colors

on my other blog that i keep regularly, i have posted this quote before, but i am obsessed with this poem so i thought i would share once more....

“My skin is kind of sort of brownish pinkish yellowish white.

 My eyes are greyish blueish green,
 but I'm told they look orange in the night. 

My hair is reddish blondish brown,
but its silver when its wet,
and all the colors I am inside have not been invented yet.

-Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

funny happenings

we taught them a song to sing during our opening (opening is what we do everyday for the first 10-15 min. when we sing songs, talk about the weather, go over rules etc) anyways we taught them a new  song about pirates and patrik was loving it!

for my lesson we traces the profiles of our head and then drew our faces... some of the kids understood  profile... 

and some didnt... hahahah patriks and lukas were a little bit skewed.... 

hahahah lukas wanted facial hair... he kills me! i love him!

we walk this little path to get to school everyday so we have seen the leaves gradually change and its been fabulous! this ones my favorite. its sooooo amazingly yellow its unreal! this picture, as usual doesnt do it justice!

this is holly, shes cute!

probably my favorite thing i have had here. a crepe with pork, bell peppers, cheese, and yummy sweet sauce. soooo delicious for 2 dolllarrrr!! whoop whoop

this bathroom had the funniest signs.... 

that table doesnt move... so if youre a guy you have to aim from like far back.... and if you want, you can put your baby on the table while you do it. strange.... 

funny graffiti on the side of the road. hahahah hilarious!

meg, myslef and jaclyn walking to this russian fireside thing. 

danielos && go fishhh

this kid is insane. i love him, but holy cow. i cannot believe the amount of energy he has. we will get him calm, and just standing there and then all the sudden he will just throw his body around. hahahah he kills us!

i showed the kids how to play go fish and they liked it a lot!

paneriai memorial museum

we went to the holocaust museum that the lithuanians ran. it was so moving. i cant believe it. it was a "mass grave" over 100,000 bodies were found. but a lot of them were burned before they got there to count the bodies because they were trying to lower their conviction... so insane. there were journal entries and one of them said that for like 3 weeks straight they would bring truckloads of people and shoot. they said there were constand gunshots for 8 hours, all day everday. the gastapo also had reciept things that kept tally of how many peopl they were killing and there was 4636 children killed in 3 months............ i cannot believe people still had the fight inside of them to persevere and want to live through this. the weirdest thing that kept amazing me was to think, this all didnt happen too long ago. We read a part that was about these 5 men who were brought to the camp and were put on the job of burning the bodies.  They were to stay in a bunker at night and were highly guarded 24-7.  They talked about how they start digging a tunnel to escape. It took them months to escape. How incredible is that?

this was in ONE of the circles....

There were 5 large circles in areas like this where people were shot and buried.

This was where they burned the bodies to hide the evidence towards the end of the war. They used this bridge to carry the body and dump into the middle of the fire. 

on a brighter note, you all may know that my favorite seasons are fall and winter... the leaves are changing and they  both are on their way!  these pictures were taken on our train ride back to Vilnius. 

family in low places

Don't spend time beating on a wall,
 hoping to transform it into a door.

My parents have said this to me a few times in our deep conversations, arguments etc. Now, normally in the context it was written or said… one would assume it was talking about friends, a situation, a boy, SOMETHING else. Well, in this case, the quote is speaking to me directly.

Throughout my life I have been someone. I have been stevie zel hansgen. Lived on 6190 clear street, and 5627 valewood drive. Both in murray. I have had friends come and go. I have walked to wendys on state street after murray football games. I have sang my heart out on Friday and Saturday night with girlfriends who I thought would be there forever. I have went to concerts. I have watched the sunset from “the rock” hundreds of times. I have been apart of beautiful times, and I have had moments that I wouldn’t take back for the world.

 I have cried, I have laughed, I have lived.

But along the way, I have had to say goodbye. Some intentional, some not. Some sad, some not. Goodbyes aren’t fun, especially when you look back and realize who you were then was fun. Who you are now is more wise, but sometimes I look back and say, “man, I wish I could relive that night one more time…” yada, yada, yada.   In looking back I realize that in some points in my life I said something mean, I did something that was out of the stevie character that I did and sometimes I would think “stevie, what the heck, why would you say that?” and “stevie, that was rude!” or “uhh…. Duh, stevie, you are lying right now.” Anyways regardless of the situation I may have been I was maybe acting like someone I wasn’t and I didn’t like who I was being. I kept “beating on the wall” wondering why things weren’t working in my favor? Why wasn’t life being easy? Why was it sooooo hard?

I kept beating on a wall, seeing the door, but not wanting to open it because I was stuck in my ways. I was seeing the door, but ignoring the fact that yeah, maybe it was better…  but who cared!!!!!!! I wanted it the way I wanted it and that was final!!!!

Being raised lds my whole life added things as well. Just being the stevie hansgen that I am, always wanted to know for myself the How come? And the WHY?  Of everything, every rule, every choice. I know it drove my parents insane (sorry) but that’s just how I was, I didn’t know why I was that way, I just was! But, in being independent in that way it hindered me. My parents would say, don’t touch the stove its hot, so I had to see how hot. So immature and so lame but that’s how I was. As I grew older I could see that it was going into everything in my life. Curfew, drinking, decisions, boyfriends I had, the friends I chose etc. instead of embracing the door that was basically being held open by my family, a few of my good friends, I still chose to try and force myself into something was giving me NO genuine rewards.

Well, now fast forward 3 years and here I am. I am a 21 year old full of life to live. Living in eastern Europe. All alone. It has given me more than my fair share to evaluate things in my life. Why I have struggled, when I could have succeeded, and quite frankly it has forced my mind to go places it always shoved onto the back burner.

What I am trying to say while rambling on for dayyyyys and dayyyyss is this, I am happy. I feel better than I have ever felt in my entire life. Being away from everything was just what I needed, I just wish it hadn’t taken me 21 years to figure it out. I hope in me discovering who I want to be for the rest of my life will show me who my friends are. Because when  what you are doing, and what you should be doing are the same that is when you are happiest. And when you are happiest with yourself and you stop, and look around and see who is standing with you, THAT is the glorious moment in life when you realize who your confidants are. I just hope I can be there for everyone else, as I hope you will be there with me. xoxoxoxo

 

number one fans, confidants, happiness.
 they will be there when all else fails, the road gets tough, and when all we have is family in low places :)