Construction not just destruction! :)

I blame the weather for the lack of posts on my blog lately. Spring is truly, beautifully 100% here! I don't have much news to report, but have many a photo documenting the progress that has been made at Jaunvitagas the last two weekends in a row. The first is a tribute to the very best talciniece (helper) ever so far! IG is putting all the boys to shame! :)

Saimnieks and soon-to-be saimniece with the firewood and the rock pile. There are about four firewood piles twice the size of what you can see in the picture and the rock pile keeps going too. As per the title of this post, we finally got to really clean up the mess we've been making and actually constructed instead of just destructed, and that is what was great.

This will be Lielais Ugunskurs ("big fireplace"), mainly for Jani (the summer solstice celebration) and.....the best part.....for burning all the branches I've collected on branch duty. KB dug the fireplace, we raked away all the dried grass around it and the we carried over and arranged the rocks. It was the first thing we actually built at Jaunvitagas - hooray! This weekend we also built Mazais Ugunskurs ("small fireplace") in Mezmala, which is what we are calling the area of the woods we have cleaned out and are making into more of a park.

The honorary lighting of the first fire.

This is what branch duty looks like. There are no words to describe how good it felt to watch those suckers finally burn.

This is what I looked like at the end of the day. :) It felt great to lay in the sun with bare feet. Also we all got very sunburned faces - gotta be careful of the spring sun!

Here is a side story. I like this next picture. It looks like it belongs in a storybook. I think I had this same image in my head sometime in my childhood listening to my Nani read us Latvian stories (except that girl probably wasn't wearing jeans and sneakers).

IG taught me to eat flowers and leaves! Here is the proof of what I am sticking in my mouth!

Here is a close-up of what I was eating - three-leaf clovers and their flowers called Zakskabenes ("rabbit sours")!

And here is my reaction after eating them....

Just kidding! They were very tasty and refreshing, kind of like berries!

So the work continues and the work never ends, so I've been told. Luckily, we love what we are doing, because we are building our future, literally from the ground up.

More rainbows

"The work can wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work." (Patricia Clafford)

What a great and beautiful reminder: this was the quote on an invitation which we received on Sunday to attend a christening tomorrow afternoon. A mild joke about having to take time off work at the last minute to be there for this important moment in a child's life, but nevertheless a thought that's been on my mind since. My colleague and I pondered the thought during recess duty today on that first really perfect spring day, and she pointed out that it's not just to show the child the rainbow but to take time to look at it yourself too. Let's not let it pass us by.... :)

Birch tree juice

You know you're not in Kansas anymore (and yes, I still have moments like this even after more than two years of living here)...when your friends drop by to return a mini-disc player they have borrowed and also five liters of "fresh squeezed" birch tree juice. :) Maybe I should say "fresh dripped", it's collected much like maple syrup. It is so refreshing and mega-healthy. Ours came fully packed with extra protein, a mosquito floating on top, so you are not fooled as to how fresh this really is! :) Now how many other people can say that was part of their Sunday?

A game of pool

I have this analogy about life, which actually came to me in a dream one time. I repeat it to myself from time to time. Today, I'm posting it outloud in hopes that these vibes will somehow make it to some people who I think need to hear it.

Life is like a game of pool. No matter how much you want to, you can't change the position or placement of the colored balls (other people). You are the white ball, you can only change your own angle of looking at things.

Today I feel like a fish out of water. I feel like I'm living in just a wacky weird world and I no longer know how to function or communicate with people - it is just too weird. (And I am not even just talking about people from Latvia today.) I'm not going to say the details (though it would feel really good for me to purge them yet again, I must respect some privacy here), but I will just say that I have had four solid encounters today with situations where I feel that people are totally trying to change me to be/act/say/do just that which they need of me in shockingly forceful or manipulative ways, and I do not even know what to say back. A fish out of water.

My first question is: am I really such a bad person? No, of course, I know the answer is no, but geez....

My next question is: when did we all make the decision to stop accepting people for who they are and try to change the rules of the game of pool?

I am who I am (most days I feel pretty damn good about this, too), so take me or leave me, but don't try to move me around to suit your needs! So there....

My promotion

Very exciting, this weekend I got promoted from branch duty to rock duty. I actually truly loved it, it was much more exciting and I will tell you why. Branches are boring and all the same. Rocks are very different with their own little personalities, and I believe they each have a story to tell. As I unearthed them (I totally enjoyed pulling the moss of the top of each rock to uncover each new "present" and also seeing what critters were hiding underneath each rock - can you tell why I'm good with the preschoolers?!), I was enthralled with thinking about the history behind each rock, what it has seen and experienced for thousands upon thousands of years, how different and unique they all are, and how now it is their time in history to become part of the bonfire which will witness the day of our wedding.

In other news of "promotions" for those of you who don't yet know, I will be teaching either kindergarten or grade two next year (administration is still undecided). Unfortunately, at our school, that means a financial promotion for me because for some reason totally unfathomable to me, preschool teachers get paid significantly less than elementary teachers - something about that our work load isn't as full because we have an assistant teacher in the room. Well, I'm not even gonna get on my soap box about that one.... But I'm excited for a new adventure in teaching next year!

Butterflies

Today I saw my first butterfly of the year! As per an old Latian belief, which I just learned last year, if the first butterfly you see is white, it will be a dull and bland summer for you but if the butterfly is colorful your summer will be colorful and eventful ("raiba vasara"). I saw a yellow butterfly, and when I called KB an hour later to tell him so, he told me that he had just seen a yellow butterfly too. I guess we're in for a good summer! :)