Thursday, October 15, 2009

Leaving on a Ferrybusplane

This weekend three friends and I will be travelling through Estonia to Tallinn, then across the way to Helsinki, where we'll spend a day filled with IKEA and H&M and Sibelius-dedicated sculptures before heading back to the Baltics. That's one good thing about living in a small country – it's much easier to get to the bigger ones surrounding it.

Today, through the assistance of a friend, I found this guy, who roughly translates popular English songs and performs them in Latvian. Some are pretty amusing, while others are just a bit off. The video I've linked, however, has over 95,000 hits on youtube.com, which is a pretty decent number. It's amusing, to say the least.

English Conversation Group is going well - at the second meeting last week, all three students showed up again. They seem to get my jokes, which is a relief, and are responsive, which is rewarding. After the last lesson the two girls came back to the classroom after getting their coats and were like "This has been bothering us since last week, but...WHY ARE YOU HERE??" It's mostly the mid-teenage group that doesn't understand why someone from the States would so willingly set up life-shop in Latvia. I thought I had explained things fairly well during the first Group, but I guess I still left some things unanswered.

In other Riga news, yesterday we had a wind storm advisory. I guess that's what you'd have to call it. The TV screen was literally scrolling a message that read something such as "Unless absolutely necessary, it is recommended for people not to leave their homes". I didn't think it was that bad, but it was very rainy, very windy, and rather cold. Some parts of Riga have gotten their fall colours, but the majority of it is still stuck in a stunted air of almost-there. It's like watching a little kid trying in vain to blow up a balloon because their lungs aren't strong enough or they're just missing something.

I had another analogy involving a dog trying to pass excrement, but I won't go there. But I guess I just kind of did.

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