I travelled to Georgia a week ago with the "Saucējas" to sing at a festival in Batumi, a resort town on the Black Sea. We spent a whole week travelling to various places: a few days in Batumi singing, dancing and walking on the grey and pebbly beach; some time in the capital, Tbilisi, which we already knew from a trip 2 years ago, and day trips out to various places in the country - amazing cliffs with networks of caves long abandoned; a monastery made of rock with monks still living within; a shashlik meal in the country with the parents of our homestay host. Georgia is totally inspiring - very few tourists, the locals are friendly, generous and don't hassle, the sights are like pictures from national geographic magazine: the views are so stunning it is hard to believe they are not just painted backdrops. Food is delicious and simple and cheap, the weather is fine, and the wine is delicious. What more could you want?

Here's some random snaps of things we've been up to lately - many related to autumn, of course. Even after 10 years of living here, I am still amazed by the way our lives are so intricately linked to the seasons in Latvia. So this post is obligatorily about chestnuts and acorns and woolly jumpers. As it should be in late October!

Our house is moving along nicely. We've had a complete change of work crew for the interior work and it really does look like we will be in by Christmas. So much so, that I have begun to imagine actually moving in and LIVING in the area. Our suburb, Āgenskalns, is a wonderful suburb just over the river from the old town - a challenging mix of the most gritty Riga life, and the most interesting and charming. It is an eclectic blend of 100 year old stately wooden homes, set back from the street in beautiful gardens with old trees - many of which have now been gentrified; plain old wooden "boarding houses", which contain many small one room apartments that were built to house workers in the early 20th century; and multi-storey concrete monstrosities, locally called "hruschovskas". Many of the smaller streets have simple names like "Bee Street", "Flower Street", "Bell Street", "Pigeon Street", and they wind haphazardly around with no sense of planning. Some of them are still dirt.
The centre of Āgenskalns is a striking old red brick market hall, which hums with food traders and second-hand clothes stalls most days of the week. A tram line rumbles through the heart of the suburb, and it is not unusual for strangers to stop and talk to you on the street. Some of the richest, and also some of the most downtrodden people call Āgenskalns home.
On Saturday, before driving down to the country, we stopped in at our new place to check out our new front door and then did a stroll around the block, to get acquainted with the neighbourhood, eat some ice-cream and take in some autumn colour. We started here...

Every year in early autumn, you can see Latvians gathering all around the countryside for a special collective working bee - the potato harvest. I have never really understood how it all gets coordinated - it's not written in the newspaper, or advertised on the radio, but somehow everyone knows that THIS is the weekend for potato picking. Farmers gather together scores of relatives and everyone goes out on the field to dig up the fields and fill up large sacks with starchy tuber goodness. Driving in the country on that particular weekend you see people toiling away, with lots of sacks on the side of the field. This has always mystified me, how everyone seems to agree on exactly the same day/s to do the work, and I have always felt a bit of envy because I have never had a chance to take part in this autumn tradition. Over the years I have hinted to my neighbour, who has never offered for us to take part in digging up her massive field. I don't know why, perhaps it is because each helper usually gets to take home a sack of potatoes?

The first of September has rolled around again, and today we braved the streets with a dressed-up son and bunch of flowers in tow, ready to start a new school year. Tiss wasn't too happy to be starting school again - which kid ever is? Although I think that on the whole he enjoys school. We all attended the first assembly today, including Mikus, who seems quietly excited that he will also go to school there.
One year into it, I have come to a reserved conclusion that the school he is attending is a good one. The Rīga Central Applied Arts Primary School is a public primary school, located in the old town - just a few blocks from home. It was established in the 19th century as a German school for applied art, and a number of well-known Latvian artists and craftsmen have gone there. Today, although it is still located in the same building, it is a regular primary school in which kids are taught all of the required primary school curriculum, but also get a double of the required dose of art and home economics. Most of the after-school interest groups are art related - ceramics, animation etc, and it seems to attract a lot of parents/families with an interest in the arts generally.
One of the great things about the school is its size - there are less than 300 students, from grades 1 - 9. As a result, you get to know most of the teachers and staff, and feel very comfortable walking into the school and finding out whatever information you need, and organising a personal approach to your own situation is no problem. The location is amazing - for excursions the kids sometimes walk around the old town, and this is also where the older grades have "plein air" pracs for the first week of the school term. However, because it's an inner city school, there is no dedicated outdoor area for the kids, which is a stark contrast from my own memories of lunch hours at school, spent outside playing hopscotch, sitting in the shade, playing on the oval...
One interesting part of primary school in Latvia is that your "home room" teacher is the same one for grades 1 - 4. This can be a blessing, if you happen to land a good teacher, who you can become very attached to over the first four years of schooling. Unfortunately for us, Tiss got an older teacher who has lost her love of teaching, and uses Soviet pedagogical methods - through instilling a great deal of fear in her students, putting them down and yelling. We have been trying to teach Tiss to get a thick skin in regards to this treatment, which has been hard, and we are very grateful that she is not the only one responsible for teaching his class.
In terms of work, last year the kids were basically taught about form, rather than content. There was a great emphasis on handwriting skills, which I found bemusing, but trust that at some point in the next couple of years the focus will shift from HOW Tiss writes, to WHAT he writes...
Apart from these and a few other things, school is good. Tiss takes after Jem in terms of popularity, and is friends with most kids in the class. When we arrived this morning you could see a real joy in the children being reunited after the summer break, and it was exciting for both parents and kids alike to wonder what this year of school will hold. The days have become suddenly colder and dare I say it, I am almost looking forward to blustery autumn and winter days, when we can sit indoors and concentrate on studying, reading and learning.