BAD LUCK.

I don't exactly know why but in some ways I have not been very lucky in Latvia. I have never, NEVER, been stolen before but on Monday it was the second time since I live here. The strange thing is that I thought that it is not something that happens often here... anyway, it happened twice to me!

The first time was in Rīga, I was in a city bus when I got stolen my purse, with all the documents and credit cards (and the purse was so beautiful, I loved it!!!).

The second time was on Monday. I was in the ballet lesson, with the dancing group “Focus” that I have joined here. After the lesson one girl couldn't find her mobile phone, then another girl couldn't find the key of her car, she went outside and the car was gone! Then they asked me to check if I had something missing. And yes, I had my Spanish mobile phone stolen and not a single coin or banknote in the new purse (this time they were quite nice and at least they didn't take my documents again).

Sí, this is what happened! We called the police and through the GPS of the car they could know that it was in a very close village called Pelči. The police and the girl whose car had been stolen went there. I went, together with the other girl who had her phone stolen, to the police office to write down everything that had happened.

Yesterday I got to know that the car was found in the middle of the forest, full of mud inside and outside. About the phones, there are no news.

Mmm... és primavera!

YES! After a quite warm winter, the spring has arrived! The spring, full of light, energy and colors! It's so nice to be outside; it is warm but the air is fresh... so fresh! And the sun shines very much, it hits your skin, it makes you feel so alive, so comfortable! The sky is blue, pure blue, and the birds sing beautiful songs... The flowers are starting to grow and now you can see the “snow clocks” (sniegpulkstenīši) in every corner.

It's just perfect to go outside, walk, run, climb a tree or just relax on the grass by the river. The days are longer and brighter, the sun is higher. And, during the sunset, the sky becomes wonderful: pink, orange, red, yellow, blue... all the colors combine in a gorgeous painting.

TIME FLIES

Time flies! Almost 7 months in Latvia... 7 months!!! I just can't believe it. I remember so good the day I left: it was 31^st of July and my plane had left at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, so I had to have lunch early (what early means for people from Spain, here I have learned that early and late are two VERY INACCURATE words). My family and my friends came with me to the airport, it was hard to say goodbye. Then I had to stay for more that 3 hours in the plane but I was not as excited as I thought I would be, I was sad to leave everyone there.

Now, 7 months later, I feel that Kuldīga is my second home. My life is here; I have my friends, my flat, my job, my hobbies... I am happy, very happy! Of course it is not always that I am shining of happiness, I have my bad moments too! But I feel good here, and I guess that is what really matters.

Last week we had the midterm training for EVS volunteers. It was a lot about reflexion and looking into oneself. I liked it very much and I realized many things! One of them is that I have changed a lot since I came here (actually my life has changed completely so of course I have changed too). In the training we had to draw a time line from the moment we arrived until now, with all our ups and downs. I think my drawing looked very good, it started quite down but it just went higher and higher, with some small downs in between. One of the reasons of that is because I feel that everyday I get more and more adapted to this country, my Latvian skills are improving and communication with native people is improving as well.

Another thing we had to do in the training was to think how we can improve our projects. It is easy that by this time the EVS becomes monotonous, we don't have so much initiative as in the beginning, nothing new really happens. But the trainers we had have much experience and they know that this usually happens so they asked us to think of a project, something we can do in our last months because yes, more than a half is already gone. I don't know from where I had the idea but suddenly I realized that there is something that I am missing very much: theater. I gave up theater 3 years ago, and I miss it very badly, very very badly! So I thought that we could organize a theater festival in Kuldīga. I have many ideas for it in my head, but now I need to talk about it with some people and find someone who helps me in the organization. But I am really excited about it and I hope we will manage to carry it out.

And at the moment this is not the only project we have in mind. In the Youth Center we are planning to organize a youth exchange for next summer and with Zura we want to organize one event that will involve the participation of many other volunteers in Latvia, plus, we want to make a dance combining Georgian and Spanish dances. So actually we have many projects in mind, all of them look good, all we need is to work hard so that we can enjoy a good result!

Tiksimies vēlāk,

Claudia.

Fairy tale

Once upon a time, in a small small town in the heart of Catalunya, there was living M, a girl who had a very big dream: she wanted to travel, go abroad, discover the world and all it's wonders.

One day she made up her mind and decided to go for that dream, so she took all her things and flied far away. She landed in a new place, unknown and very different from where she came from, a land called Latvia. This place was fascinating! It was quite small and half of it was forest, the little towns were full of traditions and a big love for culture, the inhabitants had beautiful and colorful gardens, the nature was alive.

M arrived in one of those small towns that won her heart: Kuldīga, a city with a soul, the pearl of Kurzeme. A charming and quiet place, with peaceful streets, old houses, wonderful landscapes and an incredibly large waterfall! Yes, this was the perfect place where to start her story.

Summer ended and autumn started painting everything with amazingly beautiful colors. And then it started, all the citizens started to warn the girl about the winter, they said that it would be very cold and white, full of snow and with temperatures around -25 degrees. M was frightened, she wasn't even able to imagine how it could be so cold because she was used to another kind of weather, that's why at the same time she was very curious about it and was looking forward winter's arrival.

The days went by and the cold didn't increase, December had already arrived and there was no sign of the snow. M received news about her family who said that in her hometown it was very cold and it was even snowing! Everything started to look so unreal, the weather was getting crazy and the young girl was so disappointed, still waiting for the snow.

One rainy day, she met with her friend to bake a delicious honey cake. They were both in the kitchen, preparing the cake, cooking something else to eat, talking... And suddenly, they looked through the window and a big snow storm was falling! The excitement began: they started to scream, jump and laugh, finally they had what they where waiting for so much, the weather had completely changed in the blink of an eye, the snow had finally arrived in a great surprising way.

The following day, when they got up, everything was completely white, incredibly beautiful. But despite the amusement of M, she didn't feel very good, she had just got ill. Luckily, she had a fairy godmother in Kuldīga who always took care of her, provided her with warm clothes and shoes and gave her anything she needed. This time, the fairy godmother took responsibility of M's health and with a little bit of magic she got better very fast and could go outside to enjoy Kuldīga full of snow and Christmas lights, a truly fairy tale town.

Rainbows

Good morning! Labrīt! Bon dia!

Woaw.. so many days without writing and so many things to talk about! I wish the days had 48 hours, I want to do too many things!

Today I went out of my flat, coming to work, I turned right on the first corner and I saw a wonderful image: the sun was strongly shining between some black clouds, lighting up just some parts of the streets, but very intensively, and a rainbow was shyly standing in the background. It was very very nice! But, of course, I had this stupid thought of taking a picture instead of enjoying it so the clouds decided to move and the rainbow disappeared. Anyway, it was a beautiful start of the day.

So, let's review very fast what has happened lately!

Some weeks ago my family came to visit me. My father, mother and brother spent 6 days in Latvia and we visited Rīga and Kuldīga. I was very happy to see them and spend some days together, although at that time I had only been away 2 and a half months, it's always comforting to see your family. And they were so lucky! They came the best week they could have come, the autumn was at its peak, all the trees were full of colors: yellow, red, orange... Everything looked amazing! But then they left and to be honest I was sad and the landscape didn't help anymore because the leafs started to fall and everything became brown. By the way, during the days that the leafs were falling I loved to walk on the streets because they made such a nice sound!

I spent the following weekend in Rīga, with Anna, enjoying our time and discovering interesting places. We went to a tea shop so charming and peaceful, it was great! And it is written down on our list of cool places of Rīga (we have a lot of lists: our plans, the places/shops/restaurants we like of each city we visit, the food we want to cook, and some other).

I was really looking forward to the week that was coming. On that Friday I had my first performance with Focus, the dancing group I joint. It was in Saldus, in an award ceremony, and I had to dance 5 of the 7 dances we were doing. Actually it was pretty difficult to remember them all! Anyway, I really love dancing and I was really happy to dance there! But after the performance, I realized that I miss my dancing group from Catalunya so much... “Step By Step” is my second family.

And this was not the only good thing of the week: on Saturday I left with Anna to Lithuania for 5 days. It was a great great trip! First we went to Kaunas with some friends we had met in Riga two weeks earlier. They are doing an Erasmus there so they are from different nationalities and it was perfect for practicing languages: I found myself speaking in French to two sisters, they answering me in Spanish, turning my head and Speaking in English and Latvian words coming to my mind instead of the French ones. Hilarious!

Then, on Sunday afternoon we left to Vilnius. We stayed in the flat of a friend of a friend and they were so nice! The three days we spent in Vilnius were fantastic: we visited the old town, the castle, the forest, Užupis Republika, we went to very good cafes, restaurants, concerts... it was a fantastic trip.

So, when I came back to Kuldīga I got ill. Of course! I didn't have plans for the following weekend and my body decided it was the perfect time to get ill. And if it wasn't enough, I also burnt myself. Yes, making pumpkin soup I destroyed a little bit of my arm. Luckily it didn't hurt until yesterday. Well, I hope it will get better and my cold will disappear soon.

Keep calm and challenge accepted

I have just finished two dancing lessons, the first one with the students of the 5^th grade and the second one with the ones of the 2^nd grade. It was crazy!

Yesterday night, when I was going home with Zura, he told me that he would go to Rīga today and that I wouldn't have dancing lessons. We called the dancing teacher just to confirm it and she didn't pick up the phone. Finally, we managed to contact her at half past ten, before going to sleep. She said that she was injured and would not be able to do the lesson so that I had to go there and do it myself. PANIC! It was 22:30 and the following day at 8 o'clock in the morning I would have two lessons that I wouldn't have been able to prepare. At the first moment I was really scared but I realized that this wouldn't help me and I was so tired that I wasn't able to prepare anything, so I decided to go to sleep.

But the reality came back again when I arrived in the Youth Center and faced the 5^th grade students. While walking to Youth Center I had thought of some exercises but when I arrived here all of them disappeared! Luckily there was the pianist, a very kind woman who helped me a lot, who doesn't speak English at all (of course, let's make it easier!).

We started very punctual, doing some warm-up. My intention was to do it very slow and long, including all the parts of the body, because I can't teach Latvian nor Georgian dances and we couldn't do any Catalan dance because I didn't have the material but we had to fill the lesson with something. The problem was that after four exercises I didn't know what else I could do. So the first idea that crossed my mind was to practice the dance they had already started with the Latvian teacher. But this was not possible because the pianist didn't have the score! Luckily she remembered some notes and we practiced the basic steps of the dance during the rest of the lesson.

Then the students of the 2^nd grade arrived with their never-ending energy. After calming them down as much as we could (it's quite impossible for them to be quiet) I was able to do a better warm-up than with the first lesson, although I also needed the help of the pianist to finish the lesson.

And now, after this small disaster I did in the first two lessons, I am going to think of what I can do with the students of the 4^th grade who will arrive in one hour.

Keep calm and challenge accepted!

With Linda in Penkule

I have a friend, I have a really good friend: Linda.

Linda is crazy. Linda is crazy and great. Linda is crazy, great and one of the coolest persons I've met.

We met each other just when I arrived in Latvia, we went together to Laba Daba, a very nice alternative music festival where we did some recycling workshops with my organization (Radi Vidi Pats). Since then, I can't say I meet her very often, but I can definitely say that meeting her always means having a great time.

This weekend Linda invited me and some other friends to spend some days in Penkule, her hometown, because next week she is leaving to Bosnia, where she will stay one whole year doing an EVS. I'm really happy for her because doing an EVS is a great experience but at the same time I'm so sad that she has to leave now, just after we met. Thus, I decided that this will be a great opportunity for visiting the Balkans!

Anyway, I arrived in Penkule on Friday morning after my first hitch hiking experience (accompanied by Linda, of course) where Miroslav, one Serbian EVS volunteer, was already waiting for us. Penkule is a very small town with a wonderful tree-arcade entrance and exit; it just has one main road and two or three streets. There is one school, the sports hall, a kind of town hall, the post office and library building, the culture house, the bar and the shop. But also people, movement, activities, trees, forest, colors, animals, gardens, apples, goats, cows, a lake. Linda is in love with this little town, every time she speaks about it her eyes start shining and you can feel all the emotions and memories that fill her heart, it is really moving.

Linda hates cooking but I don't know why we spent such a long time in the kitchen these days: cooking lunch, baking apple cake, making pancakes, crème brulée that ended up being lemon cream, apple cake again, apple juice, croissants, apple juice, Serbian soup, steamed vegetables, apple juice, etc. At the end, we were really proud of all the results (specially the apple cake, it was delicious!) and we had many special moments in the kitchen.

One of this delicious apple cakes was made for a very important event that happened on Saturday: The Big Clothing Day 2. This initiative started by Linda consists in bringing all the clothes, shoes, bags, accessories, books or even electrical appliances that we don't need anymore so that someone else can use it. I brought there one jumper and one T-shirt but I got so many cool things, I'm very happy! I got skirts, dresses, T-shirts, trousers and even a coffee machine!

On Saturday evening Frans arrived in Penkule. He is a Belgian guy who is already doing his second master in Rīga being only 21 years old. With him at home there were 4 different nationalities in just one flat, awesome!

But what I haven't explained yet is the craziest thing we did 3 times. As I said before in Penkule there is a lake and as I also said before being with Linda means having a great and crazy time. Yes, it's not difficult to guess what we did; we went swimming! The best thing is that I didn't even go swimming on October when I was in Spain and now I do it in Latvia, where it is so much colder! But I have to say that it was great, I loved it! And, although the water was cold, we took very warm clothes and after swimming we weren't cold at all. By the way, if someone wants to do it my advice is to scream, scream, scream and scream when you get in the water, it really helps! And drinking some tea afterwards is also a very smart choice.

We were having a really nice time with Linda, so we decided that I would stay one more day there. Since Linda's mother works in the primary school of Penkule, we thought it would be a good idea to go to there and practice some English with the kids, it is always good for them to practice with foreigners. They responded very good, they were really interested and they even asked me to sign their notebooks! I really liked that idea of going to the English lessons and I think I will talk with the schools of Kuldīga if they would like to do the same once in a while.

Sadly, after swimming for the last time, I had to pack all my things and get ready to leave. Linda and her mum were so kind with me and they gave me a lot of food to bring home. I was so happy after this great great weekend! Linda is just amazing! And I already miss her, so I will definitely visit her in Bosnia, yes!

Linda, thank you for everything, liels paldies par visu!