Vincent Karnila:  

To all of you who have visited (and will visit) my page - Thank You. And thank you for all the messages and Emails. It is really great to hear from so many people I have not seen for such a long time. Also please accept my apologies for not writing sooner. Things have been so hectic with the store and other things (this is good) that I didn't have time to write. Quite a few of you have asked what I've been up to since 1970 and how on earth I ended up living in Lithuania so I'll do my best to explain. As most of you may remember I went to the Vocational School and studied for a career working in machine shops. After I graduated I went to work full time in the same shop that I had worked for in the Co-Op program during my senior year. In October of 1970 that company was bought out and if I wanted to work for the company that had acquired us I was faced with a daily commute from Marlboro to Woburn. This didn't seem very appealing to me. I gave it a lot of thought and came to two conclusions. One was that I didn't want to drive to Woburn every day. The other was that I really didn¿t think I was cut out to work in a machine shop the rest of my life. So it was career adjustment time. It's been so long now I forget how I found out about this job but I found out that a mapping company from Virginia had opened a new facility in Wayland and they were looking for cartographers. Mind you that I had absolutely no idea what a cartographer was but it sounded interesting. For some strange reason they hired me and I began to work as a cartographer. The mapping we did was not road maps but more for scientific and engineering purposes. While I found the work to be very interesting I also found some of the work could be very boring. I immediately sorted out what was what and did my best to position myself for the more interesting assignments. I must admit that if things had continued to go in the direction they were going I would have stayed in this field. However in late 1975 there were changes in U.S. involvement internationally and this caused major changes in our mapping division. These changes resulted in relocation of our division and reassignment of many personnel. Not really liking what some of the possibilities were I decided it was again career adjustment time. I then got into the automotive industry. As the expression goes, I did this just to have something to do until I found a real job but I quickly found this industry to be very interesting, a lot of fun and very rewarding. I worked locally for about seven years then in 1982 I went to work for an international management consulting company that specialized in the automotive industry. This was FANTASTIC. It had everything you would want in a job. It was extremely demanding and challenging and no client, week or day was ever the same. The job required extensive travel. At least forty weeks out of the year you were on the road. So you would fly out Sunday or Monday and return home Friday night. As a result of all the travel I was able to see a lot of places and more importantly meet many wonderful and interesting people. I did this until 2004. So now the next question - How did I end up living in Lithuania??? It's not as unusual as you would think. My father's family is from the village of Garonys which is located between Lithuania's two largest cities of Vilnius and Kaunas. So at the risk of sounding cliché I have gone back to my roots. For many years my father and I tried to find out information about our family there. Finally in 1999 I made a connection and in 2002 I visited for the first time. For life of me I don¿t know what happened or why but during this visit something inside of me said I should be living here. People have asked why and I can¿t explain. It's probably because I myself don¿t understand. I visited two more times. During these visits I thought maybe this feeling would go away but it didn¿t. All this time I tried to ignore it and just forget about it. Then in 2004 I got divorced and I then realized there is nothing really holding me. If I wanted to live in Lithuania I should. I knew I would be leaving a very good job but I think you can imagine that the twenty two years of sitting in airports, chasing planes and sleeping in hotels had taken its toll and the travel had become something I didn¿t enjoy anymore. So in June of 2004 I moved to Lithuania. It was not that difficult to settle in since I had family here to help. I must also say that Lithuania is one of the most America friendly countries you can find anywhere so when they find out you're an American the people are extremely helpful. The critical thing was the Language. Most any one 40 and under that has a college education can speak English to some degree. The children that are still in school will learn English only if they are attending a good school. For the people over 40 it¿s kind of hit or miss. Most all the people in higher levels of government and politics are fluent in English. Also people in management positions of companies that do business internationally are fluent. Still though the majority of the population can¿t speak English and once you leave the city area the chances of finding some one you can communicate with in English is pretty slim. I knew that to feel comfortable here and to increase my professional opportunities it was essential to learn the language. So the first year I was here I attended Vilnius University¿s Language School to learn - make that TRY to learn - Lithuanian. OH MY GOODNESS this language is difficult to learn!!! The most difficult part is the grammar. So after getting a one year indoctrination to the language I decided to take the summer off. There was still family to meet and I wanted to spend some time getting to know them better. Also during this summer I spent quite a bit of time in the village my family is from. There were a number of elderly people there that were having difficulty keeping up with the daily chores on their farms. So I would spend 2-3 days per week in the village working on their farms to help out. I must admit that this was a great experience and a wonderful way to spend the summer. For the next year I became, for lack of a better term, a general contractor. I had bought a flat for investment purposes. U...Expand for more