The title of this post is AFAP. What does that mean you
might ask? Well, it is an acronym I invented myself. It means As Fast As
Possible or in acronym terms AFAP. It has a nice ring to it eh? Well,
everything I did to lead up to this vacation was very AFAP. Vacations are a
time when most people take a minute to relax and just go with the flow, or at
least that is what my mom always taught me. Well, never in my whole life has a
vacation been more of a stressor to me than this one. While I was preparing for
it, and while I was on it, I didn’t feel that relaxation factor. I guess that is what happens when you are in charge of five girls, have a to-do list a mile long and no time to do anything. Here’s the story:
The
Friday we were leaving, I woke up with a time blocked schedule of things I had
to get done. The schedule went as
follows- Wake up at seven, take a shower and get Halloweenafied, start packing,
study for my test for one hour, take my math test for one hour and then help
with the Halloween party for about three hours and get everything all ready
before class starts at 3:30. I even told Josh all about it so he could double
check my planning. I woke up with plenty of time to get everything going and
completed… Well at least that is what I thought. Of course something had to go
wrong.
Right after I woke up, I get a call from Dima urgently
saying that we needed to go to the embassy and get our visa’s right away. We
had been approaching our 90 day mark, and that is when you need to get a visa.
If you don’t, you have to pay extra fees or you could get deported. Apparently,
our official 90 day mark fell on a day where we would be on our trip, so we had
to go get our visa right then. The main issue with this was that not everyone
lives in the apartment. Rosie, Rachel and Hannah all live in host families, and
it is quite a challenge to round them all up on such short notice. I jump out of bed and call all the girls telling them to come over AFAP ( so
catchy, am I right?) to bring me their passports and fill out the visa
application. I didn’t really have much luck with them though. They both told me
the soonest they could get over would be in about an hour give or take. So, I
hurried and jumped in the shower to try and get ready. While I am in the
shower, Dima (local coordinator) skyped me again. I get out and while I am in a
towel talk to him. (No fear, it was only on voice and he couldn’t see me thank
heavens.) He told me he was on the way to come pick me up to get my picture
taken since I was a big dummy and lost my visa pictures I had taken in America.
I got ready ASAF (there it is again), and went to the bus stop to meet Dima.
For those of you that know Dima, you know that his heart is
in ILP, his family, and his Mercedes. It was so interesting to me that he
pulled up in a Toyota. Apparently, his car was in the shop and he was pretty
sad about it. I just laughed the whole drive because he kept on telling me all
the reasons why the Toyota was not on the same level as his Mercedes. What a
cute and funny man. To get my pictures done, we went to the local grocery store
named Norfa. We got my pictures lickety split and even got some snacks for the
trip. Then we took the short little drive back to the apartment, Dima loving
his Mercedes the whole ride and feeling sad his beloved automobile was in the shop.
When we got back to the apartment, I thought the plan was
that I would go with Dima and take all the passports to the embassy to get our
visa’s. I was a bit off base with this assumption. Dima wanted all of us to go
to the embassy to get our visa’s. I hurried to find all the girls because none
of them had any idea that they needed to come with us. Probably the best part
of this whole thing was the fact that Rosie was wearing her Halloween costume.
Her Halloween costume was pretty special. She was going to be a moth, so she had
put a ponytail in the middle of her head and was wearing quite the eye make-up.
She had to wear it the whole time we were at the embassy, and I am sure they
thought we were complete wierdos. Oh well.
After we were done at the Embassy, we only had about an 45
minutes until school started. This was an issue for me because I hadn’t even
done any of the things I was supposed to do. We all hurried AFAP back to the
school/ the apartment to start getting the Halloween party into action. My
sweet girls knew that I would fail my math class if I missed a test, so they
said they would be able to do the set up while I took my test. Bless them.
When I finally got to the school it looked really darling.
Even though my morning was crazy, the Halloween party made me so happy. It
brought me all the way back to my China days where we did our haunted house and
parties and all of my cute china babies were dressed up. I just think that
Halloween is such a fun holiday for children. Even though everything was done
AFAP, it was worth it to make our little Lithuania Babies happy.
Happy Halloween Lithuania!
XO Mikele