Kur ir taulete?
Sorry it has been a while since I posted anything. Go figure, once things calmed down (after I passed boards and Jordan finished some busy work) and we have had a bit more free time, the weather became unbearably cold and consequently we have not been able to do much. However, this weekend looks like it is going to get at least in the 20s, so that is a wonderful thing! And, Jill, my friend, is coming on Sunday and will be spending a week with us, so regardless of the weather we will be doing more exploring!
As I said, we have basically just been trying to stay warm. The temperature has been anywhere between negative 15 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit for the last two and a half weeks. 😦 It definitely limits the distance we go and the amount of walking we do. However, on a good note, in trying to stay warm we have found a few pastry shops that we like and have been frequenting them since they are nearby and warm inside. We are happy that we have finally found a few pastries that are quite good! In particular, there is a French-style bakery that sells amazing tarts (see picture at left) that either have a fruit and custard filling or a pecan, berry, and custard filling. I told Jordan he should eat one everyday to gain weight. 🙂 We also went to the central market again last Saturday morning. It was insanely busy and the people get pushy if you are in their way, so it was an interesting experience (it’s not that Europeans are rude, it’s just that they have a much different notion of private space and don’t think anything of bumping into another person). We splurged and bought fresh salmon from a local fisherman. We decided to cook it that night for supper and it was the best salmon we have ever had. It was so moist and did not even smell or taste like fish! We will definitely be going back to get more when we are craving fish. On Tuesday the embassy took us to Balvi, a town three hours northeast of Riga, so that Jordan could talk about American History and Nebraska to the students at the local high school. It was an interesting all-around experience!
Sveiks Sveiki! Czech resturant...We had goulash and potato pancakes.
Driving in Latvia is absolutely ridiculous! Europeans are crazy (but skilled) drivers and some of the roads are not kept up very well–that is to say, there are a lot of pot holes as a result of the cold, snowy weather. At times it felt like we were on a roller-coaster ride because of the bumps we were hitting at 110km/hr, which equates to 70 mph. European cars must be built pretty tough, because people drive them like they are tanks. Another funny experience was when we got to the school and the driver was trying to find a parking spot on a narrow, very snowy road. Instead of going to the end of the street and making a u-turn he went fast enough so that when he turned the wheel and pulled the emergency brake, the car flipped a 360 so that we could go back the way we came. 🙂 Anyways, once we safely got to the school we were treated like royalty. The school cooks had made us delicious pastries and a three-course lunch that consisted of meat and potato soup, breaded chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, cabbage salad, and an interesting fruit and biezpiens desert. Jordan thought that that was the best school lunch he had ever had. After that Jordan gave a presentation to a group of about 20 12th graders and then to about 40 11th graders. The 11th graders were definitely more interactive and interested in talking; but Jordan did a really good job and showed some neat pictures of unique things in the U.S. and Nebraska.
Well, my experience at the school was memorable enough that it is the reason for the title of my post. So, of course having been in a car for over 3 hours (plus a pit-stop midway to have tea), I needed to find a bathroom when we got to the school. So the lady from the embassy asked one of the students and then told me where I could find the bathroom. This was at lunch time so there were lots of kids standing around in the hall that I had to walk down to get to the bathroom. Well, in Latvia they do not mark the restrooms as well as they do in the states and sometimes they are separated and sometimes they are for both genders. So I see what I think is the bathroom and walk in, only to see urinals and stalls, when I thought to myself, “hmmm this might be a male bathroom.” At about that time a group of adolescent males walked in. Of course I smiled and walked out and was greeted by another group of probably 7th grade boys, who were laughing hysterically. I then tried to find the women’s bathroom but soon realized that I wasn’t going to be able to do so by myself, so I decided to go up to one of the boys and ask “Kur ir taulete?”, which means where is the toilet (in Latvian a bathroom means a place to bathe, so they use the word taulete for a room with a toilet). He pointed upstairs where I indeed found the bathroom. However, I was shocked to see that all the toilets did not have seats on them, it was just the bare porcelain! (Jordan has informed me that this is no big deal and not particularly rare for the European countryside.)
- The classroom where Jordan spoke.
Anyways, so then I had to do the “walk of shame” and come back down the stairs and walk past the same group of boys, who were once again laughing and saying “Ciao,” which is an informal European greeting. One brave boy asked me if I spoke “angliski,” which is English, and I said yes and they really got a kick out of that. So, yes, now those boys will forever remember the ridiculous American taulete celebrity! 🙂
Well, it was really good to get out of the Riga area and see the countryside. It is amazing how different the area is. Once you get out of the city it is just forest and small towns that are quite poor (relatively speaking) with old, ugly Soviet buildings that are in desperate need of renovation (Jordan pointed out to me that often times there is no desire to renovate the buildings that are reminders of Soviet occupation). We also got to see the ice-capped Daugava river and the hydroelectric dams that were built on it (Jordan asked our driver if we could swing by and see Kegums, the dam that was built during the Ulmanis years). The countryside is quite beautiful in the winter, but I’m sure in the summer it will be even more picturesque.
The insanely wide Daugava River as we drove across the Kegums dam.
The students presented Jordan with this very lovely bouquet of candy flowers. Also, check out the delicious-looking pastries that the school cooks made us.
The Latvian countryside as seen from the car. Lots and lots of tall firs.
Here we stopped for a tea/coffee break.
The fun painting inside the Czech restaurant.
The last time we got a big snow we got a laugh from these two cute kids pulling their dad down the sidewalk.
Lucy and more Latvian folk songs…
Week 3 of the news segment:
1) A study published last week in the journal Science confirms the importance of the skeletal remains which have been nicknamed “Lucy.” The skeleton, discovered in 1974 in the Ethiopian Rift Valley, has been key to helping us understand the evolution of our particular human species, as scientists have long been certain that “Lucy” was different from other, older and slightly different humanoid skeletons. However, there has been much speculation about whether or not “Lucy” spent the majority of her time upright because the bones from her feet were missing. But now, after another discovery of skeletal remains in the Rift Valley, scientists have confirmed, thanks to the fact that these remains included foot bones, that Lucy would have indeed walked upright. Their evidence is the confirmation that humans at that time had a fourth metatarsal, meaning that they had an arched foot. As a result, scientists and archeologists believe t hat humans began walking upright about 3.5 million years ago, since a study of older remains (4.4 million years) from a different subspecies has proven that prior humans lacked the elongated, rigid metatarsals needed for upright walking.
2) For those of you who might be thinking about buying a new laptop, perhaps you might want to consider the following: Last autumn the Chinese government unexpectedly announced that they were going to strictly limit the exportation of so-called “rare Earth” elements such as niobium and scandium, which are used to produce a wide array of electronics, including laptops. This was, of course, huge news, given that in past years China has accounted for nearly 100 percent of the world’s supply of rare Earth elements. On Friday, then, in a desperate attempt to find alternative sources, representatives from the Japanese firms Mitsui & Co. and Sumitomo Corp. met with Russian officials about a potential plan to begin the mining of rare Earth deposits in Siberia. According to reports, the meeting also ostensibly involved a renewed discussion of the 65 year dispute over a group of four islands off of the northern tip of Japan. According to one estimate, it is thought that the island of Yakutia alone contains a deposit of rare Earth elements that is much larger even than Brazil’s famed and relatively untapped deposits, which are believed to hold enough niobium to meet the current rate of demand for some 500 years…Last year, manufactures used approximately 124,000 tons of rare Earth elements.
3) Today, in Moscow, the contingent of international astronauts participating in the Mars 500 Project emerged from their windowless steel tubes (which are meant to simulate a spacecraft) after 8 months of continuous confinement. The men, who are from Russia, China, France, and Italy, came out of their “spacecraft” and performed a series of simulated experiments on a “Mars-like” sandpit at the Moscow institute where the project is being conducted. Over the coming days the crew will engage in further exercises and experiments before they retreat back to their “spacecraft” for their “return” to Earth, which means another 240+ days of confinement in the steel tubes…The end goal of the project: to see how humans might mentally and physically react to a mission to Mars.
Finally, I’ve heard that many of you enjoyed the last folk songs I posted. So, here are a couple more:
First a more “traditional” song:
And second, a more “modern” folk song from Prāta Vētra, one of the most popular bands in Latvia:
I passed boards!
Just wanted to tell everyone that I passed my board exam, which means I am now a board certified family nurse practitioner. Now I can relax and enjoy Riga!
various ramblings…
Sorry, everyone, for not posting last week. I was busy working on a book review which I had agreed to write last October, but had never gotten around to finishing. Anyway, I finally submitted the review and got that out of the way…
Well, as Brittney described in her last blog post, we have indeed already settled into a bit of a routine, with Brittney spending most days volunteering at one of the clinics here in town, while I am spending every weekday at the national archive. So far my work is going well, but rather slow. My biggest problem, besides trying to read old, cursive handwriting and interesting variations of Fraktur script, is that I am having a difficult time deciding what to look at. I am still trying to find my way through the labyrinth that is the archive’s finding aids, but my hope is to come up with a “game-plan” that will help me to narrow down the scope of my reading. Right now I am thinking about focusing on all of the Mazpulki (Latvian 4-H) and Meža dienas (Arbor Day) materials, followed by an intensive reading of newspapers related to the election of Latvia’s 4th Saeima (parliament), the last parliament elected prior to Ulmanis’s coup…Oh, one thing I have discovered so far is that Latvia’s National Library has an incredibly useful electronic periodicals section. It is not complete by any means, but the collection has a total of some 350,000 pages, including a fairly extensive offering from the Ulmanis Era/Ulmanis Times, as Latvians often call the period of Ulmanis’s authoritarian rule. Moreover, the coolest thing about the collection is that the website offers a query box, which allows patrons to search the entire collection! I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing this is. Well, actually, the best way for you to understand is if you just try it for yourself. So, click on this link: http://www.periodicals.lv/Default/Skins/LatviaArch/Client.asp?Skin=LatviaArch&enter=true&AW=1297238659941&AppName=2 Then, just to give you a sense of how crazy this technology is, type “valdmanis” into the search box (he was the minister of economics during the latter years of Ulmanis’s rule). After that, just click on any of the results, such as the second one from Brīvā Zeme…Amazing, eh? Someday I am going to donate money to help fund the furtherance of this amazing project. Oh, and speaking of projects, some of you might be interested to read about Latvia’s new national library building (called “the castle of light”), which is currently under construction. Here is the English-language link: http://www.gaismaspils.lv/gp/index.php?m=attistiba&s=start&l=en
Top center: a digital rendition of what the new library is going to look like
Everyone, including myself, cannot wait to see it finished, not only because the building should dramatically change the “Pārdaugava” skyline, but also because the current library situation is less than ideal, with holdings distributed throughout the city in a number of buildings. And last June everyone was reminded just how needed the new structure is when the floor of the main repository collapsed, sending 1,200 books into the wet basement. Fearing a further collapse, hundreds of volunteers then helped the library staff move nearly 78,000 books to a more secure location.
This pastry shop, called Ze Donat, sells American-style donuts...
In addition to continuing my work at the archive, last week I also went along with some folks from the U.S. embassy to visit a local high school here in Riga. Unfortunately, though, I was assigned the task of addressing a group of 15 and 16 year-old students about education in the States–I say “unfortunately” because I quickly discovered that, just like at home, teenagers that age pretend to not be interested in anything “uncool” like education. Instead, then, I expedited my comments and moved to the question-and-answer section, which was much more fun. I got a lot of comical questions, such as “Do Americans really eat cheeseburgers every day?”. Later in the week Brittney and I also went to coffee with a member of the U.S. embassy’s Public Affairs Office to discuss possible volunteer work. We are hoping to get involved in some way in the education and healthcare fields.
And speaking of coffee, many of you might know that I am a bit of a coffee and pastry aficionado. Consequently, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of my goals so far as been to find Riga’s best pastry and coffee shop. We’ve frequented a lot of places and have often been disappointed on the pastry front (the coffee is always outstanding, but often times the pastries are not so much flaky, buttery goodness as mushy “Biezpiensness”–Biezpiens is a very unique cottage cheese-like dairy product that is the staple of many snacks, such as pastries, breads, cakes, etc.). It’s not that I don’t like Biezpiens (which is so important here that sometime I will devote an entire blog post to it), it’s just that when it comes to a pastry, I prefer more of a German, French, or Austrian style. Well, anyway, my search had been fairly unsuccessful until just last night, when we found a bakery called “Franču maize” (French Bread). There we happily devoured a pastry called “Franču kuka” (French cake), which was a French-style pecan-berry tart. Sorry that I do not have a picture to share with you. I forgot to grab the camera when we went out. I guess that just gives me another reason to go back. 🙂
However, as you can see here, this place is not your average donut shop.
Finally, I have to share an interesting cultural observation with you: walking around here can be quite an intense experience. I say this because even more than I remember happening when I lived in Germany, when I pass by women (especially those around my age) they often make prolonged eye contact with me. It doesn’t happen every time I pass by a young woman, but often enough that it occurs multiple times each day. I find this to be quite an interesting experience, as there is something mystical about their glances, almost like they are trying to peer into my soul. Maybe Dostoevsky was right about Russians and East Europeans having a more sensitive soul than “Westerners” (by the way, if you’ve never read any Dostoevsky, I highly recommend that you do so). Whatever the reason for this social custom, it has caused Brittney and I to discuss our observations of women in general. Our conclusion: we are in agreement that collectively speaking, young women here appear more confident than their American counterparts. There is just something about the way that they briskly walk down the cobblestone streets dressed to the nines, with their head held high–simply put, their body language exudes confidence. Anyway, it has been interesting for us to observe the importance of fashion in Europe, which certainly takes precedence over both comfort and warmth. Just to give you an example, even on a cold winter day one often sees women wearing rather short skirts and high-heeled boots. We don’t understand how they can withstand the cold dressed like that (such as the girl in the following photo).
In closing, here are some photos from last week:
The delicious tiramisu that we savored at Un Momento.
A photo of the meat section at Riga's Central Market.
Another favorite bakery, called Kukotava.
One of my favorite buildings in Riga's Jugendstil/Art Nouveau neighborhood.
More buildings from the Jugendstil area. Riga is considered by many to have the most beautiful Jugendstil architecture in the world.
Jugendstil architecture...
Here is a photo of the Latvian National Art Museum.
A panorama shot of one of the most famous streets in the Jugendstil neighborhood.
I guess the rich folks are doing just fine…
Here is my second installment of the news section. Enjoy!
1) I guess the rich folks haven’t really been hit too hard by the recent economic turmoil of the last few years. Why do I say that? Because Christie’s International, the high-end London-based auction house (their other main auction house is in New York), released their sales numbers for 2010. The total sales for the year: $5.2 billion. And the surprising figure for many analysts was that some $965 million of that total came from auctions of contemporary art. For instance, someone paid $106.5 million for Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust,” while another buyer forked over $42.6 million for a Roy Lichtenstein painting. I very much appreciate art, and would indeed enjoy owning a Picasso, but, in all seriousness, these figures are a bit distasteful when there are so many people around the world who are in need of help.
Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust"
Roy Lichtenstein's "Ohhh, alright"--yep, $42.6 million for this...
2) The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced this week that the global consumption of fish was at an all-time high in 2010. On average, each person worldwide consumed 17kg (37.4 lbs) of fish. The FAO is quite concerned about the steady rise in this number because they estimate that 32% of all the world’s fish stocks are either overexploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion. I guess it’s a good thing, then, that Nebraskans love to eat beef rather than fish, otherwise that number would be much higher! I was also surprised to learn that fish is the most-traded food commodity in the world (I assumed it would be a grain or something), with total sales reaching $102 billion in 2008.
3) The European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) announced earlier this week that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will continue to run through 2012, before they shut it down to prepare the collider for full-energy collisions. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this project, the LHC was built to enable scientists and physicists to attempt to recreate the “Big Bang” in the hopes of finding the theorized Higgs boson particle, which is thought to be the base matter of the plasma which would have been created one millionth of a second after the Big Bang.
Here are some stats about the LHC:
1) On November 7, 2010, scientists smashed together ions for the first time (instead of only protons) and created a collision which resulted in temperatures a million times hotter than the center of our sun.
2) To combat these insanely high temperatures, the inside of the LHC is cooled to a temperature of -271.3 degrees Celsius — colder than deep space.
3) The electric bill for the LHC is roughly 19 million Euros per year (25.8 million U.S. dollars).
4) The LHC is housed in a 27 km-long (17 miles) tunnel some 100m below the Swiss-French border.
A picture from inside the LHC...
Finding normalcy…
It is with ambivalence that I write this week’s post…We are creatures of habit and I thrive and feel the best when I am in a routine. With that being said, this past week has been our first real week of normalcy. Therefore, I am saddened yet relieved by the fact that we have been here three weeks and have already somewhat adapted to our surroundings. I guess that is to be expected when you consider all the moving around we have done in the last three years. So it is quite nice to know that we can easily adapt to new environments and cultures. However, it is frustrating that we are in a different country and have already experienced enough that we have been able to find normalcy. I guess I should be okay with this since we are going to be here until October. Nonetheless, it is still depressing…
Has the world become so integrated that we can find normalcy almost anywhere or do human beings adapt and seek out normalcy in things that are not so normal…
With that in mind, I will tell you about last week (menesis)…I worked (strada) at the clinic (slimnica) Monday (Pirmdiena), Tuesday (Otrdiena), and Friday (Piektdeina). Okay, you get the picture, my Latvian lessons are going well and I’m building my vocabulary everyday. 🙂 I saw some interesting cases as the clinic and I met quite a few English speaking families. The doctor sees a lot of kids so it is fun (and good practice) to interact with little ones. I have found that most Latvian (and most European) families only have one or two kids; the actual statistic that I found is like 1.2 children per family in Latvia. So people really get a shock when they hear that Jordan is one of seven children. 🙂 I think families are smaller here because of affordability and convenience. It is very expensive to live in Latvia; Jordan and I really do not understand how people manage to live in Riga and how so many of the shops and restaurants afford to stay open. European homes are also smaller so that may play into the family size as well. I think Europeans are pretty mobile and like to travel too, so having lots of children would hamper that and be expensive. I am curious to ask people about family size to see if my assumptions are correct…
On the topic of affording to live in Riga, I am saddened by the economic situation here. As you walk around you see children, middle-aged, and elderly people sitting, standing, or kneeling on their knees in heavily populated areas begging for money. This week I saw elderly people digging through trash cans. It breaks my heart to see people succumb to this way of living. In the healthcare spectrum, I see patients come in who need to have tests done that have to wait several months if they want the government to pay for it, but those who can afford to pay for it themselves can have the test done within a few days. Jordan and I have discussed how the healthcare system here shows that you can not have both a private and public insurance system because it produces unequal access to care. I guess I was just disheartened to learn that the healthcare system here is not any better than healthcare in America and the Latvian economy is in worse shape than America’s economy.
On that depressing note I just want to say that I count my blessings daily because I am healthy and happy and have had so many wonderful opportunities and experiences thus far in my life, and I have my wonderful family and friends to thank for all the love and support they have given me.
With that being said, I will focus again on the original topic…In finding normalcy, Jordan and I decided to eat at a Chinese restaurant Friday night. Yes, there are Chinese restaurants here! Other than eating at Lido (the traditional Latvian restaurant that is like a cafeteria), we have not really eaten at a sit down restaurant, so we decided to venture out. The restaurant was about 4 blocks from our apartment and was nice and quaint inside. We ordered won ton soup and a “hot pot”, which we had no idea what that was, but it sounded good, so we thought we would try it. The waiter suggested an order of noodles with it, and Jordan likes noodles, so we ordered them as well. Oh, and one thing that I had forgotten about eating out in Europe, is that you have to pay for water! Yes, being stingy, I was annoyed that I had to spend $2 for 8 oz. of water. Anyways, the food was pretty good; different than what we had expected, but good. The won ton soup was similar to what you would find in the states, the hot pot was a mixture of chicken, beef, and shrimp with some vegetables in an interesting sauce, and the noodles were fried with lots of vegetables. However, not knowing how much the extra noodles cost, we were rather flabbergasted by the bill. Needless to say, we will probably not be going back…At least we always learn something with each new experience 🙂
Well, I apologize for the somewhat depressing post. I needed to sort through my thoughts and reflect on my experiences last week. So thank you for your patience and sorry for the late posting. And to answer my question about normalcy, I think in our case it has been a little of both. We have found “normal” things here in Latvia that you can find almost anywhere and we have also adapted the not so normal into our new normal…but one must keep in mind that my normal is not the next person’s normal so it is all relative…
crookedtimberofhumanity 