Riga After All

It's a short one this week guys, sorry.

Well, it seems I typed to soon last week because I am going to Riga after all. I wasn't able to go on the Riga cruise this past weekend because of poor planning but an opportunity came up to go this coming weekend. My Polish-igloo-engineer friends were planning on going and had an extra space. The cruise only last 40 hours and ost of it is on the boat. It seems that most people go to party and buy really cheap liquor. We're driving to Stockholm on Friday and then setting sail that night. We'll have most of Saturday to explore the city and load up on booze if we so wish and then we sail back to the Swedish capital. On Sunday and Monday we'll explore the city and then some two of us have to come back Monday night because of a class that has required attendance. The others are staying another day or two to explore.

The school week was pretty typical. Classes, homework, and all of that. The interesting things happened on the weekend. We were planning on having a big party for the fake holiday of Valentine's Day it was facebook official (joking, of course) and it looked like it was going to have a lot of guests. But somehow the never-responds-to-email landlord found out and put up posters all over the dorm stating the police would come and shut it down if we went through with it. I don't know how he found out or why decided to care all of a sudden because we've had many parties before with no cops. The party was cancelled by the organizers at the last minute so a lot of people showed up anyway and so did the cops. Apparently though there weren't enough non-residents to violate any fire codes and meet the legal definition of a party. Though there was a lot of running around and some wrestling.

On Sunday I had a lovely dinner and fika with my contact family. They made a French dish because the wife is a French teacher and in love with all things French. We chatted for a few hours and then had the traditional Swedish fika. We talked all about our families and countries. It was a really good day. They sent me home with some Swedish bread and a promise to meet again. On the drive there the husband to buy flowers for his wife for All Saints Day which is a national way to celebrate.

Today in Swedish language class we had a substitute teacher who told us about the traditional way to celebrate Fat Tuesday. They eat a traditional baked thing that is like a giant cream puff. She said that over six million of the tasty treats are sold on this one day every year. That's quite for country of nine million!

I'll post another short entry next week between my two trips but I'll write a long one about both the my trips, Riga and Brussels.