Impressions & Musical Musings of an American in Latvia
I’d never seen one of these before. It was the annual concert of a youth guitar studio, & some of our friends were in it. The teacher, also a choir director, arranged his students into a choir & directed them. It was a little weird at first, but kind of cool. I think it cured me of my idea to do something like that, though.
Our ministry now has a ropes course… and it’s intense. I was one of the first to try it out. I did some of the low elements with not too much problem… save the x-ropes. It was when I got to the high elements that I had to face my fears. The multi-vines nearly kicked my butt. At 7m above the ground, I started to really get nervous. Thanks to my new hero, Aimee who was my belayer, I didn’t have to worry too much of plummeting to my demise… but it didn’t lessen the intensity. Basically, the multi-vines consist of a single cable on which you stand & then you grab onto rope vines that are attached to another cable above & spaced about 1.5m apart. As if that’s not difficult enough, there’s another person doing the same thing from the opposite direction… & you have to cross in the middle.
I did it. I’m glad I did. 2 days later… I’m still sore, but it really brought a lot of confidence to me that I didn’t know existed.
~t
I know that I have something to write about, but at the moment I’m not sure what it is. So, I figure if I ramble for a moment, maybe my brain will get rattled back into shape & something of interest will come out.
Well, I’ve sat here for a few minutes & nothing has happened yet. I know that I can’t bowl. That’s for darned sure. Well, I should clarify… I can’t focus too much when bowling. I tense up resulting in very erratic trajectories. Lydia didn’t seem to have this problem. She basically kicked my butt. She only came in 3rd, though, behind Andis & Peteris who, between two games shared 1st. Peteris, ironically, had only ever bowled before in the woods with a ball, pins & lane all made of wood. The picture that came to mind was rather humorous; something along the lines of Robin Hood Prince of the Lanes. So, Peteris was more than a prince Saturday afternoon. In fact, we dubbed him the “Bowling King”. I think his first real bowling score ever was like 143. Dang it.
The other royalty, the Little Princess Agnese & Ieva did their best just to bowl at all. They’d never seen, let alone played, American-style bowling. The lightest ball was 9 lbs. which didn’t help their slight frames at all. Aside from Ieva’s terrible head cold & cough, we all had a blast in the basement of the Talsi sports hall on the one of two lanes situated just next to the tiny bar playing a bizarre cacophony of 50’s & 60’s American & ugly Europop music, which would skip on occasion in the subpar cd player.
So there you have it. Is it interesting enough?
~t
