The end

It's crazy how time flies. I have the feeling that this last days are running through my hands like sand and I just can't hold them. The last month felt like a week. People say that when something is good, the time passes fast, while when something is bad or boring, it seems to stand still. That's true (at least for me). This last month was the very best of my whole year. I found a real second family. Yesterday, my youngest hostsister Lauma called me her real sister for the first time. (Before that, she always said I'm her half-sister because I only stayed a month.) Finally, all is good. Finally, I feel home. And in 2 days - I have to leave. Today I'm going to pack. It feels so unreal that it's soon gonna be over. I fear saying goodbye. Because when I said goodbye to my german family 10 months ago, it was only for 10 months. But this time, it will be forever. Of course I can come back, and I definitely will, but this special year, this time of my life - it will be over.
I learned so much in this year, maybe not about maths or physics, but about life. About happiness. About friendship and family.
I have to leave this country and this people, but I will take home all my memories. And they will stay with me forever.

I will now finish this post and have a great last time with my family.

Have a great time, too!
Annabel

By The Sea / Baron Munchausen Museum

The last weekend we spend by the sea. We stayed in a holiday home which was located less then 5 minutes from the sea. But in there, we spend only the night, because it was so beautiful by the sea. It was the first time, I was actually swimming in the baltic sea (and not just walking in it). The temperature was okay, not too cold.

On sunday, we went to a Baron Munchausen (Freiherr von Münchhausen) museum. In Latvian, his name written ''Minhauzens''. The Germans reading this probably know who Munchausen is, so did I. For the others: He was a german baron. He lived in Riga for some years, where he also found a latvian wife. That's why he's also known to some Latvians. He is most famous for the tales he told about his adventures, which in most cases definitely are complete bullshit (Lügenbaron), but people enjoyed listening to his stories because back in that days (where TV, computer etc. didn't exist) it was great entertainment. If you're interested in the guy and his tales, you can find a lot about him on the internet.
On the second floor of this museum was a small exhibition of wax sculptures, all of them famous Latvians. Also, there was a collection of beer glasses from all over the world. I didn't really get the combination of this three things, but they were all interesting to watch.

I only have one photo from the beach (because I didn't take my camera there), but I took many in the Munchausen museum.

I hope you have a great day!
Annabel

Open air museum

This sunday, we've been to the open air museum in Riga. I've already been there in winter, but it's  way more beautiful in summer.
There, my hostmum and my hostbrother sang folksongs with their choir. After they were finished, we walked through the museum.
I don't really know what else to write about that trip, but I took lots of photos, so I'll just add them.

Have a wonderful day!
Annabel

No water

Last week I was standing under the shower, singing and thinking about life, when the water suddenly got less and less, until it fully stopped. Luckily I was already done with cleaning myself, so I grabbed my towel, and went to ask my hostfather what happened. It turned out that the water was finished. During the whole last year it has rained extremely seldom, less than 10 times, and we live on the country in a household with 8 people, so our water was just gone.
I never understood what it means to have no water until I had to face this situation myself. No water for showering, using the dishwasher, the washing machine, the toilet flush, no water for cooking and lastly also no water to drink. I luckily spent this day in a friends house, who still had water. When I arrived back home, it had rained a bit, so there was water to drink and cook. On the next day, the water stopped again. That made us get a little bit crazy, because we also didn't know when it will rain again.
To use the word "luckily" a third time in this text, luckily in the next days it rained a few times. I've never been so happy to look out of the window and see rain.

Be thankful for what you have,
I wish you a great day!

Annabel

The end is coming close

20 days.
For the first time in this year I'm actually feeling home in a place, and now I have to leave it soon.
Last weekend we had our last YFU camp in Cēsis, where we talked about saying goodbye the entire saturday. For me, it was quite useless, because I already said goodbye to my classmates before I moved to Suntaži, and to the family I lived in before I came here I didn't really say goodbye (actually they didn't, except two of them). Saying goodbye to the family where I'm now is going to be difficult, but not as much as if I had lived here for 10 months. Luckily the 6-hour talk about saying goodbye didn't only bore me, because many of us think that you shouldn't plan saying goodbye in every little detail.
So after this was over, in the evening we had a little goodbye ceremony and after that we sat at the campfire, grilled marshmallows, and sang songs with the guitar. That was the best part of the whole day. In the end, only the german girl who played the guitar and I were left, and we still continued singing, until we had no more song ideas (we had no songbook, so we were singing a lot of different stuff that randomly came into our heads).
On the next day, our hostfamilies also came to Cēsis, and we had a little goodbye party.

I'm having a good time in Suntaži now, I'm happy. Right now for the next few days in our family also lives a woman from the USA, because my hostmom is a social worker, as well as this woman, and she kinda participates in a social worker exchange program. And I'm very happy because she told me that I don't have a german accent and that she didn't recognise me as a german from the way I'm talking english. So I might not have learned perfect latvian in this year, but at least my english got very fluent. And since I'm here in Suntaži talking with the little girls a lot, my latvian also improves, maybe not in grammar, but in fluency.

Have a great day!

Updates: last schoolday, holidays...

This monday I had my last day of school. I drove to Riga in the morning by bus, there we ate cookies together, and then we got our reports. I didn't get grades in every subject, but I got them in english (9), german (surprise surprise 10), art (10), music (10), literature (8) and nature sciences (4). In Latvia the grades go from 1-10, 10 is the best. I should add that in most subjects I didn't understand the lessons most of the year, so I just wrote from the knowledge I had from school in Germany, and translated most of the test time what the test even is about, that explains my bad nature science grade. By the may, this grades actually don't matter at all, because I have to repeat eleventh grade in Germany anyways (Abiturrelevanz).

Now I'm having holidays until the middle of september, and I'm actually really happy to go back to german school and really use my brain again. But for now I'll enjoy my holidays, relax, sleep long in the mornings, stay awake long at night, go swimming in the little lake near our house,...
I'm also excited to see my family and friends again. It's less than a month, and that feels so awkward. It always felt unreal, and still does, but I start realizing that this adventure soon will come to an end.

I'm going to switch back to thinking in german (right now I'm thinking mostly in english, some german, and some short parts in latvian sometimes, too). Here I actually realized that I don't think in a language most of the time, because I often tried to figure out in which language I was thinking at the moment, and it's usually pictures, diagrams and stuff like this rather than a language.
School will get serious again, and as I already wrote, I'm kinda looking forward to it, but I'm also scared, because I haven't been under learning pressure the whole year, neither have I done a lot of homework, so probably that will be hard in the beginning. But I'll see.

Today a week ago, I moved to Suntazi, and it's been a great time so far. I love having so many people around. It's great to spend time with the whole family, and since I'm here I'm also not really homesick anymore, because I finally have a family where I feel home.

By the way: It's freakin hot here. The daily temperatures are 25° or higher, and with the high humidity that's crazy.


The photo which I'll add was taken on the graduation of a friend of the family, he finished music-school. On the left there's my chilean hostsister Amanda, then there are two girls from our neighbourhood, the blond one is an exchange student from Germany, too, and they are hostsisters, and then there's me on the right.

I also want to keep you updated on my hairstyle, last saturday I shaved (almost) all of my hair. It was completely destroyed from all the colouring, and felt like plastic. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I asked Amanda to shave it for me. It feels great to have no hair to care about. I'm also becoming kind of an expert in turban making, because sometimes I prefer to cover my head, from sun and mosquitos (and staring elderly russian women sometimes, but here on the country there aren't so many of them, so usually it's sun or mosquitos). I also just wanted to have this experience once in my life, and I don't regret doing it.

Have a wonderful day y'all ♥