Ive found time to write my blog because I refuse to study on holiday and we've come to Latvia. It's not a summer beach holiday in Greece but I figured the kids would neve let me sunbathe any ways so I might as well check out a new style of culture. Its not very Russian here. I'm not sure what I was expecting but the houses are not all made out of wood. The women are not all overly busty blondes and they don't all pass time playing dominos whilst shooting vodka or driving fast cars. Racism aside its not very different from any other European city. Well, apart the following discoveries.
1) Latvians don't smile very much, in fact they don't use their body language, facial expressions or hand gestures any where as much as we do. They appear relatively stoic, but this could be untrue, it could be that I miss these added emphasises because they are cultural and I'm not looking out for the one they offer. It's decidedly noticeable to us though when a small toddling child stops, grins and shouts 'ello' with a mechanical wave whilst getting in the way that people gamely even step around her, let alone respond.
3) children here are identical to those at home. They still wake up earlier than their parents want them to , they love eating snacks and hate eating meals (even if they are the same food), and often declare, 'I NEVER get to....' When u say no to doing the same thing four times in a row.
4) In Riga they love a museum, these are some of them. The sun museum (interesting that the sun is everywhere but no one else has a museum on it) the museum of ancient Baltic Jewelry, museum of Romans Suta and Aleksandra Belcova (to be fair they could be awesome Rock stars ?), there are many more.
5) they don't move their heads to eat ice cream. True. We must be a very gravitationally aware country, risk averse to any drips. Here they blissfully lick aware turning their ice creams willynilly to greet their tounges. Oh the decedent risk!
6) another risk they enjoy is the 'tram dash', this involves darting out abut 12 ft into a busy road to get on the tram which has stopped in the middle of the street. I think the fun of this would wear pretty thin, pretty quickly.
Since I have turned my phone off (wonderful) I can't upload photos on to here until I get home and put the proper camera shots on here. Due to the dominance of photos of my offspring on my Instagram feed I've been challenged to take more photos of other stuff. I pretty much fail, but it's bought to my awareness the primitive divide in my mind which is the beauty of my children vrs the second rate beauty of everything else. Nature is still beautiful but it's not a patch on the joy a photo of something I grew (????) running over grass laughing, 100% happy in the moment.
