2-8. November
At the beginning of the week, I was talking with girl named Tereze about visiting more museums in Riga, and she agreed to show me around after the classes. We visited exhibition of movie production, exhibition of Riga artists who were somehow also connected to art group Kursi Koolkond in Estonia, which was interesting. Tereze knew the hostess of the latter exhibition somehow, which meant that she shared us some of her red wine, which was a lovely gesture. One exhibition we went to was crowded and we couldn't see anything: the room was filled with all those fancy people in suits, so we unfortunately had to reschedule from there. It was a great night otherwise, I really want to thank Tereze!
On Friday, I visited a very exciting exhibition called "superconduction: challenge of art & technology" and it was held in a narrow house somewhere almost in Old Riga. I was invited by a girl called Dzelde, who was also one of the tour guides, along with about 10 other girls from our school.
The exhibition was interesting, I learned that I can communicate with plants in another countries over the internet, I learned that you can make a very detailed map out of photographs from social media tagged in certain locations and many other things related to science and technology.
9-15. November
On Tuesday I met up with the guy from our school, Kristians, and he showed me the Riga market, in particular the one shop that was selling graphic t-shirts. I don't think I can name anything specific about that market, if anything, I made an observation that it's not even much different from a marketplace in Estonia. That is actually what I begin to notice more and more in Latvia: so much is very similar to Estonia. There are even words that are the same: Katlumāja in latvian, katlamaja in estonian.
On 11. November, Wednesday, there was an important holiday in Latvia. As I understood correctly, they were celebrating "Latvian Freedom Fighters’ Remembrance Day - Lacplesis Day". At the daytime, I gathered in the big hall for the lecture about that day's historical significance to Latvia. The lecture was in latvian, so I had Tereze next to me who was translating some parts of the lecture to me in english, but it was funny that even she did not fully understood the history and events, so it limited her ability to translate, but at least I learned something new, for example some details about importans latvian painter Jāzeps Grosvalds.
On the evening, I was out on the street, where I saw a whole ocean (metaphorically) of candles, in rememberance of the soldiers. The street was right next to Daugava river. I also met up with a girl called Ance, and she shared me a candle to also light it.
Only thing that saddened me about the whole day was that when I was asking from the students about the day and what it is about, they were not really able to explain, and some people even wanted to avoid the topic, as if the day is nothing special, or the lecture was mindnumbingly boring. I have decided to not be dragged down by it, since it always pays off to be curious, instead of being carried by with indifference. I am not talking about students being indifferent, since it is not my first day of school and I know that students anywhere tend to get bored or not pay attention - I am talking about these moments where I felt awkward, since I see latvians have something going on, such as holiday, and I really want to be let in on this, but I find it rather difficult if latvians display indifference about the whole thing when I ask questions. I have to thank Tereze here again, because she was probably the only person who made effort to explain what is behind the celebrations, and few other people as well, such as Rute.
On Friday, I went to DDB Latvia. Their logo:
The office rooms were really cool-looking, I saw lots of clever posters, images and texts on the walls, and generally, it really looked like my dream job. I want to thank my Inese for arranging this opportunity, as well as teacher Matiss for welcoming the initiative.
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