IMAGINE DRAGONS

Yesterday, I've been at the Imagine Dragons concert in Rīga with my friend Keita.
It was awesome.
We bought standing tickets, what was very good, because the party at the standing places was huge.
The band that played before Imagine Dragons was called Sunset Sons and I never heard of them before, but they were great.
And then, when the Dragons came, it kinda exploded.
I often heard of famous bands which make good music, but are not good to listen to in concerts because they seem bored, and just play their pieces and dissappear of the stage again (e.g. Linkin Park, don't get me wrong, I still love Linkin Park).
But Imagine Dragons made a good show, they really seemed to enjoy it, and so did all the concert-visitors.
What really touched me was a little speech which the frontman Dan Reynolds gave, it was about all horrible things that happen in this world, he was also talking about the terrorism that happened in France last year, and how we shouldn't and won't let all of this get us down. After the speech, the whole arena showed peace signs and sang together. That was a special moment.
Also, their whole music is just extremely good, even though I didn't know some of the songs I really enjoyed the whole concert (advice: listen to their song "Dream").
That concert was definitely one thing about this exchange year that I will remember for a long long time.

Have a wonderful day! ♡

5 months

I can hardly believe it, but I already spent 5 months in Latvia. 5 great months, 5 interesting months. I met amazing people, did awesome stuff.
But 5 months also means that I survived half of my exchange. In 5 months I'll go back to Germany.
That makes me sad and happy at the same time. I'll have to leave all of this behind - but I'll meet my german family and friends again.
I'm happy that it went so good until this point (of course there were ups and downs but that's normal), and I'll give my best to make to rest of the year as awesome as possible.

"Exchange is not a year in a life. It's a life in a year."

Latvian-learning-book recommendation

If you want to learn latvian, I can highly recommend you the book ''Latvian in three months''.
It's written by Dace Dumpe, and it's published by ''Zvaigzne ABC''.
Right now, I'm only using this book for learning latvian, and I really like it. I'll give you a list of pro's and con's.

Pro's:

-Price: under 20 €; totally okay for a language-learning book
-Weight: you can put it in (almost) every purse
-Simplicity: easy to understand, even for a German
-Learn effect: good
-Use: everyday-life-language; that's perfect
-Exercises: good; possibility to check your solutions

Con's

-Some mistakes in the translations, also some mistakes in the exercises (but you normally easily find them)
-No CD (better for learning the language IN Latvia)
-The title: it's a lie. It's impossible to finish this book during three months. i'm using it for about four months (actually three months active use for one or more hours per day), and I'm only half finished
-English is a simple language, which means that every other language is hard to explain in english. E.g. the cases (they have 7 in Latvian), they don't exist in english, so the book starts from zero. But still, my latvian class teacher told me it's very good for an english latvian-learning-book


Suggestion:
Buy this book before you buy another, try if you can work with it, and if not, sell it again and buy another


Good luck with learning Latvian!

Ballet

For my 17th birthday I got a ballet ticket from my hostfamily.

Yesterday, on the 20th of january, we went to the Rīga Opera to see the piece "Raimonda".

Rīga Opera is very a very glamorous building from the outside, but even more glamorous from the inside.

"Raimonda" is a classical ballet which takes place in the middle age, and it's with knights and a king, a queen and a princess, but also with some oriental characters.

The main story is the following:

One guy falls in love with a girl, Raimonda. When I interpreted right, she's the princess. They dance together, and he gives her a white scarf. She's dancing with that scarf alone, until one oriental (rich looking) guy appears with his fighters, dances around her, and finally steals it. Then he disappears. Raimonda goes back to her prince, and they dance together again. After some more dancing, the scarf falls from the sky, and Raimonda gets is back. After that, the guy who fell in love with Raimonda becomes a knight (the king gives him a sword). Then, the oriental guy comes with a lot more oriental people, they show a lot cool performances, and Raimonda comes to his side. Then the new knight comes, and wants to fight in a duell against the oriental guy. The king starts the duell, and after some fighting, the prince hits the oriental guy in the face. He goes back to his guys, removes what he was wearing over his head and there's a big wound. With his last power, he walks to Raimonda, who  changed the sides again and is standing besides the knight. He reaches his arm for her, but she refuses him, and he dies in front of her feet. In the last scene, Raimonda marries the knight and puts a crown on his head, so he's the prince now.

I really liked that ballet, the dances were amazing. I personally really really liked the oriental costumes.
The only critique which I can mention is that the whole piece is a bit to much a klischee.
It would have been a lot cooler, if the oriental guy would have gotten then girl, he was a way more interesting character, and also then the end would've been more surprising.
But still, I really enjoyed watching this ballet.

All the photos which I'm going to add to this post (except for the three photos of the opera hall in the end) weren't taken by me. I found them on the internet, because photographing wasn't allowed during the ballet, and also my camera wouldn't be that good.
That fact means that the people which you see on the photos probably aren't the same I saw in the ballet yesterday. But still I thought it would be cool to add some photos.
If you're interested in a more detailed version of the story (and maybe I also made some mistakes telling it) or you want to see more pictures, just google "Raymonda ballet" or "Raimonda balets".

Have a nice day!

My 17th birthday

Yesterday (16th of january) was my 17th birthday.
In the morning, I got flowers and a gift from my hostfamily.

Then later I went to the city to meet two friends from Germany.
Together with them I went to a pizzeria, where I had reserved a table. Then, my other friends also came, and together we ate pizza and celebrated my birthday.

By the way, I was wearing a princess crown (a birthday gift), and almost everyone in the restaurant was strangely staring at me.

It was an awesome birthday ♡

Eine Ode an den Zwiebel-Look

Eine Ode in vier Versen 

Verfasst von Annabel Nannt

Gewidmet dem lettischen Winter

Top, T-Shirt, Hemd, Pulli, Poncho, Jacke (wetterfest, so bleibt man trocken),

Thermo-Unterhose, Jeans und ein, zwei, drei Paar dicke Socken.

Dies ist nicht der gesamten Woche Garderobe,

doch der Zwiebel-Look, den ich mir lobe.

Hats draußen minus 20 Grad,

hab ich den Zwiebel-Look parat.

Ich stapfe und rutsche über Schnee und Eis,

draußen ists kalt, doch mir ist heiß.

Ich erreiche die Schule mit Müh und Not,

doch nun fürchte ich eher den Hitze-Tod.

Geh die Treppe zur Garderobe hinab,

und leg dort sehr viel Kleidung ab.

Nicht zu heiß, nicht zu kalt - es ist ein Traum,

Anpassung an den Lebensraum.

Egal wie kalt, ich bin glücklich hier,

Zwiebel-Look, ich danke dir.

Silvester & New Year

I planned to spend Silvester & New Year with Amanda and her family, but I also planned to spend Silvester & New Year with Franka. So I found the optimal solution, took Franka and went to Amanda (we asked her family, of course). 

There, after we talked and updated our situations, we went to the kitchen / dining romm / living room and prepared it for the celebration. 

Then, some neighbours came over and did ''Kaladu'': They were dressed funny, and danced through the living room while they were singing ''Kaladu Kaladu''. After that, we ate cookies with them, and they went to go and sing at the next neighbours' place.

Then we wrote letters to ourselves, about what we want to do in the next year, and we made a handprint on them. Then we wrote stuff which we want to leave behind in 2015 on other papers, and made little paperballs from them.

At midnight, we were in the garden, and we shot some rockets, and burnt the papers with the things we want to leave behind in a little campfire. We also but a red string around a branch of a christmas tree, also for bad things we want to leave behind, and burned that branch, too (it seems like the Latvians have a lot a stuff which they want to leave behind).

After the little firework, we went inside to eat. The food was delicious, and way too much (no problem, we ate it for breakfast on the next day). 

After some more talking, joking, laughing etc. we went to bed very tired (by the way, when I woke up on the next morning, I found out that a cat was sleeping ON my head).

On the next day, we were tired, and there still was a lot of food and outside was a lot of snow, so we decided to stay one more day. We went to some neighbours to do the ''Kaladu''-thing, and in the evening played games and ate again, and we had a lot of fun.

This was one of the best new years in my life ♥

All the photos which I'll add weren't taken by me (I'm more an enjoying-the-moment-and-not-taking-photos-person), they're taken by Franka, and I like them a lot.

I hope you had a nice Silvester, too!

Have a great day!

Anekdote: Der deutsche Körper vs. der lettische Winter

Nachdem ich bis jetzt das gesamte Auslandsjahr jeden einzelnen Tag fit und vital in die Schule gegangen bin, hat mich an diesem Mittwoch der lettische Winter (-20° Celsius und kälter) dann doch besiegt.
Ich war nie länger draußen als nötig (zur Schule laufen und wieder zurück, jeweils ca. 20 min brrrr), jedoch kam am Dienstag auf noch der Weg ins Orchester und zurück hinzu (ebenfalls jeweils ca. 20 min brrrr), welchen mein Immunsystem wohl nicht so wahnsinnig toll fand. Dienstag Abend fröstelte ich trotz warmen Hauses vor mich hin.
Am nächsten Tag morgens unter der Dusche stellte ich dann fest, dass sich irgendwie die Duschenwände bewegen und drehen. Danach stellte ich fest, dass ich wohl besser wieder ins Bett als in die Schule gehe, welches ich seit dieser Entscheidung nur kurzzeitig wieder verlassen habe.

Übrigens: macht euch keine Sorgen um mich, mir geht's soweit ganz gut, hab nur leichtes Fieber, eine Erklärung und Gelenkschmerzen, höchstens eine leichte Grippe oder einfach eine starke Erkältung.

Liebe Grüße, und bleibt gesund,
Eure Annabel

Kolka

This post is about a trip I did with my hostfamily on the 26th of December.

We went to Kolka. Kolka is a special place, it's where the Baltic Sea meets Riga Bay. It kinda has the shape of a party-hat, and it's very windy there. We drove with the car for 2,5 hours, visited the place for maybe half an hour (it was very cold and got dark) and drove back 2,5 hours.
It was a really cool trip, and Kolka beach was very beautiful.

All the photos I'll add I took myself, except for the summer-photo that was taken from the air (so you can better imagine the shape).
If you like to, you can look up Kolka in Google Maps, that will help you imagine where it's located.

Have a wonderful day!