Long vacation in Riga with my mom

My sense of not having done much (valyanie duraka) has increased greatly with a week of walks and coffees and pastries during my mom's visit. The time passed slowly and beautifully, again. My mom loved Riga very much, which perhaps has left an imprint on me, because when she left yesterday I found myself comforted by Riga. It is crisp and fresh, as always very beautiful, still full of golden trees and steeples in the sun, and it feels like home.

I still don't have photographs to offer real illustrations, since I only lazily figured out how to open the battery compartment of my new camera from America, and I haven't felt pulled to make photos yet. But sometime they will come.

On Tuesday I should finally receive Ethics Committee approval for my project. That is when my project will be considered, and I don't think there will be any problems. As soon as I have it, I will start observations at a TB clinic in Riga, and probably the week after that will start inviting current patients to participate and start calling past patients. I am feeling anxious to start, because while I am very happy with how I have spent my time so far (slowly, with open eyes, learning about Latvia, making friends, living healthily), it is true that I have been here for a month and a half and I haven't been able to start my project.

I have been finding out from conversations with people that the Russian-Latvian situation is more complex than I had at first perceived. It still seems accurate to me that Russians and Latvians, as individuals, live comfortably and respectfully. But of course each group has strong stereotypes about the other. More importantly, I hadn't realized how serious it was that Russians in Latvia do not have automatic citizenship (not even Russians born in Latvia). Whatever the logic, the result is that at least among the older population, about half of Latvian residents are not citizens and so cannot vote. It is then seems a lopsided democracy. But I write this preliminarily, because I have practically only heard one side. I can imagine the frustration for Latvians to live in a country that is almost half Russian. But then that is the reality, and it should be approached with care for people, it seems. Well, but I am sure I will have more to say on this later. Perhaps even there will be more responses by those interested in Latvia, who I am sure are more knowledgeable than I.

I wanted to write more about my mom's visit, but I am not sure how to write about it in a way that is interesting - it was pretty, it was nice, it was pleasant, comfortable, lovely! And in a way that keeps intact its intimacy. The weather was almost entirely warm and sunny, surprisingly, with the notable exception of a storm that flooded Jurmala and broke a lot of trees in Riga. (But today the temperature dropped a lot and tomorrow it might snow.) We bought a lot of smoked fish at the market, made salted and baked salmon, went swimming in a pool with cascades (there was a slick metal trunk-like leaf hanging over the water, which poured out a waterfall at the press of a button) and underwater massage streams (one of them was so powerful that you had to hold on to a bar not to be pushed away, and it was not unlike what I imagine a fire hydrant's stream to feel like). We had a lot of dinners and tea with Nadya, my mom's childhood friend, and her husband Gilbert and Vasilij Timofejivich and Lena. We went for walks in the woods with Tanya, and I almost got sick and then wore an extremely warm, snowman-like (or Snegurushka-like) pouffy and, sadly, fur-trimmed coat, and went for a walk in the woods and slept a lot and felt better. I ended up introducing my mom to almost everyone with whom I have been interacting here. Oh! And we went to the American ambassador's talk (Catherine Todd Bailey), which we found out had been front page news for the days leading up to it. It was good, she talked reasonably and criticized corruption. But apparently she is perceived as undiplomatically too much trying to influence Latvian decisions and policies. In general, my mom took care of me, and so, baby-ish-ly and contentedly, I found my plans to take care of her turned upside down. Although in a way it was not so good because I am finding that being taken care of makes me much lazier than I am otherwise. And so I feel motivated to return to non-laziness and activeness again - hopefully after next Tuesday I will be able to.