Name's Days

Today is my host dad's name's day (and my dad's birthday which I always think is the 29th..so Happy Birthday). As I said in a previous post name's days are like birthdays in Latvia and everyone has one. Even if your name isn't Latvian there are name's days for unlisted names. My host dad explained to me that on name's day you don't invited people to come over to house to celebrate...they just do. So you must prepare food for an undisclosed number of people and hope that they show up otherwise you might be eating leftovers (which is hard because nothing in Latvia has preservatives so things go bad quickly). So last night my host dad asked if I wanted to come and see how they prepare trout and I was like sure. I was expecting some secret family recipe of herbs and seasoning.........instead I walked into the kitchen and a whole dead fish was staring back at me. It reminded me of all the dead fish I had to pick up while raking the shore when I was younger. Here is a picture just in case you don't believe me....let's just say there isn't a Latvian translation for "gross."


So I sat there and watched him take a whole fish apart. Let me just say that I heard crunching sounds that will give me nightmares for weeks to come. It was definitely an educational experience though I guess they use every part of the fish. They even take the stomach, head and backbone and make soup out of them. The only things they don't use are the gills and eyes...I told my host parents that more people in America would be vegetarians if they had to do this before eating fish. Then they asked "you like fish right?" and I said "I like fish sticks"....

Registering

After you get your Latvian residency permit you have to register your place of residence with the government. There are only five places in the whole country where you can register your place of residence and luckily the closest place to me was only a 15 minute walk from my house. I found the whole process of registering very weird. It is another remnant from Soviet times where citizens had to register their place of residence (even though in theory the place you lived was not really yours but property of the state anyway). I just find it quite scary to have the government know exactly where you live. On the other hand the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire alumni association has been able to find me no matter where I live.....so it must not be that hard to locate people in US either, even without the registration process. It just kind of makes me wonder if the registration process is just an exercise in futility.....but then again I guess one could say that same thing about the Soviet Union.

Residency Permit

Its official I finally got my Latvian Residency Permit today after 91 days of being in the country (you are only allowed to stay visa free for 90 days and they can deport you after that). As many of you know I have put a lot of time and effort into this permit (which is actually just a sticker in my passport). After all the money and leg work Matt and I have put into this is, it actually feels very anticlimactic. But I feel like I should celebrate so I will be the American that I am and go to the mall.

Happy Thanksgiving

This week in my english class I tried to teach my students about Thanksgiving. We did the usual reading about the history of the day and learning about what we do in America and such. And then the speaking activity was to think about what you were thankful for and talk about it with a partner. I always know when they don't understand something cause they all sit silently and look at their papers. So I started giving examples of what I was thankful for like my family, the opportunity to live in Latvia and learn Latvian and so on. They still gave me puzzled looks and I said well aren't you glad that Latvia is independent and that you get to live in a free country. And they were like no that's fate...I guess I didn't think that trying to teach about being thankful about things was so hard. Finally after about 20 mins they admitted that they were thankful that they get to learn English for free and other things like that. It was just an interesting cultural experience and another lesson to add to the many I have learned about cultural differences.
Also speaking of thanksgiving one of the Fulbright professors and his wife hosted us for Thanksgiving dinner last night and it was so nice to chat with fellow Americans. I think its like therapy living abroad to share your cultural stories and mishaps with other people from your country who have had similar experiences. Still it was nice to get together with other people who understood the idea behind Thanksgiving!

Me and some of the women from my english class!

You hang up no you hang up....

You know those obnoxious people who won't hang up the phone when they are talking to their significant other and are like you hang up no you hang up...I guess I admit I have been guilty of it as well from time to time. Well that doesn't happen in Latvia in Latvia they can't get you off the phone fast enough and they practically hang up on you. They don't even say goodbye most times. In America usually we build up to it..like ok well talk to you later..or have a good day..in Latvia if you tried to say that the person has most likely already exited the conversation. Its probably cause mobile calls here are outrageously expensive and so people want to say what they need to say and get it over with. It reminds me of those cell phone commercials where they talk like they are in an auction to not use up their minutes except in Latvia instead of talking fast they just cut out the formalities of saying goodbye and hang up instead.

Three Prices

One thing that has always perturbed me on my trips to Europe is that they charge non-Europeans more to get into museums and other touristy things. I guess I don't understand it because in America we have the same price for everything no matter where you are from (except in and out of state tuition). Plus our national museums in DC are free.
In Latvia though they have three prices for almost everything. One for Latvians, one for Europeans and one for everyone else. My Latvian class for example cost twice as much for me as it did for everyone else cause I am from outside of Europe. Then when I got some documents notarized which is supposed to be a set price they charged me 10 times as much even though I only spoke in Latvian. So I thought it was funny when I went back to same place this week to get another thing notarized for my residency permit except this time instead of 10 lats I was charged one. I think this was because it was a Latvian document and last time they were documents in English. I just think its funny that even though the dollar is doing poorly they still assume we have so much money so we have to pay twice as much. After getting ripped off and charged more then everyone else it kind of makes you miss home where there are free refills and the price that it says is the price you pay even if you have a foreign accent.

Latvian Independence Day!

Today was Latvia's 89th Independence Day (of course it was interrupted by almost 50 years in the Soviet Union but I guess they just kept on counting). I went to the Latvian Military Parade which lasted about 20 mins and I couldn't get any good pictures cause there were so many people on the banks of the Daugava (the river that Riga was built around). Then I went to a true Latvian party where we sang folk songs and drank hot balsams (a really good Latvian drink with back current juice). Then we went to watch the fireworks which were pretty impressive (see picture above). They too were along the banks of the Daugava and light horizontally so they went along with the skyline of Riga. I only wish I was a bit closer!

Dinner Party German Style

Living in Latvia has really made me aware of all the little cultural differences you would never see just traveling through a country. For example on Saturday I was invited to a dinner party because my German friend Thomas (who lived across the hall from me in the Latvian dorms two summers ago) was in town. I was told the party would begin at 8:00 pm so I left the house at 8:00 pm and headed to the store to buy a bottle of wine. While I was at the store my other German friend Katja called me and said are you coming and I was like yeah just picking up a bottle of wine. This was about 8:20. Then she said why are you so late and I was like um you said 8:00 and I explained that in the US when someone says 8:00 you show up fashionably late like 30 mins and she was like well in Germany when we say 8:00 we mean 8:00. Needless to say I was 45 mins late to the party and had all the Germans there wondering how we accomplish anything in the US if we are all late to things. Just another, in a long list of lessons about cultural differences!

Martiņa Diena

Today was also Martiņa Diena which according to the Baltic Times is a "conglomeration of ancient pagan traditions surrounding the end of the harvest period and more modern Christian traditions brought by the Germans in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many of the customs of the holiday are similar to easily recognizable Halloween traditions. People dress in masks styled after animals and go door to door singing, dancing and begging for small gifts (St. Martin is considered the patron saint of beggars)." I went out to the Ethnographic Open Air Museum to see what kinds of festivities I could find and found that I was probably the oldest person there without children!

Some Latvian folk Dancing.
More folk dancing.
A guy in a wolf mask.
The ladies playing the music.

Lačplesa Diena

Today was Lačplesa Diena, Veterans Day, or the Day of Heroes in Latvia. I was actually on my way to another celebration when I happened upon a military parade at the Freedom Monument marking the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Latvian army. Lačplesa Diena is the official date for commemoration of Latvian soldiers. On this date in 1919, the Latvian Army won a decisive breakthrough in the fighting against the Russian and German forces, which had taken up arms against the Republic of Latvia. The victory marked the conclusion of the Latvian War of Liberation (1918-1920) and allowed the work of creating the new state to begin.

The President Valdis Zatlers giving his Lačplesa Diena speech.
The soon to be ousted Prime Minister laying flowers at the Freedom Monument.
A bonfire on the shores of Daugava River.

People laying candles on the ancient city wall in commemoration of those that fought for Latvia.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen...

Today I got to give a speech at the Parliament Building to the Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. At first when my boss asked me I was kind of like OK why me but then I realized it was because she would be out of town and I spoke the best English. Flattering right. I spoke on the contribution of civil society to the participation of women in politics. It was very exciting I got to have my speech translated into French and Latvian. Although I did hear some mistakes in the Latvian translation and thought about having one of those Condaliza Rice correcting moments but thought better of it. We had those microphones I always dreamed about in Model United Nations Club.....you hit a green button to talk and your microphone turns red. Kind of makes you wonder how politicians can leave them on and say inappropriate things so everyone can hear.

Directions Please....

I get asked directions all the time here in Latvia. I don't know if its because I look like a local (doubt it) or that I look like a nice person (probably more likely) or that I look very knowledgeable (I like to think its a combination of the three). Today I got asked directions in Russian. At first I gave them my I don't speak Russian phrase which I have memorized and perfectly conjugated but then I realized that I actually understood what they were asking me. It was one of those language moments that everyone who has studied a language is familiar with. What I like to call the light bulb moment when you can actually understand something in a foreign language. Except the thing is I haven't been studying Russian since I got here (only Latvian) but have managed to pick up a lot on the streets and TV. I guess this whole immersion thing has helped me with two languages instead of just one.

More Protests..but this time I was there!

Today I participated in the largest protest in Latvia since the independence movement. There were different reports about how many people there were but I would say between 7,000-9,000. Which is even more amazing considering it was freezing and that the snow eventually turned to rain. I really think it was a key moment in Latvian history and I was so happy to be able to be there to see it. I really love protests, to me that is democracy. People getting out on the streets and telling the government what they think. Again they were protesting the firing of the head of the Corruption Bureau and corruption within the government. The protest took place in Dome Square and here is picture I managed to take by holding my camera high above my head.

A Bad Latvian Week

I know that everyone who has lived on a foreign country has had a week like I just did. It was one of those weeks where everything goes wrong and you wish you had the comfort and for me the efficiency and customer service skills of home. I am having problems with my residency permit, got yelled at in the tram (thankfully they don't teach us much slang in Latvian class so I couldn't understand what she was saying to me), had bad cultural experiences with deadlines and people not observing them, got yelled at by a notary with about 10 people staring at me and probably thinking stupid foreigner as I was trying to convey what I needed. Lets just say it was just an all around bad week and I am glad its over! I just bought some Dr. Pepper soda and I am going to watch one of my movies and have a fun American night by myself away from all the scary yelling Latvians and hope that next week things will get better!