Dvidesimt Trys . . . and Counting



Kathy Couhlin


 
© Copyright 2024 by Kathy Coughlin
Photo of map courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo of map courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

For someone who didn't cry easily, I sobbed uncontrollably that August day on the cold, linoleum floor of an unfurnished flat in Marijampole, Lithuania. Exhausted after 27 hours of traveling, I wondered why I was here. I was also distraught that my husband's and my plan to connect by phone before my transatlantic flight in New York had somehow gone awry. In pre-cell phone 1998--what now seems like the Dark Ages of communication--we were separated by 4,621 miles of silence. I had never felt more alone in my life.

Six months before, traipsing off to a foreign country to teach English had seemed like the epitome of independence, adventure, and glamor. People asked me where on the globe Lithuania was. Then they asked why I wanted to go for the better part of a year, by myself, to a foreign country on the other side of the world, where I didn't speak the language.

Why indeed?

Semesters abroad had not been a focus of the small women's college I attended in the late 60's, so I spent those years close to home. Much later, the community chorus I had sung in for years went on a European tour the year after I dropped out; I was left close to home again. It was almost as if I was on a no-fly list.

By contrast, our three grown children all had international experiences under their belts. We had waved a daughter off to London for a semester of college, and then to China and Saipan with her modern dance troupe. Our soccer-playing son had traveled with his team to Japan, France, and Costa Rica. Another son used his Spanish-speaking skills to work a job in Mexico for several months. I was the one who helped them pack and worried until their planes landed safely back on American soil. Although I had once taken a short business trip with my husband to Europe, I had never traveled alone or for my own purposes. Now that our nest had emptied, I could acknowledge the wanderlust bubbling to the surface of my psyche.

While I wasn't a college student and, at 51, certainly not young, it was nevertheless a logical time to rattle the cage of my existence. From my conventional childhood through college graduation, my church wedding through the upbringing of three children, my life had been, for the most part, one of tradition and adherence to the rules. We were about to put our St. Paul home of 23 years on the market and head for the south shore of Lake Superior. This destination had been a long-time dream of my husband Mike, and it was now about to be realized. But during the interim--before we owned another house and while Mike built a print shop--I would be footloose and fancy-free. Why NOT go to Lithuania?

But the choice of this small country--registering 123rd on the world's list of biggest to smallest--had not been a foregone conclusion. I deliberated for weeks about where to go--a daunting task when the whole world is an option. I immediately eliminated any country that had even a hint of political, social, or military unrest, but that still left the field wide open. I wanted to go somewhere different, but not TOO different. I satisfied the former criterion by eliminating all industrialized landing places that would be considered tourist destinations, and the latter by eliminating whole continents where I would stand out simply for my skin color. I welcomed the prospect of some discomfort, but I didn't want to worry about survival.

Mike, a geography and history buff, got involved. He pointed out that back in 1989, Lithuania had shown great character, along with Estonia and Latvia, in resisting Russian occupation. This protest, called the Baltic Way, was a political demonstration involving approximately two million people. Joining hands, they created a human chain spanning 420 miles across the capitals of the three Baltic States. This impressive piece of history gave one vote to Lithuania. A good friend suggested that I was being unconsciously drawn toward this East European country, as it was close to the Czech Republic, that part of the world from which my ancestors hailed. That made another vote for this second world country, which I had hardly known existed a short time before. Two votes was enough to clinch the decision.

That turned out to be the easy part. When I tried to sign up for it on an international teaching programs site, I learned that Lithuania was no longer offered as a teaching destination. That was because not enough people had signed up to go there in previous years.

Bells went off in my head. Was this a sign? Should I settle back into my familiar and stable life and find something less drastic to add spark? Go on a shopping spree with my sister?

Motivation in the form of pushes and shoves came from all sides. It was humbling to receive a real life lesson from my son Nick, a twenty-three-year-old whipper snapper: "Mom, when you're lying on your deathbed," he said, "can you picture yourself saying, 'Gee, I'm glad I didn't go to Lithuania'?

Okay, then; I decided to keep trying. Perhaps the most logical next step would have been to choose a different country, one that had all the support of an international teaching program behind it. But surprisingly, I found I already felt a kind of attachment to Lithuania, partially because others' lack of interest gave it an aura of challenge. I wasn't a wimp and I wasn't giving up yet.

I contacted the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington, D.C. I was given the name of a Lithuanian woman working in the United States as a liaison between teachers in her native country and US teachers. This woman with an unpronounceable name became my advocate. She directed me to apply as a private citizen directly to the Lithuanian Ministry of Education, the bureau parallel to our US Department of Education. I jumped through the hoops presented to me, learning that red tape is just as sticky on the other side of the Atlantic. After weeks of waiting, I was accepted as a teacher for the upcoming school year at the Rygiskiu Jono Gimnazium in a city called Marijampole!

With a large chunk of the clerical footwork accomplished, I could concentrate on a more enjoyable aspect of travel--learning the language. Lithuanian, however, gave a whole new meaning to 'foreign.' Belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family, Lithuanian is gifted with a complex composition, very long words, and a few sounds that have no counterparts in English. In the Foreign Service Institute's I-V ranking, it is a Category IV, meaning it has significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English. But not to be deterred, I obtained language tapes and got to work. I found a native speaker and met with him for a few pronunciation lessons. But if I had a goal of even partial fluency before leaving in a few months, it was a naive one.

Nick, who spoke a passable Spanish (a Category I), couldn't recommend enough the pleasures and benefits of speaking with natives in their own tongue. He became an occasional study guide. "Ask me in Lithuanian how to get to the train station," he would quiz me.

I thought hard and referred to my notes, finally answering in English, "I'm sure I'll never need to go to a train station."

He laughed but continued to prompt me. "Well, how about just one word instead of a sentence? How old am I?"
And that was when I learned 'dvidesimt trys,' the Lithuanian words for 'twenty-three.' It became my go-to mantra: when challenged for any Lithuanian response that I didn't know, I'd answer with 'dvidesimt trys.' It brought a laugh, and I practiced it enough that it eventually rolled off my tongue. In that one compound word, at least, I was sure I would sound like a native.

The school in Marijampole that had agreed to employ me---I never learned whether I was a desirable addition to their staff or a Ministry of Education-imposed 'assignment'---gave me a mentor to help me prepare for my new surroundings and new job. Violeta was one of the Lithuanian teachers of English at the Gimnazium, and through the medium of snail-mail letters ahead of my departure, she told me what to bring and what my living arrangements would be. She would eventually pick me up at the airport, give me a walking tour of the town and my route to the school, and accompany me on my first food-buying excursion. She would take me to meet the people I needed to meet and cook a pan of mushrooms, gathered from the forest the previous season, for my first Lithuanian meal. For all of this and the million questions I continually pelted her with, she should at the very least have earned a promotion, if not inclusion on a list for eventual canonization. She was, indeed, a saint.

Departure day finally arrived. It was the beginning of my education into the emotional realities of not speaking the language of those around me: self-consciousness and a sense of inadequacy, usually; frustration, always. Navigating my way through foreign airports was daunting. Airport personnel undoubtedly wished I could correctly string two words together in their tongue, while I wished they had had more sensitivity training. I became adept at pointing.

Somehow, I made all my connections. But missing that important phone call in New York, then traveling for more than a day, picking up seven hours in the process, and then landing in a place about as familiar as Mars all melded into a stressful culmination to what had been an exhilarating period of preparation. But did I say culmination?

That was the word, the concept, that drove me to tears once Violeta finally left me alone in the stark surroundings that would be my Mariampole home. With lots of help, I had done it: I had gotten myself here. But in those first Twilight Zone minutes of my new reality, intense loneliness, self-doubt, and despair engulfed me. The romantic dream of foreign travel, once young and fresh, now felt old and ragged. This wasn't a culmination!

I had been like a naive bride, enjoying the fruits of her preparations as she walked down the aisle, never expecting the glamor to fade. The truism that every endpoint is also a starting point, and that the starting point was right here, right now, was more than I could bear in my lonely, exhausted state. The realization fueled the sobbing that liquified my soul and left me lying in its pool, totally spent. I don't know how long I lay there, but eventually, I reined in my self-pity, dried my tears, and began the new work of functioning in a strange country.

Work it definitely was, but the ensuing paybacks were more numerous than I'd even expected. I never actually counted the benefits I gained by traveling to Lithuania by myself. In cultural lessons learned, surges in self-confidence, and friendships made, I’m guessing it’s dvidesimt trys . . . and counting.

   
 Kathy Coughlin is a retired English teacher, now enjoying life as a student. Her introduction to  international travel described in this essay was the first of several international trips and her bucket list of desired destinations grows ever longer. At home, she is a volunteer for animal causes, an avid tennis player, vegan cook, gardener, and a reader for the blind. She and her husband have three wonderful adult children who make them proud every day.
     She has been an amateur writer all her life. In 2005, she self-published a whimsical poem for children about the human propensity for collecting: Lucius and His Collection of Unusual Things. In 2016, she applied her love of writing to her passion for animal welfare, and with the collaboration of an illustrator and her son, published a children's story set entitled We're All Animals. She has written personal essays, a handful of articles and countless letters to editors on animal causes, and has been "working on" her memoir for about fifteen years.



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