Annual meeting of all parks

On Friday, 23rd August, the annual meeting of all employees who work in the protected areas in Lithuania was held. This time, unfortunately, it was in our park. I say unfortunately not because it was not good, but because this could be an opportunity for both of us to discover new parts of Lithuania. Anyway, we were looking forward it because some of the volunteers were coming with their colleagues so we could spend more time together.

So in the morning I met Olesya, Marion and Lilita, a girl from Latvia who is doing a practice in their park, and we went together to the campsite where the event would take place. We were the first and we had a lot of time so we decided to use it to put up our tent. We did a great job and as Oli noted "Our tent looks the best", even though there were no other tents yet.

After the girls registered more of the guests started coming so we started to prepare ourselves for the different excursions. Daniele lead another bike tour in the park and the rest of us went canoeing. It was very crowded in the small rivers as there was another group with 7-8 canoes, but we befriended them and helped each other when someone got stuck on an underwater tree. At the end they even invited us to their party on one of the islands but we couldn't stay because we would have our own party later in the evening.

After we finished the canoe trip we went to one spring and walked back to the campsite. We changed our wet clothes, some of us even went for swimming in the cold water but I just enjoyed a cup of hot tea. The table was laid and everyone got around it. There were so many delicious things brought by the employees of every park that after trying from almost everything I looked like pregnant.
Soon after that a small performance from a local folk group started to entertain the guests and everybody took part in the dances afterwards. The party continued with a big campfire, lots of beer and scotch, songs and dances until the small hours of the morning.