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From: "Zachary Foreman"
Well, my trip was pretty exciting too (but it only lasted 44 hours).I got to Warsaw ok at about 12:30. Then I had to wait an hour and made it to Sulwalki (I almost got off at the wrong station). The train got there about three hours late and so I didn't have time to buy a ticket (so I thought) so I bought one on the train, I was lucky, It turned out to be no big deal. Then I got to Sestokai (in Lithuania). I had dollars, marks, and zloty. I didn't have litas (I needed 2 dollars worth). I finally got some from this guy in a bar for trading a 5 DM coin (glad I still had it) but by then I had missed my train, so it was three hours at this unheated little trainstation. I changed money in Kaunas and had two large pizzas (I hadn't eaten in over 24 hours). Then I caught the midnight train to Riga. Got to Riga at about 6am found an ATM (yeah!!) and had an expensive breakfast. Got on the 8:35 bus which got to Gulbene at around noon. I spent a great week at the Likanses house, we played cards till 4 in the morning, they taught me a lot of Latvian (my favorite phrase is "speka pauri" which means "bacon-heads".) I had good food, showed them how to make banana splits, gave them gifts, played more cards, watched poorly dubbed Russian mafia movies (I saw Jingle All The Way, isn't that still in American theaters?) Anyway, had lots of fun and I am considering going back before I go, It only costs $30 and 24 hours to get there.... I should have my papers done by Monday. This is really cool: I met the English teacher at their school and guess what? he's in the peace corps!!! So maybe in two years I can be a peace corps volunteer teaching English in Gulbene, Latvia!!!! I talked with him alot. he says that the acceptance rate is 25% and that they required him to teach for a year at a community college before he could go to Latvia. He graduated from USC and he also wants to work for the government (he hopes to go to foreign service school). He spent his break in Poland!! He really liked Krakow. he also said the application process took a full year. I think it was a good idea for me to take this year off. There are 4 recommendations, medical, security, etc, etc. He also said that Eastern Europe wasn't that competitive. Here's my backup plan: teach English in the summer in Korea and make lots of money, then teach at the Gulbene school during the regular year and spend almost no money... After two years of this go to grad school with (hopefully) my loans paid off. Oh yeah, I couldn't decide Athens or Istanbul so I decided to save money and do neither, just Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. But I might not be able to do Bulgaria because the book says that I need 6 months of validity left on my passport and mine expires in march... So maybe I will visit Gulbene again.. Zach |