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.