't worry - there are a lot more pictures to share, including more of my relatives here and our trips around the city - but they are all on my dad's camera.  He'll share them once he returns home at the end of the week!

The people here are extremely hospitable and friendly (and very well dressed) and my relatives and my host mom have been treating me so well.  It has been a real challenge to communicate since most people do not speak English, but it is really cool to feel that pressure and I'm learning really quickly, even in these past two days.  With my host mom, I've been speaking a lot in German and Lithuanian, and that has been pretty interesting.

I love the food.  It is incredibly rich.  I have to save the food stories for later - actually, I'll save all my stories for later - but let's just say I've crossed fish liver and pig's ear off my "to try" list.  And I loved both dishes!  

Iki pasimatymo - Emily

Surprise! Early-21st-Birthday Party at Home.

 

Tomorrow I leave for Lithuania!  My mom and dad and brother planned a little going-away/happy-early-birthday party for me.  (I turn 21 on July 2, while I'm in Lietuva)  We had mom's special cioppino (with halibut, scalops, calamari, and shrimp) for dinner, and a 100% surprise chocolate cheesecake for a pre-birthday dessert.  

I couldn't be more excited to start my trip.

Ate - emily.

Inflation!

As I'm recalculating my budget, I realize that the exchange rate is shifting - in Lithuania's favor! Lo and behold, the dollar has fallen, and most of my expenses have gone up a bit.  

Now I'm shifting my funds around on my budget sheet so that I know I'm financially set once I leave next Saturday morning.  (Thanks Liz, for help with the spreadsheet!)  I'm going to be sure to bring the things I need that I know will be more expensive in the field - such as toiletries, first aid materials, etc.  

But hey, I'm up for a financial challenge - and I'm always up for bargain hunting.  

Imponderabilia Article

Laba diena - I wanted to share an article I wrote about my work for the Cambridge University student anthropology publication, Imponderabilia.  In this post I've included a cartoon I've drawn for the publication and a snippet of my article - you can find the full version here.

In my cartoon, I've pictured the Vilnius TV tower being protected from Soviet opposition through the unique ammunition of the Lithuanian people:  folk music.  

Labas! A bit about my research.

Labas!  

Hello and welcome to my summer blog.  I'll be updating this with snippets of news, stories, pictures, and my experiences from the field as I conduct my ethnographic project studying Lithuanian folk songs, dainos.  Before I leave on June 20th, I wanted to get started by posting some of the background information about my project and my goals.

My research while abroad surrounds understanding Lithuanian identity construction through the performance of dainos (folk songs).  I want to understand how people "remember",  imagine, and construct their nationality through folk melody and text.  

I'm not quite sure what I'll encounter in the field, of course, but I am hoping to really focus on what young Lithuanians think about dainos, music, and Lithuanian art.  What can we learn from Lithuanians and the place of music and art in Lithuanian culture as we American artists struggle to build our younger audiences?  Focusing on young Lithuanians and their perceptions of music will really show me how memories are transmitted through song - young Lithuanians might not even remember the fall of the Soviet Union, never mind Soviet life, and yet they sing about their triumphs as if they remember it themselves.  How does this mechanism operate and help to construct both national and personal identity?

Through my studies I hope to self-reflexively explore my own heritage and my love of music.  As a "half Lithuanian" American student who wants to be an opera singer, I hope I can discover throughout this summer how I construct my own identity through music.  My relative told me that music is inherent to Lithuanians: that - like basketball skills - music is in Lithuanian blood. Of course, anthropologists agree that such talents are culturally engrained and not quite biologically determined. 

Yet it makes me wonder - could music be "in my blood" too?