L O V E

People sure do love Valentine's Day over here and they seem to love loving it.

My V day was more of a long weekend. On Friday I helped deliver the mail in a custom made outfit :)
My cow also joined in the spirit. (I made it out of a sportsland plastic bag )

Then I helped judge the performances at the Valetine's Day concert. And then after that was the necessary V Day disco (at which the loving spirit died a little because the music was a little hard to love). And this was only Friday!! Not even Valentine's Day!

Then there was Saturday. I walked to the culture center and watched a lovely Latvian dancing concert. It made me teary :) This was my favourite costume, made from a beautiful green silk. The skirts reminded me of my curtains (which is a good thing cos I love them :) ).


And then ofcourse there was the party :) I don't think I need to say much more about that.

Valentine's day itself was pretty quiet. The big event was the champagne toast to the start of the Chinese New Year :) Although there was an interesting TV show where 4 males and 4 females got married without ever having met each other before. Ahh the beauty of true love :)

Crazazy

Life is pretty crazazy over here.

I've started volleyball and art school. And so now, taking into account the compulsory procrastination, I have no time to do anything. Art school is a bit of nonsense but it has given me more motivation to learn Latvian. I want to be able to tell the teachers to stop giving me stupid children's projects and to just let me do what I want!! The IT teacher got the message when he saw that I already knew the ctrl-c, ctrl-v shortcuts and so from now on I can do my own projects, the only problem is that all the little kids are using the computers! Once I've sorted out a way to scare them off I'll soon have some work to share with you guys. :)

Last week we had a B'day at school. (Dzimšanas diena in latvian and Gerburtstag in German. Aren't I a poncy multilingual show off :) ) . I've grown quite fond of birthdays and names days because the norm seems to be that the person whose day it is brings in sweets for eveyone else. This is fine with me and I think it's a good move. Instead of giving more gifts than you get each year you receive more :) Especially with all these names days!! For those of you who don't know every name (or most names) have a 'day' and you celebrate on whichever day your name falls. Personally I think it's an excuse for more food and parties but that's fine with me :)

Anyway so one of my class mates had a party and we had a nice cake. And then later they did what I had only ever heard of. The boys all got together and chucked the birthday boy (who was sitting in a chair) up into the air 18 times (one for each year). It was awesome but left me wondering whether it'll happen to me. I can't decide what I think about that. On one hand it could be fun, but on the other hand scary as hell! We'll see...
There has also been a birthday in the family ... Riča the dog's. In my aus family we don't even know our dog's b'day, let alone celebrate it. But here they have a nice tradition. They give their dog a cake. Here is proof.

(If my dog ate this he would explode)
Apparently this cake wasn't as tasty as some in the past, something to do with the quality of the cream. :)

So somehow (seriously I have no idea how, I didn't ask anyone about it) I have managed to join the SRC. It must just be in my blood because the SRC came and found me. And I love it!! The teacher is awesome and basically I just go for her. She spends a bit of time each meeting talking to me in Latvian and unlike everyone else she understands I need everything said twice and v e r y slowly. But SRC isn't just a free language lesson it's serious stuff and I have jobs to do. I'm going to buy valentines gifts for Valentines day tomorrow and I was also chosen (unbeknownst to me because I can't understand most of what they're talking about) to be on the jury to judge the valentines day plays. I'm not sure anyone thought about the fact that I won't be able to understand what they're saying. But I suppose, as I have said before, that bad acting is a universal language.

NEWS FLASH: I have actually done some school work despite my initial intentions to slack off this whole year. I agreed to give a presentation on the great nation of Australia to my English class. I managed to keep everyone happy. My teacher loved the pictures and the depth of my speech while my classmates liked the fact that I took up both English lessons and gave them food. Well, they were keen on the food at first but when they actually tried the vegemite they weren't so happy. :)

And on the vegemite note. I have never liked it but for some reason I keep eating it. Maybe it's because I feel I need to hold onto my inner Aussie.

So it's all smiles over here (I promise/d) :)

Hehehe

I've been watching a lot of bobsledding and so my family showed me this. I thought it was kind of funny but maybe I'm just an immature teenager.

http://www.kasjauns.lv/lv/news/?news_id=15580

I'm sorry if you don't like it. I just thought it was too good to not share.

Me!!

This is going to be a little long.

I received a concerned email from my mother the other day, she was concerned that perhaps I hadn't returned from the American Embassy. But I'm glad to say that I got out alive. The embassy visit was pretty boring. The highlight would have to be hearing the American diplomat speak Latvian, I hope my accent is slightly better.

What was good about the visit was that it was only for about an hour and a half. So the rest of the day was spent wandering the streets of Rīga with my host mother and sister. They took me to Rīga cinema which is an absolutely beautiful old theatre. We saw the latvian film 'Rudolfs Mantojums'. I couldn't understand much at all and so I spent the time making up my own dialogue, sleeping :) and staring at the amazing interior. The Latvians are very practical when it comes to crowd control. Instead of allowing you back out into the foyer after the movie they push you out a side door that leads straight into the street. You've had your movie now get out of here!

I also went to Rīga on saturday to visit the YFU mob. It was sooo beautiful!!! It was warm (-2) and snowing. And the YFU crew were awesome, sounds like I'll be doing some awesome things this year.

I had to keep myself amused somehow on the long train trips to Rīga and back and so I took my knitting. Here is the evidence:
Yes I am a cool kid.

Sunday was finally the day I got to ice-skate!! The morning was spent clearing the snow and then it began.
With these boots I was bound to succeed!

It might not look like I'm moving but I am ... I promise and all by myself!!!
Don't mess with me, I'm bound for the Latvian Hockey league.

But in my spare time I enjoy competitive ice-skating. I've been told I'm a natural.

I hope you enjoy all the photos of me and the stories about me. :)

Geriatric snow

Snow does not age gracefully.

When it first lands it covers the land like a soft layer of icing sugar. But over time the snow is compacted and dirtied by the animals that venture out into the harsh conditions (it was - 25 today). Salt and sand are thrown onto the street to increase traction (it looks muddy and gross but if the road is less slippery I appreciate it. I've had enough of skidding in the car and slipping over when I walk.). And animal excretions are frozen where they land, the cold preventing them from decomposing. All in all it destroys the fairy tale picture we have in Australia of a white christmas.

The infamous yellow snow.
Not the greatest photo but I was quite embarrassed to be photographing this particular subject. I get enough shit for taking photos of all the snow, let alone yellow snow.

In other news school was cancelled today. They have a policy that if it's -20 children up until grade 10 don't have to go to school and if it's -25 then everyone can stay home. And yes it reached -25. Wooo! The way it's going at the moment when it reaches -5 I'll be outside in my shorts screaming with joy. It's just so hard to do anything with this cold. Apparently I've had the luck of arriving in the coldest winter in 23 years. Yay for me. I just hope it's not too cold for the ice skating lessons to start on the weekend.

Tomorrow the class is going into Rīga to visit the American embassy. No one seems to be able to tell me why but I'm grateful for the day of school and the adventure. I'll report back tomorrow. :)

The universal language of ... theatre sports!

My host mother told me about a show that she thought I should go and see. It was a theatre sports concert. When she showed me the add I was like 'teatre sports'?? What the hell is that?? Do they get up on stage and act like they are playing sport? Or do they play sport while acting? ie. ice skating as Michael Jackson (which I have seen and it wasn't good, but more on that later.)

Anyway I wrote the English translation in my diary, 'Theatre Sports', and I left it. The next day I looked at it and it dawned on me. It was a theatre sports competition!! (For those of you who don't know http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatresports).

After I worked this out I felt pretty stupid because I have some great mates who do Theatre Sports and I've been to a couple of performances before. So I was pretty excited about going to a Latvian version of the sport.

The first half hour was spent giggling. It was theatre sports in Latvian!! But it seems bad acting is also a global phenomenon and that you don't need to understand what they are saying to cringe. So the rest of the evening was rather painful. The eldest kids were good but still not quite the calibre of the deakin crew. :)
This is a picture of the beginning of a game of space jump. It was in Latvian!! :)

Ummm ... yeah

It's been pretty subdued in the house today because yesterday one of the dogs died. Obviously my host family was distraught.

I haven't been quite sure what to do. I didn't want to intrude on their grieving and I didn't want to be a burden. So I cleaned up the house from the dinner party the previous night and then got out of there and went shopping.

It was a pretty succesful shopping trip. I bought knitting needles and wool (I have been given 5 weeks to knit a scarf), school books (it dawned on me that I'm here for a year and so I decided I should start taking school slightly more seriously) and general grocery things.

These are some of my purchAses. Riga Dinamo is a Latvian hockey team. Needless to say they are pretty popular. At the games everyone chants Di na mo, or Di na, or Ri ga, or Di na mo Ri ga. I'm hoping this book will get me into the club (not sure which one, maybe the cool kids? :) ). Ontop of the book is my knitting. That's my work from a day. I'm doing a slightly more complex knit from a book of my host mothers but it's not quite working. It's meant to be one texture on one side and another on the other. But somehow I'm managing to get stripes of the two on both sides. But I figure that first attempts at knitting have a duty to look bodge and homemade, it's part of the charm.

I had grander plans for my shopping trip. I wanted to get ready for Australia Day celebrations. I was planning to make lamingtons and since I forgot to bring a flag I was going to sew one. However, the store had no coconut (pretty essential) and there is nowehere I can buy fabric nearby. So I'm not going to have anything special ready for Aus Day. BUT I've decided I'm still going to make the flag. My family thought it was a great idea as they have a flag pole outside their house. So australia day will happen at some point, just not tuesday ( I'll wear a yellow top but I don't have any green (me, no green???)).

I have so any things to write about! Here is a preview of the posts to come.
- a sneak preview into the world of Latvian theatre sports
- an interesting tobogganing video :)
- some local graffiti (the local graffiti artists have a great grasp on the essentials of the english language)
- my thoughts on why everyone has skinny legs
- and I might even share some of my interesting food experiences

But for now here are some pavlova pics!
This is a nice aerial shot that displays the artistry of the fruit placement. I used Kiwi fruit, raspberries and bananas. It was actually quite nice. The pavlova was a hit. Everyone had seconds. YAY! After the drama of cooking it it was nice that it turned out well.

Mmmmm. Scrumptious.