Rain and books and my namedate

Labdien (good day)! Or labrit (good morning), or labvakar (good evening)! depending on what time you are kindly reading my thoughts and impressions.

I can also say: Mani sauc Vera (my name is Vera) un es esmu no Amerikas (and I am from America). That is about it for now, but soon I will learn more, since I have been given extra funding to take the class. Also my Latvian class is becoming very enjoyable socially, as well, because last time, instead of the Dutch architect (who was quite nice but laughed suspiciously every time I mispronounced the "o," which is pronounced "oo-ah" or "ya" in Russian letters), there were two Russian-speaking students. One is a technical director of a night club (!), and the other is a bohemian-ish porcelain artist from Saint Petersburg married to a Latvian. They were warm and funny and careful students, so class is very enjoyable. I am not sure, though, how it will be tomorrow, since there will be two English-speaking Dutch architects, the two Russian-speaking students, and me. Perhaps I will also get practice being a translator, or we will just have to have the entire class in Latvian.

Just now I had a meeting at the American Embassy, so I guess I have been officially welcomed to Latvia, though quite informally, by a helpful and handsome Russian-Latvian young man, who puzzled over which passport I should use when travelling to Russia, and gave me an enormous pile of pages to fill out for my residence permit application. Oh and also the meeting was, ironically, in Russian, even though the American Embassy was the one place I was expecting to need to use in English!

Perhaps I have made it clear already, but since my mom keeps asking, I want to again clarify that I like Riga a lot! I wouldn't say that I am in love with it, probably largely because I am influenced by the local culture, which idealizes nature and the countryside, rather than the city - even beautiful and interesting Riga, with its architecturally intricate buildings, holding long history within their walls and windows and rooftops. But at the same time, even as I am not in love with Riga, every building is indeed beautiful, and there are tall steeples and cobblestone streets (in the old city), and folk dances and songs on harvest (and most other) holidays, and calm lanky shimmering forests, and nostalgic dilapidated Soviet apartment buildings - all of this brings me lots of pleasure, as do also the people I have met, and the way that my days pass here. And so I am very, very content and I feel good. It is not difficult to be here, and, maybe most tellingly, I don't want to be anywhere else. I don't necessarily want to stay here my whole life, but for the moment this accidental location is where I want to be, and in nine months I suspect that it will be very hard to leave. Hmm that sounds unconvincing and too serious and dry, perhaps. Maybe the most important part is that I really like the people I have been interacting with, and while I spend a large portion of my time alone, I do interact with them often, and also I don't feel lonely.

I also really like Tanya's apartment. It is very calm and very pretty, gentle, like her. And we live happily together, I think. It is very easy with her and my only concern is that I am becoming more soft-feminine and speaking with more uncertainly, like her! There is a glass wind chime in the hallway, which I often brush (or less romantically, hit) with my head but then which jingles prettily and, according to Tanya, produces good vibes. There are lacey curtains on all of the windows, which face a big green and autumn-yellow forest across the road. It is very neat, except for probably thousands of bottles and tubes of lotions and gels and make-up tucked away everywhere in the hallway and bathroom and even the kitchen, but they are tucked away elegantly, and amusingly, because they are so excessive. The apartment somehow (but only sometimes) pulls me to do household things, like cook and wash and clean. My room has several small red-white traditional Russian carpets on the beige linoleum floor, and a light green plastic chandelier, long royal curtains on the large windows, and polished dark-brown furniture. Now it also has many flowers from my namedate (my angel day), which was on Sunday. In Russian orthodoxy, it was the day of Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov, and their mother Sofia, and for the first time in all of our lives, Vera, Nadezhda (my mom's childhood friend Nadya) and Lyubov (her sister's friend Lyuba) were all gathered together. There was a big feast and it was warm and lively, and everyone gave the "imeninetsy" presents.

But also I have finally started interacting with young people! Not that I prefer them : ) but still it is probably good to meet young people and get their perspective and do young-people things, like going folk dancing at the Riga Technical University tonight. On Friday one of the other two Fulbright students, Laura, organized a taco night at her friend's house (thus successfully fulfilling our role as cultural ambassaders), where I met a lot of Latvians, who I liked a lot, of course, and hopefully will keep interacting with some of them. And the next day I spent more time with Laura, her Finnish friend Elina (with whom I am going dancing tonight), Laura's Latvian-American friend, who was very very sad about leaving Latvia the next day after being here for eight months, and one of the Fulbright scholars and his wife. The Fulbright couple are in their sixties (okay, so it was not only young people that time) and he is teaching social work here, and they were, of course, also extremely nice and calm and interesting. We gathered together to walk around Old Riga since there was a celebration of Mikeli Day, a harvest holiday, which included traditional song and dance, and tractors decorated with various fall vegetables, and a huge crafts market in Dome Square.

It happened to be really beautiful weather - very warm and calm and sunny - during the weekend, but since then and during the week before it has been grey and often rainy, like now, and hence the title of this blog. Also regarding the title, I have been reading about Latvian history and right now about its medieval history (although it wasn't Latvia then, but rather the Livonian Confederacy, and Latvians as an ethnicity did not even exist until the 19th century - before that they were several groups, namely the Livs, Seminallians, Lettgallians, and Couronians).

I keep writing down little details to write in this blog, so here is a random collection of impressions. There is a park in the center of Riga with a pond and little rivers, one of which has a bridge covered entirely by locks that newlyweds place there after (or maybe during) their weddings. Outside of the Soviet-style apartment buildings there are lots of cats and kittens, which are cute but somewhat sad, although usually the residents feed them regularly, at least in my apartment building. Also although Riga is best known (at least by Russians) in terms of its culinary merits for its pastries and milk products, I have found that it has the best grapes and tea ("chamomile meadow"!) and kefir (maybe because it is more fatty here) that I have ever tried. There are indeed a lot of typically-Latvian-looking young women - tall, lanky, blonde, although there are non-blonde and non-short people, too. Many women wear tall boots with very high stilettos, and stride about with an attitude, flashing their cigarettes, and sometimes their extravagant furs. And one warm day my bus passed a really pretty young blonde lady who is now my idealized imaged of a Latvian young woman, who was riding a bicycle with a package (of fresh groceries?) at the front, in plain jeans and with flowery cotton shirt and blonde ponytail romantically flowing in the breeze.