Lithuania 4 Lyfe

I hadn’t had as much as a thought about Lithuania before Jurgis Kemkelis ‘25 (once ‘24) arrived wide-eyed on the doorstep of Chamberlain. Exchange students brought to our school by the Assist program were so distant from my high school experience. Outside of the obvious difference in age, my introversion kept my head down and away from anything outside of fleeting interaction. Jurgis sat down next to me at lunch. He introduced himself, looked back at his food, and continued his meal. The day after, his hello was a little less shy, his nervous smile a little less wry, we finally made conversation.

Those who got to interact with him were surely never short of positive things to say. His stamp, without doubt, has been made and will continue to last at St. Christopher’s. However, what stuck out to me was the pride he held in his nationality; a country the size of Virginia with a capital whose name took me weeks to properly pronounce. Instead of visiting vicariously through slideshows during chapel, I casually suggested the idea of actually going to his country, not expecting anything out of it. As it turned out, Seth Aschheim ‘24 had the exact same idea.

“I had no idea of the food, the customs, any of it. I just knew it was a country in Europe. Eastern Europe. And pretty much nothing more than that. I knew Jurgis was from there,” he recounted. For the both of us, it was a shot in the dark to try something completely foreign. Originally planning to just spend time in Kemeklis’ home country, we were fortunate to spend the first half of the trip in both Prague with Kemeklis’ cousin, Tadas, and a few days in transit through Poland. As was made evident, Lithuania isn’t a hot spot for American tourism. For the average US citizen, visiting the country is neither convenient nor particularly enticing. “A lot of people were surprised, like, why were, like, two American kids without any adults just going through Europe? Like, the response to that was just fun. Everyone was surprised to see us there. And they all thought we were European, or spoke Lithuanian, and then we just spoke in English. And they were like, oh, Americans, what's up?” That being said, the warm reception we were given made all the difference. Each day was full of people eager to show us their culture just as Kemeklis was for us.

For Aschheim, the trip was so much more than memories and an excessive number of photos, it was a chance to reconnect with his family and faith. In Warsaw, the capital of Poland, we were able to visit the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Having both Polish and Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, this provided Aschheim an opportunity “unlike anything [he’d] experienced before.” Alongside this, he was able to see firsthand the Jewish neighborhoods of both Warsaw and Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. 

I find it fitting that the patron saint of Vilnius is St. Christopher. Not only is he the namesake of our school, but his image is symbolic of protection for travelers, both in spirit and in the real world. I’m glad our school has been able to facilitate and provide the opportunity to host Kemeklis, because without it, this trip would’ve never been possible. Lithuania would just be another country in Europe. But more importantly, I would’ve never learned how to say “little dwarf” in Kemeklis’ language.