One of the activities that I do with my students is have them write journal entires. It’s good just for them to write, and put their English to work. I don’t grade them on how well they do, but on if they do it.

I’ve learned some interesting things through these journals. There’s been funny ones and serious ones. I thought I’d share some of my 12th grade journals I got today.

I like to do many things in my free time, but the biggest part of my free time I spend into the gym. I love weightlifting - especially powerlifting - bench press. If I have bad emotions, I kick them out also at gym - boxing bag is my target. These things helps me to be so calm in school. In school I am different than on street, because on street also the “rules” are different - people not the same as in school. On street if you are weak you loose, that is rule number one. Today you must be very careful on street, because you can’t know who is the person you are talking with - maybe he is a criminal, maybe he have a gun, knife and he wants to do some violent or nasty things. At all I can say that I better like street than silent school, because in school from the first grade I used to be kind, good and calm, but I changed when I started to learn, then out of school you must be nasty, powerful and cool - these are things that helps to survive on street.

Often they are shorter, but can give a lot of insight into the culture here, for example, this one:

I am dreaming about sun and little walk close to sea. That is very spiritual relaxing. Sometimes I need to be alone because of sunny weather - I want to get peace from nature. God speaks to us through winter and spring, sin and cloudy skys, stars and every tree. Thats is biggest gift for me as a human. But that would be very terrible if someone could not see that.

Latvians are very nature oriented. They love being outside and spring is a welcome time after the long, dark, cold days of winter.

More journals later!