The Big One O

Well here it is, the tenth blog of my great Latvian adventure and it´s put me in a somewhat reflective mood. I never thought that I would make it to ten. Firstly I thought that I would get bored of writing all the time (which sometimes I do) and secondly, I thought that things would start getting more, you know.....normal, and that I would run out of stories to tell. But writing these blogs have been great for me to tell you all about the strange, the mad and the weird. What´s funny is that the blogs themselves have now become internationally known, they are read in parts of Europe, Asia, South America................................ and they all agree that my spelling is awful. Though I have had some really nice comments from others. I have even spoke to the first EVS volunteer that stayed here in Gulbene and she told me the origin of all the pictures of animals in the flat and the reason why there is a huge plant in the corner of the front room.
However for all you critics I now have an editor to help keep the spelling and grammar in check, this is just the start of bigger things, although when I say editor it´s probably fairer to say a lovely friend who is willing to help me.

Last weekend I hosted a party for all the people that I met on my on-arrival-training in Riga about a month ago. The party was organised by my new mentor Justinē, which was good as she did all of the organising, as I´ve been so busy lately with work and joining various projects. At the time I probably wasn´t in the party mood for several reasons. One being the fact that I was starting to get a bit tired of all the partying I´ve been doing, I love to party but I also need time to rest and be on my own. The second reason was that on that weekend, thousands of miles back home In Plymouth my ex-classmates from Uni were all celebrating their graduation. This put me in a bit of a sombre mood. It´s quite hard to give yourself a goal, work really hard for three years and achive that goal, especially at times when I didn´t think it was possible. I´m really pleased with how I did but I haven´t been able to celebrate with the people who helped me along the way. I couldn´t celebrate on the day we got our results because I was In India, but that ended ok with a sneaky beer on the rocks next to the river by the house.
But graduation is a chance to celebrate together, but as always Pa short had some great advice, "the awards are great but at the end of the day they are just trinkets and baubles". I know he´s right. You give your self personal goals and that´s what they are personal and you may forget the rewards that you have over time but the things you learned and the experiences you gain will last forever.

Well thats a bit too deep for this story. Let´s get back to the reasons I don´t like hosting parties. Here´s the big one: If it´s shit you can´t leave.
But thankfully it was a great and I think everyone had a great time. It was interesting to get their perspective on the flat, some were shocked with the smell of the water and the sleeping arangements and the pictures of random animals every where. One guy was saying that if im not happy I should do something about it, but I suppose I am happy, very happy, its not perfect by any means, but I have two choices - whine and complain, or just get on with it. There are times when it can be difficult here but the work is perfect for me and the opportunities are amazing, I’ve met so many people and already seen a lot and its still very early in my journey. Next year I´m going to travel across the Baltic countries and then see how far I can get after that.

I had a great time meeting the guys once again and I will meet them again soon somewhere else in December. But for the week it was back to work, I have created a couple of new interest groups at the centre and recently bought a really old manual camera, which I can´t wait to learn how to use because then I can develop my own pictures in the bathroom, which would be great as the red light will distract people´s attention from the orange stains and mould on the wall.

Plus I joined another project at the end of the week with people from Lithuania, Poland and Latvia. The centre was hosting a project that focused on the importance of young people being polictically active and there were workshops on how to make videos. So I even starred in my second short film in Latvia and my roles are getting higher, first I was just a random guy but in my second role my character had a name which was .................................waiter. Hopefully that film will also be on YouTube.
At the end of the week the group went to the capital, and in Riga we went to the Latvian parliament and even met the ex-Minister of Finance. This was fun, as Latvia is in a current economic crisis and also spent two million Lats (which is close to two million pounds) on a bridge that hasn´t even been completed yet. I donned my serious face, and gave him some hard-hitting journalistic questions about these issues.....worryingly he sort of just laughed the issue away and said this, I quote,
"when I was starting out in Politics a superior said to me you can make two types of decisions when you´re a politician a bad one........or an even worse one".............Knob.

Riga is a great place and the hostel I stayed in was awesome. Any place where they greet you with a free beer is going to be a good place especially when they have the Beatles, Rolling stones and Dylan on the video juke box. The nightlife is active in Riga, but they don´t start until quite late and as I was in English party mode, I started drinking at eight but it´s ok, people caught up, and me and the Lithuanian guys even managed to sneak into a night club full of cheesy euro trance music and Russians.
I learned a lot from these guys: They are currently squatting in England and have made getting stuff for free into an art form.


Once again I had another great week in Latvia and drinks with some new international friends.
But next week I think I´m going to take it easy with a new book, a cup of tea and some biscuits. It´s coming up to two months of being here now and the time has gone fairly fast, I´m going home for Christmas in December but after that I might have to do a full seven-month stretch away from home and whether it will be easy or not, who knows, but I´m sure I will have some stories to tell.