Bonding time

Sorry it’s been a few days since we updated, we’ve been “bonding!”

Saturday I could have stepped on my son’s big toes!! I was quite upset with him. I had been asking for days for him to take me to the “market” in the airplane hangers. At first he pretended to have no idea what I was talking about. Then he kept telling me another day. Finally Saturday I said, “I am going by myself.” This did not make my husband very happy to have me wandering Riga by myself, but since they were close to the movie theatre we came up with a plan to have me meet them before & after a movie to check in so they knew I was alright.

Getting to the markets was so easy, and when I got there I couldn’t believe how amazing they were. Hundreds & hundreds of little booth set up in 5 large airplane hangers, and all outside of them. Meat, vegetable, fruits, cheeses, bakeries, spices, I could not believe my nose! I was on a hunt for good cheese to make home made pizza and also some gifts to take back to our 3 children at home. Now remember, hundred of booth and they all speak Latvian or Russian and I only speak English. The only Russian word I can say “good” is french fries.  It was fun to figure out how to buy peppers, onions, strawberries, mozzarella & parmesan cheese, bread and lots of other goodies I had been wanting. The vendors very quickly figured out they could not talk to me, so most of them punched in how much on a calculator I needed to pay and showed it to me and I handed them the lats. Prices were pretty good except for the $8+ I spent on strawberries. Yikes! Did not expect that high of a price, but I realized that we are in Eastern Europe in May and strawberries don’t grow at Adams Farm just down the road.

When I went to check in and  I saw my son, I got real close to his ear and hissed at him, “I can’t believe you didn’t take me there days ago.” He just smiled. He knew I would spend hours there and what 14 year old boy wants to spend hours walking around a market with thousands of other people. Not mine who hates crowds. He got a movie out of it and lots of fresh cheese, veggies & fruits. Sneaky child!!!!

Sunday David & I stayed in and Oscar went to the church down the road. Oscar said the church was very much like ours, except it was all in Russian. He said he got to sing Revelation Song in Russian. He sat with a friend of ours here who translated. Church was 2 hours long, so maybe that’s why our son avoids church if he can….. working on that issue.  We had hoped to see David’s previous foster mom & foster brothers, but Oscar could not find them in church. Shortly after he got back to the apartment, we got a phone call from them. She wanted to come visit. We had been negotiating with David that we wanted to go to a few museums, he wanted to stay here and play computer games & listen to music. He had no interest in the Art museums in Riga!

So, we told Natalia to come on over. She speaks very little English, but tried real hard. Within about 10 minutes of being here we were walking out the door. She wanted to show us “her” Riga.  It was hilarious to see our son telling her “No” he was not going. She had been his foster mom for 2 years, and she was not one to take no for an answer from him. I still have no idea how she gets him to do what she wants, but from the moment she arrived, she took charge and he was doing what he was told. For about 4 hours we walked the Riga streets and saw Riga we would never have seen with “our” 14 yr old tour guide. It was lots of fun. We got a lot of pictures because when she told him to go stand for a picture, he did vs. scowling at me when I tried to take his picture. J

My little enterprising son quickly got tired of translating between us and his foster mom about what we were seeing in Riga so he told me he needed translator fees. (He knew we paid a translator for courts.) I gave him all the change I had in my pocket and told him we’d get him ice cream too. He got about 3 Lats ($6.00) and ice cream out of the deal, and he worked on a lot of English in a few hours.  I can be a sneaky mom too. $6 was cheap compared to all the English words he learned while walking around when he was explaining stuff to us, and he also learned more of Latvian history while explaining what she was telling to us. I’d call that 4 hours of home schooling on the Riga streets!!

We have 4 days to go before we can leave. We are still praying no one goes to the courts and tries to keep us here. I really do not like plane take offs & landings, but I can’t wait for our plane to take off from the Riga airport on Thursday afternoon with our son with us. Then, I will breathe a big sigh of relief.

David, Arturs and Natalia

Roof line in Riga