Affected by the GFC, our friends have rented out one of the rooms in their apartment to a German student on some kind of university exchange program - to make ends meet in the short-term.  They befriended the student on Facebook, and were amused by his first status update after arriving here: "Latvia is just like Africa, only colder".  ..... What the fuck?!  I am intrigued about the parallels this young German sees between Latvia and Africa.  I am the first to admit that people...

 It's been cold the last couple of days.   I mean REALLY cold.  So cold, that you can feel your nose hairs snap-freeze the minute you leave the house.  So cold, that the morning radio has notified us that kids in the earlier grades don't have to go to school.  That is, minus 20 degrees celsius or under.  I'm a mean mother though, and have made the kids go to school anyway. In Oz, I could totally understand the concept that you shouldn't be forced to go to school if...

Seeing as we've had another cold snap, and it was minus 10 degrees yesterday (Sunday) morning, we decided to go for a swim at the local indoor pool.  We don't do it very often, as it is a whole intense post-Soviet experience, and not for the feint hearted.  Mind you, if we wanted to pay 25 Ls ($50 AUD) we could take the family to the local spa pool, complete with 10 different types of saunas, complimentary smelly body soap, a overheated swimming pool and jacuzzi, mosaic tile version of...

Our apartment has become a more important place since we've had kids - a space that is practically the entire world for the little people who live in it. Since we are about to move house, I've been evaluating  this art deco, not-renovated-since-the-late-soviet-period apartment, and what it will mean for the boys to leave it. I've come to appreciate the world of play that children create: their  tendency to re-label what is around them, giving special meaning to certain places around the...