Babysitting

After reading the title I am sure more of you, as the insightful readers that you are, are going to think this story is about me taking care of a bunch of Latvian kids. The closest thing I have come to that is entertaining my professors kids at dinner last night. No this story has nothing to do with that.
I was walking down the street today when I saw outside of one of the expensive designer shops an equally posh baby carriage and inside was a little sleeping baby...where was its mother you ask? I assume that she was inside of the store shopping and left her baby outside in 10 degree weather (Celsius) by itself. Hopefully she put the wheel brake on!
I have actually seen this a couple times before today and it still baffles me. I mean you see kids walking around the streets by themselves at all hours of the day and night....when they should probably be in school and baby carriages left outside of shops. My American professor doesn't let her children cross the street by themselves and I really don't blame her. Its scary for me sometimes trying to navigate the cobblestones in ice with cars barreling down the streets at 50 mph. It all kind of makes you wonder are the parents in Latvia?

Protests in Riga

Of course it was just my luck that the one day I actually leave Riga the largest protest since independence was held. My host Mom even participated in the protest. How did all these people know there was going to be a protest? Well like in Soviet times when people wanted to announce a protest they published it in the evening newspaper. So key cultural and political figures wrote an open letter to the government. They said that they would participate in a protest the next day in front of the Saiema (the Latvian Parliament). Over 5,000 people answered the call packing the street of old town and making it difficult for the politicians to ignore them because they had to walk through a crowd of chanting people to get from their offices to the parliament building. They were protesting over the firing of the head of corruption bureau. Of course this story was not covered in the Western media but for more info about this please read The Baltic Times.

Ludza

This week I had the opportunity to go to Ludza in the eastern part of Latvia to conduct a seminar educating people on Human Trafficking. I had never been to Latgale (the eastern region of Latvia) before and jumped at the opportunity. Since the city was less than 30 kilometers from the Russian border we had a number of border guards and policemen and also people from NGOs. We taught them things like what is human trafficking, how to identify a victim, how people get trafficked and what is rehabilitation. It was very interesting to hear their perspectives and see what they could actually do to stop people from getting trafficked.
Here are some of the pictures from my trip



This is were we slept in Latvian they call it campings. It was actually really nice!
This is one of the presentations from the seminar. The arrows pointing to the Paldies (thank you in Latvian) show just how many opportunities there are to save someone from being trafficked.

The American Ambassador

I was invited to hear the United States Ambassador Catherine Todd Bailey speak at the University of Latvia. The speech was titled "Preserving Our Common Values" With a title like that I was expecting a light hearted comparison of Latvian and American values. Instead she basically tore Latvian politics to shreds and stopped just short of saying that the government is corrupt. It was very interesting and something that made headlines here and really pissed some people off.

It's just fish....

Last night my host parents had a couple of their friends over to the house. I was reading in my room and my host dad asked if I would like to join them. They handed me a bunch of food and I started eating. As I was eating I looked more closely at what I was eating and realized that it was cooked mushrooms....so it turns out that I finally ate Latvian mushrooms and I must admit they were not at all that bad.
But the story does not end there. Then they started passing around some appetizers. When then finally got to me I looked down and realized what they were about to eat. My host mom was like do you know what that is and unfortunately I did know. As I wrote before I always learn the words for food I do not like and this word was right up there with the mushrooms....it was eel. My host mom was like don't you want to try some it is a delicacy in Latvia........and she added it costs a lot of money. I sucked it up and took one cut it into three pieces and hoped for the best. As I ate it with all of the people in the room watching me, I thought this is why people travel to other countries, to learn and try new things......and it turns out eel did taste a lot like fish.

The Third German Invasion

One of my Political Science Professors made an off hand comment that has really stuck with me since. We were going around the class and saying where we were from and what we study. In a class of 15 of us, 11 were German and she said it is the Third German Invasion. The Germans invaded and subsequently ruled the Baltic States for over 700 years, and then the Nazis came back in World War II (with ironically many of the Baltic Germans who left or were called back during the interwar period and were hoping to reclaim their land).
The thing is that professor was completely correct. It seems wherever I go in old town there is a German tourist group and in my classes most of the students are German. I guess in Germany it must be cool to study the Baltic States. Also when you look at the sky line of Riga it looks like it could be a city in Germany and Riga has one of the largest concentrations of Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) Architecture in the world. Additionally my host mom told me that during Soviet times people were encouraged to learn German instead of English (which is why she speaks German instead of English). So Latvia really is a perfect place for Germans to vacation. It looks just like Germany, they are not seen as occupiers (the Latvians have the Russians for that) and lots of people speak German. So if any of you want to visit Germany but don't want to pay the high prices or the horrible exchange rates (Latvia does not have the Euro yet) consider coming to Latvia where it feels like Germany but with 50 years of Soviet Occupation!

Latvian Malls

I am always amazed when I walk around Riga how they take things from Soviet times and transform them to fit in present day Latvia. For example the Occupation Museum was during Soviet times, the Museum to the Red Riflemen, a Latvian battalion that fought to defend Lenin during the Russian Revolution (which is the short version of the story for a more complete version see here). After independence the building was vacant and there was talk that they should just tear it down. Instead some American Latvians bought the building and turned it into a museum chronicling the Occupation of Latvia. Then I learned that most of the shopping malls in Riga were old Soviet factories. Domina mall was once VEF Domina a factory where electronic radios were made for the entire USSR. So it seems that the remnants of communism that most people see around Riga are the exact opposite of what they were during Soviet times. Factories displaying the industrial strength of the workers paradise in Soviet times are now capitalist malls where people can pay too much for designer clothing from all around the world. I am not sure they did this on purpose but they definitely made good use out of a bunch of vacant buildings and turned them into things the Soviets would have despised.

Why Latvian?

Ever since I started studying Latvian, people have always asked me why would do you study Latvia? Its a small country of little to no importance to which I have no family ties. My brother posted an interesting article that I thought I should share with you all. He found it in BusinessWeek and it says that the demand for translations into Latvian grew faster than any other translation request over the last year. I finally feel justified in my decision..and dedicate this blog post to all those people who thought what in the world are you going to do with Latvian? Thanks Mike for showing me that my Latvian skills are marketable at last!

Happy Birthday?!

I am not sure if I have explained previously on my blog that in addition to my research I am also volunteering at a women's non-governmental organization called Marta while I am in Latvia. I help out with human trafficking research (which is my research topic), translations, and teach an English circle.
Yesterday I was at work preparing for my first English conversation circle when they came and told me it was someones birthday today and that we were going to sing to them. I followed everyone else downstairs to the kitchen where there was a huge birthday food extravaganza. We sang Happy Birthday (thank you Latvian Saturday school for teaching me the Latvian birthday song, everyone was impressed..not with my singing but with the fact that I knew the words) and everyone started to eat.
I then asked one of my co-workers who made all this food and she said the birthday girl did. And I said she made all this food for HER birthday celebration and she was like yeah duh. I guess in Latvia you celebrate your birthday by slaving over the stove and making food for everyone you know and even people you don't (I was introduced to her yesterday).
I remember as a kid always being sad that my birthday was in the summer and how it was always lumped in with all the other summer birthdays. Well not anymore...I guess birthdays in Latvia are happy for everyone but the birthday girl!