Bruno Simão
Embedded Files
Hello World!
Hello World!
My name is Bruno, I'm 17 years old, and I'm a student in the 12th grade at Loulé Secondary School. I've always enjoyed programming and coding, so I'm really glad to have this opportunity with the Erasmus+ Project!
Unfortunately I couldn't bring my cat with me on this trip, but I know I'll enjoy it and the experiences it will bring me just as much.
09/12/2023 - First day!
Arrival
Arrival
Today was a very busy day, we had to take 2 flights, one to England, and then another one to finally get to Vilnius. Because of this, we ended up seeing a lot of foreign products that we otherwise couldn't in Portugal!
End of the day
End of the day
We ended up arriving at Vilnius already pretty late, so we didn't get to do much, but we still walked around and got familiar in the new environment. Then for dinner we ended up going to a restaurant called Bulldog Burgers, I had a lot of fun!
10/12/2023 - Last walk around Vilnius
First we started our day off by going to the breakfast buffet, it had a lot of tasty food options, and I definitely enjoyed eating there!
The buffet had different types of cookies, bread, jam, fruits, and more. The picture doesn't show, but I ate a boatload of cookies too, they were tiny chocolate chip ones, and very tasty.
Our last day in Vilnius, we walked around a LOT. We saw a lot of statues and interesting Lithuanian architecture today, our teachers also showed us where we'd be staying in our last day on this Erasmus trip. We stopped by a café in the middle to warm up, since it was way colder than we were used to in Portugal! I tried a cappucino even though I don't actually like coffee all that much, but it was actually pretty good after i added a bit of sugar.
At the end of the day, we ate at a Lithuanian restaurant to try their traditional food for the first time. I ordered potatoes with meat since it sounded good, but it was actually a bit spicy, which made me not like it as much as I thought I would.
The restaurant vibe was actually really warm though! I enjoyed being there and talking with my colleagues and teachers.
11/12/2023 - A start
Visiting the school
Visiting the school
Today we went to KITM, or Kaunas School of Informatics and Technology, and were introduced to their team, and got a tour around all of the school.
Walking around
Walking around
After the tour, we walked around and had saw a lot of different buildings and sights. I had a lot of fun!
Our Dinner
Our Dinner
After everything, we ended up going to eat at a restaurant, and I really enjoyed the food there. I believe today was the start of something great!
12/12/2023 - Being more independent
Today, a few of us decided to wake up really early, at 6 AM, to go wash clothes! Well, I didn't actually have that many clothes to wash but I wanted to know how it was like for when I actually needed to.
We went there REALLY early because between 6AM and 8AM is their Happy Hour, which means they have big discounts during that time. In this case, any washing we did was going to cost just 1€ (which is a really good deal!).
After that, at 10AM, we all had arrived at school to set up our work spaces. The teacher also told us how our project here was going to be.
We are essentially going to be making an API for a "Fake AI", which was going to mimic AIs like ChatGPT, Wall-E, and such, where the endgame was to make it act like an AI without actually creating any artificial intelligence. I was instantly very interested on starting on this project, since I've never done any project of this scale.
However, this day was just to get everything ready for the project, and we didn't actually start anything. (Even the teacher told us not to start on it just yet!)
After we left the school, we had lunch at Bernelių Užeiga, where we ate our last dinner with our teachers. I ordered some chicken skewers for myself, and it was actually tastier than I thought it would be.
We all talked a lot about how the rest of our days are going to be, and how they made a deal with the restaurant so we could eat dinner here every weekday for a MUCH cheaper price.
After we all ate, we paid and completed our deal with the restaurant, so we could continue eating here for the rest of our trip.
After we left, we walked back home and saw how the christmas tree looked during the night (which was actually very beautiful). I knew it was our last night with our teachers here, so I made sure to enjoy it to the fullest.
13/12/2023 - Trips to a few museums
Today we went, with the help of a few teachers at KITM, to a two museums to explore Lithuanian's culture and history.
The first one we went to was National M. K. Ciurlionis Art Museum, where we saw a lot of Ciurlionis's artworks, while learning its history with their own audio guide.
Then we went to Kaunas's Devil Museum and saw how Lithuania, and also a lot of other countries and regions represent their devils. It was all very interesting and enjoyable!
14/12/2023
Today was normal for the most part, we woke up as usual and headed towards KITM, we arrived there and continued working on our project. That day we were told to research on how APIs worked and how to create one! I ended up researching a LOT on the Laravel framework, and started following a tutorial on how to create a REST API with Laravel.
It was essentially an API that was going to have GET, POST, PUT and DELETE methods, using Routes and Controllers. I learned a lot of things today, it was very fun honestly!
After class, the teacher told us we could visit the D&D session that happens every Thursday. 6 of us decided to go with and see how it was, and honestly, I don't regret it! The D&D team already had a session ongoing when they started, so we were only spectators, but it was still very entertaining since the story and players reacted in very funny ways.
After the D&D session finished, the dungeon master asked us if we wanted to get a tour to the Akropolis mall with them, and we all said yes since we haven't gone there yet. It was really fun, the people we went with were very nice and informative of everything we saw when we got to Akropolis.
They showed us the tiny "island" they had near Akropolis, since it was terrain all surrounded by a river they all considered it an island. They also showed us how lithuanian couples put lockers in the bridge to show their love to each other. All of this was super informative, I didn't expect so much meaning could be attached to this bridge, the picture doesn't show it, but there were MANY more lockets along the side. Who knew it was such a common activity?
Then we arrived at Akropolis! It was HUGE, it had 3 whole floors and each floor was bigger than any mall I've been in Portugal. Apparently, the first floor had general stores, from tech stores to book stores, the second floor had mostly clothing stores, and then the third and last floor only had restaurants.
We didn't do inside any store while we were at Akropolis, but it was all very amazing to look at just walking through it. After we left, they had us set up the 'Ziogas' app to be able to take the bus near the restaurant we eat dinner at. It taught us a lot of how the lithuanian bus system worked.
15/12/2023 - End of the work week
Today we had a shorter class, and were allowed to leave early at 1PM since the teachers and staff at KITM had an event happening today, so instead of eating outside we decided to cook by ourselves instead of eating out, not only to save money but to have a new experience together! It was a lot of fun, and even though we aren't in the Cooking course, the food was actually good.
Other than that, we didn't do much today so this entry isn't as big, but it was still a very fun and learning day.
This work week was really packed, but it was really fun! I can't wait to go back the next week and continue on our programming project.
16/12/2023
Today was the day we finally decided to all to go the shopping together. We planned out and figured out how to use "Trafi" (Which is a Lithuanian app that tracks where all the buses are in Lithuania, and tells you which one to wait for at bus stops. It's a really useful app! Our teacher at KITM had explained it to us, and we used that knowledge for good.) to get there.
At Akropolis, we ate at Burger King (basic, I know), and walked around a few stores, we even bought a new card game to try out at home! After that, we went to the superminside Akropolis, Maxima, and bought things we needed, like a toaster since we didn't have one originally.
Today really helped us overcome our initial fears about taking the bus and getting lost, and ended up learning a lot about how Lithuania usually works.
17/12/2023
Today we also made our own lunch, since we needed to start economizing with our money and be more responsible with it. There were some mishaps in the middle (we are unfortunately not cooking experts), but in the end it was a delicious lunch.
Later that day, we separated from each other a bit. On my side, me, Santiago, and Lara, all decided to meet up with a friend we met last thursday to hang out with. We went to Akropolis at first, to relax at a café and just talk, but then we left and they showed us a lot of things we hadn't seen before. Overall, we had a lot of fun together!
At the end of the day, we had a lot of dirty dishes from the previous cooking days, and decided to just order take-out sushi, since it was healthier than something like McDonalds.
18/12/2023
Today we finally tried taking the bus to school, it was actually really scary at first, since we didn't know the roads or how it worked for this path, but it was actually really easy. It made getting to school a LOT easier than just walking there! A few of my colleagues were saying walking was better, but in my opinion I think taking the bus was a step in the right direction.
We finally started working on our project. Since I'm the only one working with PHP in our group, I had to struggle by myself unfortunately. The teacher had recommended I use Laravel, a really popular and rising PHP framework. I had heard of it before, but I never really delved into it before until now. I basically had to learn Laravel while I worked on the project, so it was definitely tough, but also very interesting!
Working on this project was honestly really fun, I had to research a lot and I learned a lot about how APIs and Frameworks worked. I had already done a test tutorial for Laravel APIs to test my knowledge with practice, and managed to advance on the project.
19/12/2023
Today we woke up a bit later than usual- we were told we could get there at 11:30AM instead of 10:00AM like we usually do, because today we had a plan to do job shadowing in Vilnius as a special occasion.
We decided to take the bus to school to get there earlier, but then it turned out that they told us to get there earlier just in case, and we actually had to wait a bit more at the school, so we just talked to each other while we waited. After a while, the teacher came back and told us to get ready to leave, and off we went to Vilnius!
We arrived at the company, which was a server database company, around 1PM. We were greeted by the manager there and she gave us a whole tour of outside and inside the building! She told us a lot about how the company first started, and how they grew to be the best data security company in the market.
They had a triple security ranking, so they had everything doubled in case one of two things they had stopped working, the other one could continue and do its job. Below are pictures of the generators and the coolers they had to keep everything in check. It was actually really interesting to see how everything inside worked, even if we couldn't take any pictures! The manager was also really nice and explained everything well.
After that, we came back home really late, and we were all hungry, so we hurried and ate extra food before we went to our designated dinner restaurant. We split up a bit, half of us went to eat at a pizzeria, and the other half went to eat at a hamburgueria. I went to the pizzeria and shared a ham pizza with my friend and we actually ate it all, but unfortunately it filled us so much that we couldn't fully eat our dinner later in the day.
Other than that unfortunate miscall, today was actually really interesting! I enjoyed learning how the company and server-based companies worked in general, especially because this one was such a highly rated one!
20/12/2023
Today we worked a lot on our project. It was actually kind of hard, since I hadn't used Laravel (PHP Framework) before, and I wanted to try and apply the OpenAI API into my API project, and I faced a LOT of issues, but I learnt a lot about how Laravel worked, which was actually fun!
Unfortunately, by the end of the day I didn't manage to solve the main problem I was having, but I tried to work a lot and research on Laravel and how it worked, and also Composer (a PHP add-on) and many other things.
After we left the school, we just relaxed until it was time to go to the restaurant we had an arrangement with. Honestly, I was kind of scared of going there again, since all of the meals we had so far was just potatoes. Even the last meal we had was 7 potatoes for a meal (Which was actually some sort of potato mash, but either way), it was not very good. However, when we arrived there we actually got food we are more used to.
We got some soup for the starting course, and then meatballs, mashed potatoes and beetroot for the main course. I didn't eat the solid parts of the soup, but it was pretty tasty otherwise. And the main course was really good, I was mostly surprised because we hadn't gotten a dinner like this in a long time, and it was very enjoyable.
After we left the restaurant, we had already planned to go to the Donut Shop immediately after, because it closed pretty early. However, we actually managed to get there in time to buy some donuts! I hadn't planned to buy any to begin with, but some looked so tasty I bought it in the end.
I bought the one with the raspberries it was very good, but also very sweet. Unfortunately I couldn't actually finish my donut, but I'm very glad we all went there to buy one. Most desserts in Lithuania end up VERY expensive, most of the time being above 5€, but the donuts were actually around 2€ to 3€, especially considering how good they were, I don't regret buying one.
21/12/2023
Today we continued working on our project, as always, and I finally managed to get it working without any errors! However, I wasn't really sure if I was doing it right to begin with, so I called over the teacher and he essentially told me it was right, but not what he actually wanted from me.
Turns out I branched off into the wrong path while working in the project, so now I have to go back to how my project was before and undo everything new I did the last few days. Which honestly, I'm not too upset about, since I got a lot of new info and a better hang of this new framework.
I would want to keep working on it tomorrow, but tomorrow the teachers at KITM have planned that we go to another company to see how it worked, same as we did this tuesday. However, we will wake up even earlier, at 8AM, so we can have the opportunity to see Vilnius a bit more and have time to eat.
After school, our teacher warned us that we could go to the D&D to celebrate a christmas event with them, and we actually got to play a mini D&D one-shot with them! We played one where all the players were Santa's elves. The colleagues I went with and I all picked the Tank role for the elves, just because we thought it would be fun, and it actually was. Unfortunately, the tank team had the worst luck, we kept pulling really low numbers on our die. But the dungeon master took pity on us and let us pass even though we technically failed most of our rolls.
After the one-shot, they all started giving each other presents from Secret Santa, and it was pretty entertaining watching them even if we weren't involved. But some of them actually gave us gifts! The dungeon master gave us noodles and a tiny trinket from something he knew we liked (I'm really happy about the Harley Quinn keychain, I love DC comics.), and another player bought us Kaunas chocolates. We were actually really happy, especially because we didn't expect anything, and they gave us a lot.
After the giftgiving, they unpacked a cake and also shared with us! Though it was a cheesecake, and I don't like cheesecake at all so I gave my slice away (they were happy). It was a very fun experience, I'm glad to experience it.
22/12/2023
Today we were supposed to go to another informatics company in Vilnius, so we woke up REALLY early, at 7AM, to be able to enjoy it by arriving even earlier. When we arrived there at 9:30, we were allowed to do pretty much anything for 30 minutes, so my friends and I decided to hang out at a café meanwhile to eat the breakfast we missed in the morning and mostly catch up.
After that, we went inside a huge building to finally enter the company called 'BlueBridge'. BlueBridge is an informatics company focused on just ANYTHING you might need help with in regards to informatics. If you have data security worries, leaked datas, etc, they're the guys you call for help.
We had a meeting inside the building where one of the leading workers there presented the company, what they do there, how he got in and how he found his passion there. It was actually a very informative and interesting meeting, I learnt a lot of things about the "real job" side of the informatics area. One of my colleagues even asked some questions I thought were intersting too.
Turns out they don't really have any programming being done in the company, they mostly deal with programs like Windows and Linux servers, for example. It's really interesting how much more there is to informatics than just the programming side. Data security ends up being a lot more important than people think. I very much enjoyed visiting this company and learning about it!
After we left the company, we all decided to go to Trakai Castle, since we still had a lot of time left before we had to go home. Thanks to the driver, who guided us to the castle, we got there pretty quick, we still had to walk a bit which was tiring, but it was worth it. The castle from the outside was very beautiful, and from the inside even more!
The entry to get into the castle was 5€, and after that we could essentially go anywhere. We first headed to the first exhibit on the left, it had a lot of beautiful artifacts and items from Lithuanian history, like fans, canes, and such, the quality of them was really good, I was definitely mesmerized!
There were a lot of exhibits in various different rooms of the castle, the first one we went to mostly had found items from Lithuania, then the next ones had paintings, and others even just had rare coins found in certain parts of Lithuania. For example, in one of the exhibits they even had an interactive display, where you could press a button and it'd show an animated mouse explaining the history of where and how each set of coins were found! It was actually very fun to watch, as childish as it was.
After the castle, we were all very hungry so we decided to go back and eat at the nearby restaurant. They were mostly a pizza restaurant, but most of us actually just ordered their "Wagyu" Hamburger, since we were very interested to see what it entailed. When we got the burgers they looked very tasty, but when I started eating mine I found out it was actually kind of spicy, so I didn't end up enjoying it as much. It was overall still very good though!
After that, we went back to Kaunas next to home, and went to our restaurant. Again, the food was great there but I don't want to go too indepth since it's not going to be a main focus. After we left the restaurant, we passed by the supermarket to buy food for Christmas, since a lot of stores and restaurants were going to close during those days. Today I learnt a lot of things about Lithuanian companies and history, it was great.
23/12/2023
Today we all woke up a bit later than usual since it was saturday, but we all had planned to go to a trampoline place a bit after lunch, so we could all release our stress from working so much throughout the week. First we cooked our lunch, which was an omelette, Lara and Leandro cooked them for everyone (two people who im very grateful towards). They were actually very delicious!
After lunch, we all relaxed until 3PM, when we all had to get at the bus stop to reach JumpSpace (The trampoline place), and had to wait a few minutes. After the bus arrived we all got in, and I'm only saying this because something interesting happened during the bus ride.
Ticket inspectors suddenly came in and started scanning everyone's tickets, and we thought we were safe since we had international student cards, but turns out they didn't! They told us only lithuanian students were allowed the discounts we had selected, and then said we had to buy the 1€ ticket from the bus driver, which technically made the bus ride 1.35€. The whole ordeal was annoying, but I get it since they're very strict about it.
After we arrived, it was snowing a LOT, and we also had to walk a lot, so everyone was freezing until we got there. When we did, a few decided to stay back from the trampolines and others decided to go in. I was part of the ones that just stayed back since I never enjoyed trampolines, but there were still a lot of other activities, like air hockey.
After we left, unfortunately there was not a lot of time left to do what we had planned to do next, which is very sad. We ate dinner at a nearby McDonalds, and bought a few dessert items from there too (they were very tasty). After the McDonalds we went to the Maxima to buy even more for what they planned to cook in the following days.
Honestly, today we didn't do much of anything, I believe today was sort of lackluster, but days like these happen sometimes, and I shouldn't overthink it and make myself feel bad for not being able to do more.
Something that IS good, is Christmas! It's already in 2 days, I can't wait to see what happens, even if we don't do much then.
24/12/2023
Today is Christmas Eve. Can you believe it guys? Christmas is already tomorrow. Today we all woke up a bit later since it was a Sunday and didn't have much planned, but actually since Thursday, Santi and I have actually been working on a secret santa website! We didn't mention it at all in these entries because we wanted to keep it a secret from the others, but we are near to finishing it and everyone already knows about it.
We decided to start on Thursday because, well, we heard during the D&D session, some people made a secret santa website for the group, which is what gave us the idea in the first place! Though we should have started earlier, since we were definitely not going to finish this before Christmas, but it was still fun! I made all the front-end of the site, plus the login back-end with PHP and also helped with the SQL queries needed to connect properly with the database, and then Santiago made the 'wheel's back-end with javascript and PHP. We uploaded it on a private repository on github so we could share the project with each other.
The site! We kept on working on the site all day. Until dinner, when they had to force us to go. We actually seemed pretty close to finishing by the time we ate dinner, but we ended up staying up until 5 AM on the website, which was objectively stupid but unfortunately the grind never stops.
Our dinner was a Carbonara made by Santi, which was actually really good (surprisingly!). Apparently it was a dream to make a Carbonara at any point during this Erasmus+ trip, which is really funny.
It wasn't all Santi though, Arturo made the fries and then Lara made the salad. It was all balanced in my opinion, we ate very well that day.
25/12/2023 - Christmas! 🎄
Its finally Christmas! It's the first Christmas I've ever had without my parents or family to spend it with, but it was actually really funny. At exactly 12:00AM we all wore our christmas sweaters and took a group picture. It did take a while to set it up since we didn't have a photographer but it was really fun! We all looked goofy but it was something we definitely needed to do at least once on this trip.
Unfortunately, immediately after we took the picture, I immediately went back to working on the website, as mentioned above I ended up staying up really late alongside my friends. Later today, I woke up late (again, unsurprisingly), and relaxed a bit before I went to Lara's room with the plan to finally finish the Secret Santa website TODAY.
We first ate McDonalds for lunch, since no one was in the mood to cook early in the day, and it was actually pretty good, even if not that healthy. Theres not much to say on what we did during lunch and dinner, since we just relaxed on Christmas day and... continued working on the website. Only until after dinner, which was a Strogonoff from Lara and Raul, did we actually finish the website!
After all our hard work, we could finally send it to all our friends and give them their login information.
Unfortunately, there was an error with the last person doing the wheel spin, but we figured out how to give him his secret santa in the end, so hooray for that.
We even implemented a story within it so it was more fun for everyone, and it really was. Spinning to see who my secret santa was going to be was fun! I can't wait to buy them their gift.
26/12/2023
Today we all woke up late, even though I set up an alarm for 10AM, I somehow slept through it which is unbelievably depressing, but anyway. Our friend was given the unfortunate task of planning all of our trips, and today was going to be his first try. We had planned today to go to Alytus and visit a museum and a nearby park. Unfortunately, since everyone woke up really late, he had no choice but to pick the buses that arrived a bit later than usual, so it meant we were going to arrive as it was getting dark out.
But fortunately, our bus trip actually went with no hiccups. (And the bus station was actually very beautiful.) We arrived at Alytus after 1 hour and roughly 30 minutes, and planned to see how we were going to get to the museum. Since we couldn't see the bus system in Alytus with the Trafi app, which was really just for Kaunas's buses, we called for a Bolt (equivalent for Uber) to get to the museum. But... when we arrived... the museum turned out to be closed.
Since today is the 2nd day of Christmas, which is actually a day celebrated in Lithuania, a lot of buildings close earlier than normal so they can get home early to celebrate the day. Unfortunately, this was one of them, but we didn't let this take us down. We explored Alytus a bit, which was pretty fun since it actually looked very different to both Vilnius and Kaunas!
A lot of the restaurants we found that were open at this hour, were mostly for take-out, which surprised me. I didn't expect that there were so many restaurants that existed mostly for take-out, but it actually makes sense, since they waste less on cutlery and time on cleaning and such, but I had never actually encountered anything like that.
We decided to eat in a Pizzeria called 'Happy Pizza', since it seemed like the only indoors place open to eat at, and I believe I ate the best pizza I have ever eaten in my life. It was very good for such a cheap place! Most of the pizzerias we went to had prices around 7€-15€, but this one only had 6€-8€?! For the quality of these pizzas, I do think it was very much worth it.
Then, after we finished, we went to the park we had planned to go at the beginning, and we saw a lot of fun things that were actually put there by normal people! For example, we saw a cardboard moon stuck in a tree, and such.
After, we arrived and saw the big sculpture in the middle, it was very beautiful, especially in the night with all the lights lit illuminating the area around in a really nice way. The sculpture itself had mini sculptures around it saying a story, which was very interesting too.
After that, we also saw a park behind it which had a lot of activities to do, and some of my friends even got on top of ones and played with them, it was kind of funny to watch too.
After that, it was already time to get going to the bus station and buy the tickets back to Kaunas, which was also simple even though we had a minor complication near the end. We were in the bus for around an hour when we finally got to Kaunas.
Unfortunately, they all decided to walk back home even though its a 30+ minute walk, but I couldn't do much except accept it and walk with them, even though I definitely complained to them throughout the walk back home! I definitely don't understand their thought process on this, but it was actually fine in the end since we could talk to each other during the walk.
When we arrived home we all finally relaxed from today. It was kind of a rollercoaster of many different things and experiments, but I think it helped us learn a lot about how we should plan our trips and how to manage our time, so it was definitely a productive day in my eyes!
27/12/2023
Today I was the only one who woke up early, so I had a lot of time to relax in the morning. We were finally coming back to school to keep working on my API, and I was definitely excited since I was hoping to re-do it as quick as I could. Unfortunately, my friends all decided to walk to school, again... So we definitely took our time getting there.
We finally got to school and I immediately started working on the API. I removed a lot of the things I had there before and started working on the text generator how the teacher had showed it, and added a few verification systems (which was actually what took the longest, unfortunately) but it was really fun! The best part in programming for me is testing and seeing what the error means. When you figure it out it's very exhilerating, makes all the progress I made so far worth it.
At the end of the day, I managed to finish the back-end of the API how I believe the teacher wanted it to be, but I'm still not 100% sure so I will definitely be asking him tomorrow about it, also to see where I can improve! I was feeling sad to leave so soon, but it was the set schedule, so we all decided to go back home
On the way back home, we all passed by the nearby shop that had essentially anything you could think of, and I found a lot of cool trinkets, like a tiny game console with a workable tetris game! I stayed playing with it for a while becase I didn't believe it could be possible, I almost thought about buying it but I didn't want to go too far and get it just to use it once.
Then I saw these keychains hidden behind a lot of toys, and I knew I had to buy them, they were keychains of characters from one of my favourite games, I wasn't expecting these to be here on Lithuania! I never found any merch for it in Portugal or anywhere really, so when I saw it I was really surprised. They're kind of ugly, but I do believe that adds to the charm! I don't regret getting them.
Something unexpected happened though, while we were walking home I suddenly noticed one of them fell off the chain a while back, and it definitely got me desperate to find them (which was kind of embarrassing, but they were one of my favourite characters from that game). but my friends decided to help me and go back with me to find it, and thankfully they did very far back, I still don't know how it fell out so early but I'm glad to have it back. Unfortunately, us going back to find it separated us a bit from the others, but when we got home we were all there and no one got lost.
After that, we talked to each other and played some games while we waited for the time to go to Bernelių, which by then a lot of us were tired but we still went. We arrived there in time but unfortunately it was all full! So they took us downstairs to a private room of sorts, and it definitely felt very V.I.P, and I'm not sure we deserved this kind of treatment but it was still very nice of them!
When the soup first arrived, it turns out they could only do their most expensive soup for us, which was even more than we were paying them with our deal! (We are paying them 6€-7€ for 15 days to eat there, so the soup was more than that.) We were all shocked and thanked the server, some of us didn't really like it but most still ate most of it, it was actually pretty good, but it had mushrooms which is not something I particularly like.
The main meal came and it was also pretty good too. I managed to eat most of it (except the beetroot, I don't like beetroot) and definitely enjoyed this day at Bernelių more than any other, even though I feel like we didn't deserve it!
After we all finished eating, we planned to go to the same donuteria again, especially since a few of us were still hungry, to buy some donuts. The window that showed all the donuts had a lot more donuts than there were the last time we were here, and they all looked really good, even the one guy who said he didn't think it was productive coming here ended up buying a donut.
Today was very simple, and not much happened, but I still enjoyed it a lot! I most definitely cannot wait to continue working on the API, and figure out how to make the front-end part of it work. I do wonder if the way I made my API will allow for an easy front-end, but we'll see.
28/12/2023
Today I actually slept a full 8 hours, since I went to sleep a lot earlier than I usually would, so I woke up even more refreshed than usual. A few of us slept in, so we were worried we'd be late but since we took the bus we actually arrived right on time! The moment we entered in the classroom, I started working on the API. Especially since I could finally start figuring out the front-end part of it.
Turns out it's actually a lot more complicated than I thought, especially since I will be (trying) to use Laravel and Blade, which is used in front-end with integrated back-end, so it's very interesting for sure. Unfortunately since I am still very new to APIs, I had no clue how to integrate them to the web-view, but I'm still working on it! I've definitely debated working on it back home, even it our teacher told us not to do that.
For lunch we decided to go to the Bistro restaurant, which was recommended by our teacher to try out. I ordered a bit of an expensive dish, but I don't regret it, the food there was great, honestly. Though we probably won't be coming back to it since it was actually much more expensive than what we are used to.
After school, we all separated in halves. The other guys wanted to go to the laundromat, since apparently they really needed to clean their clothes, but me, Lara and Santiago all decided to just go home, though we first stopped by Silas (the local supermarket) to buy a few snacks and necessities, and then took the bus back home. What was funny is that when we finally arrived to our apartment's street, we found the other guys leaving to the laundromat just then. They walked back home and it took so long they still hadn't gotten there.
When we arrived home we relaxed for a bit and hung out with my friends in their room, it was all very fun. After that, we got ready to go to the restaurant to eat there. The main dish was rice with chicken, and then pickles at the side. I was actually really happy with the meal since I did like pickles a lot, I ended up stealing some pickles from my friend since he didn't like them!
We arrived home and then had a video call reunion with our teachers, so they could check up on us, and tell us how our evaluation would go. They also told us how we should be planning our trips and such, it was a really informative meeting.
29/12/2023
I was able to wake up early today, except everyone in my room was struggling to wake up, which was actually really funny since they woke up, and then immediately kept going back to sleep. We all got ready quick to leave to the bus stop to be able to go to school.
We all arrived there and, once again, all started working on our projects. I was still stuck on how to implement the API with the front-end, but I do feel like I'm getting the better hang of it! I pretty much worked non-stop on getting the website to send the API requests to work, and in the end didn't get to do much but I do feel like I managed to re-do a lot of the things I had done previously that were kind of clunky.
We all decided to eat at Bistronome again, since we all enjoyed the food there, and this time I decided to order a burger instead to see how it was, and it actually was really good too! Though the beef kept falling out of the bread, which was really annoying but it was fine, since they gave us cutlery anyway.
After school, we all had already planned to go to the Museum of War nearby the school, so we all just walked there since it was an 8 minute walk. It was actually raining really heavily, but we managed to get there without any issues. We got there and the entrance fee was 5€.
The whole museum was so interesting, there were so many things and interesting facts scattered around every corner. You could even interact with some things, like an army jacket and hat you could put on! A lot of my friends put on that jacket and took pictures, it was actually pretty funny to see!
But there were also just a lot of sad things, due to the recent war in the Ukraine, they have dedicated a spot in the museum to how much damage it has caused. They had a wall dedicated to the lives lost in the war. A lot happens in war, and none of it is happy. There were a lot of pictures I took at the museum, though not as many as I could've.
We spent a good while at the museum, we saw a LOT of things, like the history of weapons, from the first firearm to the current assault rifles... There was a lot of history I hadn't seen before, it was all new to me to look at, but also really interesting.
After the museum, we separated in half so the people who wanted to go by bus could go to the bus stop, and the others could just walk back home. I was with the ones that wanted to go by bus, but we actually didn't get to use the bus since we got distracted and went to look at the nearby shops. But I don't really regret it anyway since we could bond with each other over things, and it wasn't all for nothing!
When we all arrived, we just hung out with each other until it was time to go to the restaurant, and then we went there to eat our dinner and that's pretty much it! A few of the others went to the donuteria again to buy some donuts, since they're actually really good donuts, but my part of the group just went to the supermarket to get some stuff we were missing. Today was very eventful in the way that I learnt a lot about Lithuanian history, and also WWII and such. It was a productive day, even if it doesn't seem like it.
30/12/2023
Today we all had planned to wake up at 5AM , to be able to arrive at the train station in time to buy the tickets to get to Vilnius. However.. Me and my roomates all only woke up at around 5:50AM, so we were all definitely stressing when we realized how badly we overslept. But we hurried up quickly and actually managed to buy the tickets JUST in time! Everyone was definitely stressing since they didn't mean to oversleep, but thankfully we got in the train.
This was actually my first ever train trip! It was so nervewracking, since I didn't know how it was going to work, but it was actually really simple. We actually did buy 1st-class too, but no one had the courage to look to buy anything from the menu. We just stayed the whole trip mostly on our phones, I even started watching some movie I was curious about for a good while.
Then we finally arrived in Vilnius at around 7:30AM, and we were all starving for something to eat, and we saw a McDonald's right next to the train station we left off at, so we just decided to go there. We arrived there and we ordered some McCafe meals, and some others ordered burgers (for some reason). I got the croissant and hot choco for breakfast, and 4 donuts for everyone to eat, and it was actually a really good meal.
After that, we left McDonald's at around 8AM, and headed towards our first destination, which was the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Rights. We ended up walking for about 30 minutes just to get there, which was super tiring. We even passed by a museum on the way there, and took some pictures of the outside exhibitions.
Then we finally arrived to the museum, although it was closed when we got there and we still had 10 minutes, so we just hung out outside while taking cover from the rain. When it opened, we all went in and immediately saw a lot of things and information, we bought our ticket and went our way in! The first floor had a LOT of information on what happened in Lithuania due to Russia and the KGB, it had a lot of saved items from back then, even the first room was already full so we could barely get in to read anything!
Still, we walked around the first floor and saw a lot of things, and information we never knew about before. After, I went with Raul and Arturo downstairs to see the KGB prison, while the others went upstairs. I honestly preferred that I went downstairs, I feel like I understood a lot better the abuse and horrors that actually happened with just a short look at the entrance. There were so many holding rooms, and prison cells inside, some even that you could look through the peep-hole and actually 'see' someone inside the cell.
I read pretty much every board in that floor, and I learnt much more than I thought I would. For example, to the left of the entrance there were two holding rooms, which were essentially solitary cells to hold the next in line to be questioned. It was just a tiny rectangle room you could barely stand in, and you can see in the picture it had seats, but back then it didn't even have that! They were forced to stand or sit on the floor for hours on end.
There were so many cells, and so many with the purpose of torturing someone just for not agreeing with occupation.
We saw a lot down there, but it's too much to even talk about. By the time we left downstairs, it was already 10.40AM, we basically had to hurry up to see the upstairs. I didn't get to see much, but I still saw a lot of the items and rooms they had there, they even had an example room where the russians would hear in on conversations with a radio, so they could catch anyone disobeying, crazy, right?
Then we left at around 11PM, and headed towards The Green House, a Holocaust exhibition/museum. We ended up just walking there since it was down the street, but it was actually kind of hard to find it since it was hidden behind some buildings. We did end up finding it, and bought our tickets. We went in and it was a lot of text on the walls, about newspaper clippins, and news about ongoing issues during WWII, where jewish people in Lithuania were being persecuted, there was a whole list of how many jewish people died in each city per month, and almost every city was in the thousands EVERY month. Just knowing this is horrible, the amount of things jewish people back then is unbelievable.
The museum had a lot of things I actually didn't know, apparently the jews living in Vilnius had 'Malinas' in some houses, which is essentially a hiding spot so they could hide when the "inspectors" came in, and there was even a Vilnius Jewish Ghetto, and a lot. So many disturbing facts were there, the museum guide showed us the Malina they had built in this museum, to be used for examples and to show people how it used to be back then. We went inside the Malina and then were showed a video of an excerpt of a diary from a jewish child, and his experience on being inside a Malina for the first time. There was also information about him and his family outside the door, and it was so heartbreaking. Apparently the inspectors found the Malina and him and his family were shot down. As much as you know about the Holocaust, more and more disburting facts keep coming out.
We ended up leaving the museum at around 12PM, and separated a bit, since my friends and I just decided to order a 'Bolt' due to how much our legs and feet were hurting from walking so much, however the others went by foot. We went in direction of the National Museum of Money, and when we arived there we ended up waiting for the others in a nearby bench. When they arrived, we immediately went in to see the museum.
When we got in, our friend Arturo talked with the ticketshop worker and turns out since we were students, the tickets were free for all of us! It was definitely a relief, as we didn't want to spend so much money all the time. There were a lot of coins, everywhere, and actually a lot of interactive displays too.
There was what I'm guessing is a coin press maker, or something, where the supervisor of the whole museum allowed us to make our own souveniers! There was also another one where you were supposed to try and lift the 13KG gold bar, and I honestly struggled a lot on that one, since I'm not very strong overall.
There was also a lot of screen displays, and even a VR experience! I didn't get to use much of the screen displays or VR since they didn't really interest me, but it was still a very fun experience. There was so much about coins and money notes that I didn't know about until then.
We spent a good while inside the Money Museum, but at 1PM we finally left to go eat our lunch. One of us wanted to go to an armenian restaurant while the others wanted to go to a sushi restaurant, so we all decided to separate and meet up at the Money Museum at 2:30PM. The sushi we had was actually really good, especially since it was a bit less than 10 euros for everyone, even though I actually paid for everything in full! I'm waiting on getting my share of the pay back, haha.
We sucessfully met up in time at the museum, so we could gather our stuff and prepare to go to the next museum, House of Histories. When we first arrived there, I thought it was going to be about Lithuanian history, but it actually turned out to be general history, and the conspiracy theories formed globally, such as wifi 5G spreading the Corona Virus, or even the moon landing being fake. It was actually very interesting and more thought provoking. A lot of the conspiracy theories shown were honestly people purposefully spreading lies, which is crazy to me how many people actually ended up believing in them.
After the House of Histories, we all started walking towards Gediminas tower, the way up was excrutiating, it was so tilted and there were so many stairs, I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to walk up there, but we did it anyway. When we arrived, we, again, bought the tickets to be able to roam and see everything inside. It was actually a lot tinier than I thought it would be, but it was still really interesting to see how it was integrated back in the day in Lithuania. They also had roof-access and it was really fun to just be up in the roof to see all of Vilnius from the top, it was all very pretty.
We got the elevator back down instead of going by the stairs, since there was a genuine concern of slipping due to the heavy rain going on at the moment. And I'm very glad for this, since I was not going to be able to go down there again, EVER.
Then we headed towards the train station, and ate dinner at the same McDonald's, and bought the tickets back to Kaunas for 19:30, and finally arrived back to Kaunas after this long day. We struggled a bit with the busses, since there was to crosswalk to get to the bus stop we needed to go to, but we managed to get home safely and all together.
Today was a really long but informative day, I don't think I ever went to so many places in a day!
31/12/2023 - New Years Eve!
Today is not only New Year's eve, its also Raul's birthday! We had been planning a surprise party for him all along for a few days now, we bought party hats, party whistle blowers, and even a cake! We had been hiding it from him for days, and honestly I was worried he'd find out.
We first started out by waking up pretty late, and then making dinner, which was pasta made graceously by Santiago (thanks!), and not much more since we didn't have a lot of food prepared. It was pretty good but also not very filling, but its fine. After we ate, we all had planned to leave for the LAN house, to play some games since we've been away from our home PCs for 3 weeks now! We arrived there and started setting up to play an FPS game, and only had until 6PM since it closed early on New Year's Eve.
We had a lot of, and obviously I carried all of them to victory with my great skills (kidding..). After we left, we started separating, Raul and a few others had wanted to go to Akropolis to do some gift shopping and food, and we immediately took opportunity to go to buy some things for him! We covered it up as if we wanted to "buy gifts for our secret santa", but we were mostly just wanting to separate to prepare for his surprise party.
We started walking to Kuroneko since we knew he'd like some things from there, but when we arrived there we found out that it had closed just 10 minutes before we arrived, which was really disappointing, but on our way back we found Leandro coming to where we were so he came with us to the supermarket Iki Express. We bought some candy to give him as a gift and also for ourselves.
After we bought the candy, we went back home and immediately started preparing for his party. We took out the «Happy Birthday» balloons and Leandro started filling them up, the balloons were definitely what took the longest, and at some point we were stressing out since apparently they were already on their way back. We then hatched a backup plan in case they came before we finished, in which I went down and convinced them to go back to the supermarket to buy very needed things ASAP! And things did become dark, since they suddenly appeared near the entrance of the apartment. I successfully convinced Raul and Tomás to go to the supermarket with me so the others could have more time to prepare the party.
We spent some time at the supermarket, and Tomás and I made sure to stall for time by talking for no reason, but at some point we had to return back home since we had already picked the things "we needed". I was worried I couldn't stall properly, but when we arrived they finished, and actually managed to surprise him. Turns out he never suspected anything up until the actual reveal, which is a relief. I'm pretty sure he thought the party we planned was cool, so I'm glad about that.
After that, Raul called his family and friends to talk about his birthday, and we ordered some pizza for dinner. We just hung out until nightime, which at that point around 10PM I decided to take a nap and wake up before actual New Year. I did manage to wake up just 20 minutes before, but I wasn't actually all that invested in waiting for New Years, since it had never been a big deal to me,
I stayed with the half of the group that stayed at home, and the others went out to see the fireworks, when they came back it turns out they couldn't see much due to the buildings, which was actually kind of sad, but now I was glad I didn't get dressed just for that. When everyone came back, we all just hung out until Very late in the night, which was a bad idea but we all had a lot of fun!
01/01/2024 - New Year New Me
I had never experienced New Years without my family, this now being the first time ever! Though at this point I've gotten really close to these people, so I don't find it as weird as I thought I would've. We all woke up late, but all had decided to go out toeat at this ramen shop near our home.
We all got ready and started heading out, and got there pretty quickly. Turns out we had to wait about 30-40 minutes for the food to finish but we didn't really mind it since we could just be on our phone and talk to each other! We all pretty much ordered pork ramen, but a few ordered chicken instead. When we food came in, it immediately looked delicious.
We definitely took our time to enjoy it. It had a great aspect and taste overall, the meat was very tasty and so was the ramen. We all took our time eating all of it, and ended up finishing pretty late. Unfortunately I didn't get to drink all of the soup since I don't actually really enjoy soup that much, but it was still delicious.
After the ramen, we all decided to just walk around the city sightseeing, since everything was pretty much closed today, being a holiday and all. We started planning what we could do tomorrow, and actually came across an interesting museum near our home too, which we definitely plan to come to tomorrow!
We walked around a bit more, and saw a lot of things. After that, we went back home and a few of us just decided to go to the laundromat to take the opportunity to clean their clothes. I just stayed home since I didn't need to worry about that.
After they came back, we all hung out and started preparing on what to do for dinner and started defrosting some things. Meanwhile, Santiago started giving some of the other guys a lesson in API theory (and got them all to steal my bed...) It was all fun but then it got too late, and we never got to actually make any dinner. I just ate 4 toasts at night, I'm kind of sad we got distracted, but it happens.
Today wasn't very eventful, but it was still fun! The ramen was great, especially since I had never actually had any ramen before.
02/01/2024
Today we started school back again today, so we all woke up early to go to school by bus. We arrived there and just continued working on our projects, though today I don't have much to say since I didn't get to improve on it as much and didn't work on it as hard as other days, since I was still tired from the day before.
Though I'll still say I always find it fun to work on the project, no matter the amount of progress I make on it! I worked a bit more on how to show the messages properly, and implementing the PUT method on the front end.
After school, we all immediately headed towards the museum we had planned to go to, and honestly? I feel like it's one of the best museums we've gone to yet. It was an animal museum, I'm not sure if it's a taxidermy museum or hyperrealistic animals with fake fur and materials, but either way it just shows how realistic all the animals were!
I definitely couldn't pick my favourite floor, each floor had their special charm, and most definitely having a lot of butterflies, from ugliest to prettiest, there were a lot of animals. We all thought it'd be a quick museum trip, but honestly I wanted to take my time with it to see each animal there was. There were so many interesting exhibitions, especially the ones that try to replicate real life events, like a bird being eaten by bugs, or the eagle eating a bunny.
There were about 3 floors, each roughly representing a set of animals, the first one we went to had a lot more of dead animal skin, like crocodiles and bears, and definitely a lot of birds. The second one had a lot more bugs, from mosquitoes to beetles, and I'm just going to say that one of my favourite characters is based on beetles, and even then actual beetles are horrifying.
We went through it all carefully, seeing every animal exhibition and even trying to look at them up close. After we were done, we went down and I even bought a few of their items, compared to all other museums we went to, I believe their items were genuinely a lot prettier, they didn't push the animal bit too far on their merch and I definitely thought they looked better.
After that, we all went home to hang out before we went to the restaurant. We went and then returned from the restaurant, the food was really spicy so none of us really enjoyed it but it's OK. After the restaurant, we all bought new donuts to experiment, and I bought the cinammon covered one, it was great! It reminded me of bolo de berlim back in Portugal. Then we all combined to go to Kuroneko to buy some stuff to our secret santas, (though I actually already gave my secret santa their present! But I still followed them). I had actually already guessed who had me as their secret santa, and they were definitely struggled to find a present but at the end he finally found something he could get.
Almost everyone got a little thing and then we left, and headed towards the big christmas tree and sweets market. We bought waffles and they were amazing! Though since it was so cold it almost immediately became cold, even though it was smoking hot just a minute ago. It was really fun and everything there was genuinely really pretty, we also bought some lollipop candy to try out, though unfortunately no one really liked them and most didn't finish them.
After that, we all headed back home already late in the night, all freezing cold since it was around -7ºC to -3ºC, I was definitely already running back with how cold I was, but when we all got home it turns out someone had lost their gift to give to their secret santa, so 3 of them went back with him to help him find it again. Luckily, they returned later with the recovered present and didn't lose it forever, it was definitely a relief.
Today was actually a lot more eventful, we hung out a lot today and had a lot of fun, I can't believe this experience is almost over.
03/01/2024 - So close yet so far...
Okay, so I do feel like I failed to mention this a while back, but I did in fact manage to finish the first API the teacher requested us to do, but I continued working on adding the front-end and connecting the API to it, and since today is the last day we'll ever have in that classroom to work in the API, I do feel really sad, I was relatively close to finishing it, but I can't now. I definitely have a lot of positive memories at KITM, it's a very positive and open environment, and I feel very sad leaving it for the last time today.
We worked a lot on our project today, and I was so close to implementing all the final API calls to the front-end, but it's okay. We also planned what we were going to do later today in class during break so we could have a more relaxed by knowing what we were going to do later today.
After school, we all left and waited a bit for our classmate Arturo, since he had to drop off his backpack at the apartment, and then we started heading towards the bus stop. We knew the bus ride would take a while since it was actually going to cross the bridge in Kaunas. I was actually kind of scared since it was so far away from home, but we went there since we planned to go to the KGB Bunker in Kaunas.
When we arrived, it took us a while to actually find the KGB Bunker location, and we actually passed by a veterinary which had cats just by the window, and they were adorable. But anyway, we found the bunker later on, but it turned out that the door was locked and we had to call a number in that case, but also it just meant that it was closed for the day, but we called and coordinated so we could come tomorrow roughly around the same time. We were kind of disappointed, since we actually did want to check it out, but we couldn't really do much about it.
We did notice that there was a racing kart arena right next to the Bunker, so we all went there instead since we couldn't go to the Bunker, but it turned out that the prices were kind of expensive and I never really liked karts anyway, so I didn't go just like a few other people, though 3 of us did go in, it was actually kind of funny to watch since they all got in the last 3 places.
After the karts, we all started heading back to the bus stop, and came across the veterinary again, except they let one of the cats out to greet us! It was very adorable and very touchy-feely. Even though we didn't get to see the bunker, we still did a lot of fun stuff today, I don't mind that we went so far without much.
04/01/2024
Today was going to be our last day doing activities with the KITM team, and one of our classmates revealed he was sick just the morning we were heading out, so he just stayed at home to rest We were supposed to be going on a museum visit with another teacher, however when we arrived and started heading towards the museum, we realized we were heading in direction of the War Museum, one we already went to. Unfortunately we had to warn the teacher about that, which was kind of sad since apparently he had only been there 7 years ago and was looking forward to seeing it again now, after the reconstruction that happened!
So we had to find a new location to visit, so we decided to go towards a wall art gallery nearby. We got there pretty quick (even though I was walking extremely slow) and honestly it was really pretty. The art in the walls were so intricate, and had so many details, even though it was really small gallery, it was really pretty overall!
We spent some time there, taking pictures and reading some of the text scattered around some of the art. I was kind of sad it was so short, since the art was so good, but it's okay since it means they would rather take their time improving the art than rushing and having poor looking art.
We left a bit after and went to find another museum we could go to, and found the Money Museum nearby of Kaunas, so we started heading there. When we got there it turned out that they only allowed reservation ticket entry, which was really sad since the teacher definitely didn't mean for the day to go like this, but I definitely don't blame him for not knowing we already went to the museum.
After that we just decided to go home so we could help take care of our sick classmate, but we ended up just staying at a café for about 50 minutes to relax and eat breakfast since it was still 11AM, nowhere near lunch time. After that we went to a pizzeria to order takeout to bring home to our classmate, so he didn't have to cook or eat cereals, it was an interesting experience to be honest.
After we arrived home and ate the pizzas, we had planned to go to the KGB Bunker today, but since our classmate was sick it was definitely not going to be a good idea just to make him sick again, so we cancelled that plan and just stayed home to destress.
A while later, we finally headed, for the last time, towards Bernelių Užeiga. Today was our last day for our deal with them. We arrived and got our meal, the soup was OK, but then the main meal was definitely way better than all the ones we had so far! It was a steak with fried potatoes, and salad. It was really tasty even though the meat was slightly spicy. It was actually a really good meal.
After Bernelių, I really needed to go towards Kuroneko to buy a birthday present, since a family friend had his birthday just on the day I arrived back home, 6th January! I definitely had to get something for him or I wouldn't be able to otherwise. I managed to find something I believe he would like a bit late, but I did it, and everyone bought a little something they liked too to bring home.
When we arrived home, we relaxed a bit and then had a reunion with our teachers! We talked about how tomorrow was going to be, and how we were supposed to move tomorrow, and such. We also talked about how the video we have to make needs to look like, so we could think on how we are going to do it and such.
05/01/2024 - Last day in Kaunas
Today is going to be our last day here in Lithuania, and I'm definitely sad about it. Everything we learnt here was so insteresting, I'll definitely miss it by the time we get home back in Portugal. First we all woke up early to say our final goodbyes to the team back at KITM at 10AM in the school. We got there by bus and we waited there for a while. Unfortunately they weren't able to come until very late, and by that point we had to go back to our apartment to clean everything up for the checkout. Two of us stayed behind to wait for them while the rest just returned back to the apartment.
Luckily a lot of us managed to tidy everything already last night, but others still had to do their bags and such. It took a while, definitely a bit until after check-out but there was nothing they could do anyway. We finally finished at 12PM and all ordered a Bolt to the train station, since we couldn't carry our bags in the bus to there. We all got there without issues, and wait about an hour before we had to board the train. We went on the way to Vilnius and when we arrived at the Vilnius train station, we waited for the teacher that was going to be with us at our short stay in Vilnius.
He arrived after a while, so we all just took a bolt to the hotel Domus Maria, where we could be staying for 1 day until we had to go take the flights back to Portugal. We arrived there and all went in to get our keys, there was a bit of a problem but at the end it was all resolved. We all went to our rooms and put away our bags and backpacks to then leave for dinner. We ate at a restaurant we randomly found and even ordered dessert, even though it was expensive, just because it was going to be our last day eating there.
We ate really well, the food was actually really good and the dessert was tasty. On our way back we also had a lot of fun since there was a ton of snow on the roads, and we hung around and took some pictures of Vilnius at night. We headed back to the hotel to finally be able to relax after such a long day, and we all unfortunately stayed up a bit late, since we decided to order something from Bolt food for dinner. We got McDonalds, which isn't much, but we all ate well and it was a pretty fun time overall. Though by the time we finished we had to go to sleep early to be able to wake up in time for tomorrow, which I know is going to be very stressful! We are going to have to take two flights to head back to Portugal, and I'm really anxious about all that, but I also can't wait to finally be back home after all this time.
06/01/2024 - Last day in Lithuania
Today we woke up early at 8AM to be able to eat breakfast at the hotel, unfortunately everyone was already there by the time me and my roomie woke up, so we did have to hurry up a bit. It all looked really expensive, honestly, but the actual food there wasn't that good! I picked a mini pancake, some sort of apple crepe, 3 orange slices, 2 croissants, and a sausage, but other than the pancakes and sausage, everything else tasted really bad... It wasn't super enjoyable, but I still managed to eat a fair bit. After breakfast, we all hurried back to our rooms to pack everything we took out of our backpacks to be downstairs at 9AM sharp.
We got down there just in time, and ordered 3 bolts to take us to the Vilnius airport, so we could bring our bags without issues. We arrived there early just to be sure we could be one of the first in line to the bagging area, but it also made us wait a few hours before they opened. When they opened we all put in our bags without any issues, and passed the security a bit later on also without any issues. We then waited for the doors to the bus for the airplane to open, and then we got in.
The first plane to Paris was pretty stress-free, I had next to no issues in the airplane from the takeoff to the landing, I found out I don't really feel anything in my ears unlike some other people. We arrived at the Paris Airport a few hours later, with our timezone changing to minus 1 hour, we essentially had 1 more hour to eat our lunch or whatever we needed. Most of us went to the same café to either buy a sandwich or a pizza to eat, and it was pretty tasty overall, however after that we had to go and hurry towards the bagging area to be sure we would still be on time.
The bagging area went without any hitch, so we went off to the security check and that definitely stressed out a lot of people! Something had essentially stopped the track from running, and the staff at the airport were being overly cautious towards anything they found in their scanners. We only managed to finish it after at least 20 minutes, and we were all already worried we wouldn't be able to get in the flight in time, but we managed to get in line to enter the airplane.
However, that was also stressful since there was something else stopping them from letting us in too, and it was only 5 minutes before the designated takeoff time that they finally let us in, and it turned out the flight was delayed for unknown reasons.. We were all definitely stressed out throughout the whole deal, especially since we didn't get much of a rest time. Fortunately this flight also went fine, and we finally arrived back in Faro! I was definitely glad all of this was over, being at the airplane and having to be in so many flights is definitely too stressful for me.
Coming back home was definitely a big relief for most of us, however this experience was definitely one I believe I needed! I learnt so many new things, programming or otherwise, so I definitely do not regret ever agreeing to coming on this Erasmus trip to Lithuania. I also managed to become friends with a lot of new people I wouldn't have met otherwise, which is something I'm really glad about too. An experience like this is not something you come across easily, so I'm very happy I was able to be in this one.
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