Jurmala

Yesterday I've been at Jurmala with two other exchange students. It's an amazing place. Jurmala is located by the sea, and it has beautiful beaches.
I love visiting new places with other exchange students, because we share the same excitement and motivation to see new stuff. The the two girls with who I've been to Jurmala are called Franka, she's from Germany, and Tilde, from Denmark. They are amazing people, I'm so happy to have friends like them.
Enjoy watching some amazing photos which Tilde took in Jurmala (my phone was out of battery, so I'll show you her pictures, they are great).
If you come to Latvia one day, make sure to visit Jurmala.

Have a nice day!

Awesome weekend

This weekend I spend at the place of another exchange student, Amanda from Chile.
I went there on friday evening, and her family is very nice. She lives in a small town called Suntaži (pronounced: Soontashi, for Germans: Suntaschi), a bit outside of the town. Her family has a beautiful house with a big garden and a sauna in the garden. So in the evening, we went to the sauna.
On the next day, we went to go arrow-shooting (I think that this is not the right word, but you can see in the picture what I was doing). Amanda's hostsister is doing that as a hobby, and she's very good. It was very fun.
In the afternoon and the evening, we were playing games, I really missed doing that. Amanda has four hostsiblings: one boy, he's the oldest, and three girls (like my German family). I loved all the action and playing with the kids. In the evening, we played a Latvian card game with Amanda's hostmother and guests which stayed over night.
On Sunday, we went to Sigulda, to make paper ourselfs. With us went a family from the neighbourhood. They also have a hoststudent, she's called Katharina and she's from Germany. Talking German again was great, but also a bit confusing, because I talked German to her and English to the others so I sometimes mixed that and started talking English to her and German to the others. It's really cool that Katharina is living so close to Amanda.
In the evening, we watched ''Scary Movie 3'', because we were talking about horror movies, and I said I never watched one of the ''Scary Movie'' parts. I can't recommend you this movie. I think that's the worst movie I've ever seen. (But I think ''Scary Movie'' isn't meant to be a good movie.)
On monday was Amanda's name day. Her family was celebrating very cute. The hostmother baked the letters of Amanda's name, and the first letter of everyone else's name, and put them on our breakfast plates. She also bought children secco, so we celebrated with all the kids and the family in the morning.
In the evening, Amanda's friends came, and we celebrated with them. They're all very nice, Katharina was also there, so I always had someone to talk to.
On the next day, we went back to Rīga, and I showed Amanda some of my favourite places. In the afternoon, we went to the cinema. (At this place I should mention that in the cinema in Rīga, the movies are on English with Latvian and Russian subtitles.) We didn't plan that, we just went there spontaneously. We were very lucky, because in the minute we arrived, the movie ''The Martian'' stared. So we bought tickets and because of the commercials, we didn't even miss a minute of the movie. I can totally recommend you this movie. It's the best movie I've seen in the whole year. I'm normally not such a huge fan of Science Fiction, but ''The Martian'' was incredible. Matt Damon is a great actor (he played 80 % of the movie alone), and the story was also very good. There was only one small problem for us: there were some scenes which took place in China, so the people talked Chinese, and the subtitles still were Latvian and Russian and not English. But that were only about 10 minutes of the movie, and we were able to guess what they said because of what happened.
In the evening of monday, we went to the gig of one of my classmates. He's part of a punk band, it was good music, (of course) very loud, and we enjoyed it.
This was one of the best weekends of my whole exchange year (probably the best). I hope the rest of the autumn holidays will be great, too.

Friends

We find a lot new friends during exchange. Some of the best ones are other exchange students. They can understand your situation, how you feel, and which problems you have to face.
Yesterday we had a autumn meeting from YFU, and after it some other exchange students and I went to Oldriga, had a coffee, and after it went to an awesome place, the woman toilet of the Hotel Radisson Blu. I'm not kidding, this place is awesome. There, you probably have the best view over Rīga you can get.
The day was really nice. Exchange students are just amazing ♡

Apple juice making

On the last weekend, we visited some neighbours on the country, and they were making apple juice together with my hostdad. Later we cooked it and put it into big jars.
I really like the taste of fresh apple juice, it's very different from the cooked juice.
I'll add some photos.

Pēteris Vasks

On the nameday of Dzintra Geka, I also met her husband, famous latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. He talks German very good, and was interested in what I am doing here and about the music instruments I play and the German orchestras I played in. So we talked for quite a while, he also asked what instruments my siblings play (dear sibling, if you read this, a famous composer knows about you :D ) and which music/theatre pieces I saw in Stuttgart (because I told him I live near Stuttgart), and I was really happy that I saw the ballet ''Krabat'' so I had something to answer.
Some of the other guests of the nameday were confused why this famous guy is talking to a girl they never saw, also my hostuncle, so he took some photos of us talking that I can show that I met him.
After this, the whole rest of the day guests came to me and asked about my life and what I'm doing here (maybe they just wanted to find out where I know Pēteris Vasks from). That was pretty funny (but after the third guy who asked the same questions as the others, it also got a bit annoying).
If you're interested in Pēteris Vasks' music, I saw that on YouTube you can find a lot of his music pieces if you look for his name.
I'll add some of the photos my uncle took, and also Pēteris Vasks' Wikipedia cover page to show him from the front.

Little temperature update

Temperature is falling really fast.
Now I understand why so many Latvians have a sauna. You just need a hot room to escape this temperatures.
But I feel good, I expected cold temperatures (even though I didn't expect minus degrees on daytime in October), and now I'm pretty sure we will have awesome snow this winter. ♡

Sibīrijas bērni

I wanted to make this blogpost vor a long time, but I somehow just forgot about it.

A few weeks a ago my hostfamily and I went to a famous lavtian author's nameday. She's called Dzintra Geka. They know her because this woman made a movie called ''Sibīrijas bērni'' (Children of Sibiria).
During the second world war, when Latvia became part of the Sowjetunion, Russia deported Latvians, which had important jobs like e.g. doctors and lawyers.
I'm not 100% sure why, but when I understood some explanations right, it was because Russia didn't want Latvia to have any force, so that Latvia e.g. wouldn't try to leave the Sowjetunion.
They were deported with their families. My hostgrandma is one of this children which were deported. So she grew up in Sibiria.
There is more information about this deportation in the internet and in books, so if you're interested, inform yourself. I think it's a pretty interesting topic, because I as a German never heard about it before.
This latvian author made a movie about the deported children. So my hostgrandma is also in this movie. Together with the author and other Sibīrijas bērni they travelled to the villages where they lived and talked about how living there was.
On this author's nameday, we watched the movie, and even though I didn't understand a lot, it was still interesting. If you're interested, this movie also exists with english subtitles.

It is cold

I have expected that it would be cold in Latvia. But I wasn't prepared to the temperature I felt when I left home to go to school today in the morning.
I first was a bit surprised because I was able to see my breath. Then I felt it. It was cold.
It's not that I never felt temperatures like this, but I just wasn't prepared for it. Yesterday in the evening, it still had 9 degrees. So today I wore the same jacket as yesterday, and was almost frozen when I entered school (and I only need 5 minutes to go to school).
Then I entered my class and was like ''oh it's so cold outside'' and everyone was like ''that's only the beginning. In winter you won't be able to feel your face''.
I'm already looking forward to real winter, because I really want to see so much snow (and I hope for a white Christmas), but I'm also scared of the low temperatures.
This winter will definitely be to most extreme winter in my life. In TV they said that it will snow on friday.
I actually didn't believe when I heard that yesterday, but today I'm sure that it's possible

Thinking

This moment wenn you merkst, that you think in zwei Sprachen at einmal.

It's not as mixed as in the sentence above, but my brain starts mixing german and english.
My english is pretty good, that's why when I want to say something, I normally never think it in german and then translate to english and then say it. I just say it.
But what happens now is more than that. I have to use english all the time (except when I'm in the german lessons at school). And I start thinking in english. Not all the time, but sometimes.
E.g. when I woke up today, I thought ''oh, was für ein schöner Morgen'' (oh, what a nice morning) and then I thought ''today we'll go to our countryside''. I think that I think the things on english which I also use a lot when I talk on english. I often ask ''when are we going to countryside this weekend?'' but almost never say that it's a nice morning because I normally stand up alone (because we all have different times to leave the house).
Even more weird is sometimes, when I think about conversations I'll have with germans (e.g. with my german family or my german teacher), I think of what I'll tell them - in english. I often notice that after a few sentences and start to think about it again - in german.
I also talk english to my german teacher quite often, until I realise that I can talk german.
And the longer I'm here the more my brain uses english. (Sadly it's no good english because no one here speaks perfect english, so my brain uses everything my ears hear - and that is sometimes really bad english. E.g. there are no articles in latvian language, so a lot of latvians don't use them in english, too, and the same happens to me. But it's okay, I think the most important thing is that people can understand me, and they do with articles as much as without. English lessons back in germany may become funny.)

I'm interested in when I'll start switching from thinking english to thinking latvian and how that will be. (But that will take some months because I'm not even able to speak a lot of latvian yet). I'll inform you. :)

Aleksandrs Čaks

The street in which you can find my school is called ''Aleksandra Čaka iela'' (Aleksandrs Čaks street). Aleksandrs Čaks is a famous latvian poet. If you're interested you can also find some of his poems in english and german in the internet (e.g. a poem called ''Rīgaī''). Yesterday my class was visiting the flat where he lived. My class was given explanations in from a woman in latvian, and I got an IPod with information on english. The woman also showed me a room where I sat and listened. The guy in the IPod was a lot faster than the woman. That's why after listening to interesting stories about Čaks I was able to take some photos. The photos are all (except for the photo with the hat and the jacket) taken in Čaks working room and in his families guest room. There was a lot of art at the walls, that's why some of my photos show drawings and paintings. I also I took a few selfies (one with Čaks and two in his mirrors) because I got really bored waiting for the rest of my class.
I hope you enjoy my photos.
I wish you a nice October!