The boys have been cooped up for the last week or so with a bout of the dreaded GRIPA. Although technically the word GRIPA translates as THE FLU, the implications of the word certainly don't translate over very well. In Latvia, the GRIPA is a terrible, terrible thing. If you get it, you have to obsess about where you could have possibly contracted it, notify everyone you have ever been in contact with, and if your children catch it, the underlying implication from...
What is it - is it a bird, is it a plane? Well, I can confidently say it's Riga's new breakfast taste sensation - in our house, anyway. A pankegg. Jem, the breakfast man, made an experimental pankegg a couple of weeks ago after reading an article on one of his trivia-will-take-over-the-world online communities. At first I wasn't convinced (yes, you may have guessed the recipe by now: fry and egg and then pour pancake batter on top), but for the last two weekends I've found myself waking up craving...
OK, so we celebrated a little early but today was a perfect winter day to hold the annual cricket in the snow. Australia Day is one of only 2 days where the normally slack Australians living in Riga actually come together for an event, the other being the AFL Grand Final. Mikus and I went this year together as Mook had to look after Matiss who was lying on the coach with a raging fever. After a brief kick of the Sherrin we divided into 2 teams to play a very haphazard game of cricket....
We took a week off work to paint our house last week. I always thought we'd paint the interior a shade of white. Classic. And with all the artwork we've got, it would be a simple backdrop to all of those works we have stashed behind cupboards, because there's not enough room in our flat to hang them all. Although I enjoy coloured "feature walls" in other people's houses, they always seem to scream "LATE 1990S!!!" at me from across the room, so decided that we could do without them. Stay with the...
I love Christmas time in Latvia. Here, because of the winter and the whole darkness issue it has so much more meaning to me than it ever had in Australia. For me, Christmas is a whole bustling month of light and brightness, anticipation and tradition, as we await the shortest day of the year and welcome the sun back to our lives.It starts some time in early December, when yellow sparkly Christmas lights start appearing in shop windows, brightening the walk home in afternoons when night falls before...
