Anyone who says winter is ALWAYS dreary and depressing hasn’t really experienced winter. Sure, dark days and cold can have an effect on you, and I know that weather-effected depression is a really thing for some people, but I have to wonder if most of that happens because they don’t look for anything good in winter. I admit I love the winter, but I do try to find something good and enjoyable in each season, as well. (Even in the insanely hot summer.)

Today was awesome. Winter has been flirting with us for a while.. a 1/2 inch falls, and melts, another dusting falls, and melts (or gets blown away). This morning I woke up so a good-old fashioned Ohio-style WHITEOUT! We had a few good inches on the ground already and it was still falling.

This morning Andis & Ieva had the preliminary round for NOTS, which is a youth music contest for the whole region. 16 people/groups auditioned and 11 were being chosen. We raced to get there before they sang, through the falling snow and over the unplowed and slippery roads. We walked in just as the group before them finished. They did great. Ieva played guitar and they sang a duet called “Someday You’ll Know” by Mandy Moore and Jonathan Foreman. Very cool. After a nerve-racking 20 minutes of jury deliberation, they announced who made it to the next round… and they were in! Woohoo! The band will try to pull it together to all play for the finals in March.

As a kind of celebration, we decided to meet a while later and go sled riding. Actually, here it’s more popular to go “bag-riding”. The big thick garbage bags work great if you have enough snow (which we did). The 5 of us met and hit the hill. (Our friend, Daiga was here for the weekend, too.) We were there about 5 minutes and our blue sky turned to yet another whiteout! So much fun! Watch the video here! An hour later we were all cold and wet, but we also felt like we had revisited a piece of our childhood.

That is the kind of thing that makes winter fun and enjoyable. Hopefully the snow stays for a while… Peteris said he’d teach me to snowboard this winter if it does.

It’s a busy weekend. Friday night we were in Riga… the band had a concert there which went really well.

Tomorrow (Sunday) they’re leading worship at the Talsi Christian Fellowship church in the morning and then at Talsi Baptist Church youth meeting in the evening. Then it’s back to school. Ugh… Too bad we don’t have snow-days here!

We did end up with about 5-6 inches today… and it is still falling.

Yes, finally, we have snow. I can’t believe it’s about 2 months late, but in the middle of my English class on Friday it started coming down. I’ve said before that anything that happens in Latvia happens with a vengeance. Well, this was no exception. In a few hours we had 3 inches of thick, heavy, wet snow. You know the stuff that’s awesome for snowballs? And when you looked up to see it falling on you, it didn’t gently touch your check… it poked you in the eye! It was great though. I was walking through town with Andis before I tutored his cousin. We had about an hour to kill and I was too thrilled by the snow to stay inside. In an hour we were soaked, but it was so beautiful. It continued most of the night and has been off and on today. I hope it stays. I’ve considered putting my Christmas tree back up, as it feels like Christmas now, but I think I’ll pass on that. Just hoping for more, now, as Peteris has said he’ll teach me to snowboard if we get enough snow. Bring it on!

Well, some of the official figures from the storm last night are coming in. (Read the blog below this one if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) It was the talk of the town though. From what I heard, Riga, Talsi (where we live) & Valdemarpils (where the base is) got the worst of it. After school we went driving and I took some shots… nothing catastrophic, but interesting nonetheless, especially if you’re somehwat of a stormchaser-wannabe, like me. :) The base is still out of power. Reports are 50,000 customers are out, which, in a country this size, that’s substantial. In Riga they were advising parents to take escort their kids to school cause many roads were flooded and billboards and such were down everywhere.

We did have school, though I only had 7 of my 13 students. I think attendance was down everywhere today.

This picture is from our balcony that Chris took this morning. It’s the building next to ours. (Remember you can click on a picture to make it bigger.) The “official” wind reading closest to us reported 27 meters/second, which converts to 60mph. The highest recorded in the country was on the coast in Liepaja and Ventspils… 32 meters/second, which is 71.5 mph. Stop lights in Liepaja were not just out but down… and they weren’t the ones that hang, but on poles. You can see more pictures (and try out your latvian) here.
The rest of the pics are from my drive between Talsi & Valdemarpils.

Grrr…. Electricity blinked and I lost my blog before I could save it. Oh well…. let’s try this again…

It’s now 4:20am. I have yet to have had any sleep. We’ve had quite a winter storm here tonight. It started at church this evening. We had gone to the youth meeting at the Baptist church. Andis led worship and Chris, Peteris & Marta backed him. It was cool. Then the wind started to blow and the electricity started to flicker. Poor Peteris, playing electric guitar, said he had to turn his processor back on 9 times cause the power knocked it out. Then once, it stayed out. It was awesome. Pitch dark… then you just see all these cell phones light up. But worship continued, and more heart felt it seemed as everyone really was in their own world and no one could see them. You could here Andis & Chris’ voices above the crowd leading with just Chris’ acoustic guitar as we all sang:

How precious, how precious

Is your closeness

How precious, how precious

Is your closeness

How precious, how precious

You are, my Jesus

How precious, how precious

Is your closeness

Too bad the lights came back on.

Andis and I were joking afterwards that maybe the power would go out and stay out and we wouldn’t have school in the morning. The wind was starting to blow really hard. When we got home we walked into a very dark apartment, as our power was already out. It stayed off, as did the hot water and the heat, for about another hour or 2. Not too bad. Once we were re-ushered into the 21st century. I learned that the Latvian news was warning that there could be “hurricane force winds” tonight. Oh yea.

It continued to rain, and then, I think from the wind chill more than anything, that turned to snow, though it was blowing so hard and fast, it wasn’t landing anywhere. In the street lights, which are at eye-level from our 3rd floor apartment, we could just see the snow blowing straight; no angle, just straight across.

Our apartment faces west, and our living room balcony was getting the brunt of the direct winds. We also have this annoying piece of loose metal on our roof that, no matter how many times we have reported it, and they come fix things up there, they always miss this piece. So, it’s been banging all night.

Officially, Riga has had 40mph winds. I have to believe it’s been faster out here in the open fields of the countryside. Though our windows are all shut, I was lying in bed getting a nice, cool, fresh, breeze now and then from the amazing draft. I have also been feeling our 3-story concrete block building shaking. Slightly distrurbing.
I finally got up at 3:45 as sleep was not coming. It’s cool how things work out. Shortly after I started up my computer to write this blog, my friend Mark in Kentucky started a chat with me. It was cool to hear some of the stuff he’s learning from God and be able to encourage him some. It was only 9:15pm there. :-)

So school starts in 3 1/2 hours. The power is still on so we’ll probably have school. Thankfully my class isn’t until 12:40pm. I really need some sleep but I wonder if I’m really going to get any at all.

In other news, I really need to write our monthly update letter. And the band is going well. They have some of their music online, albeit all in Latvian, but it’s still cool to listen to. You can check them out at www.myspace.com/fusionlv. Chris is playing drums.

Going to try to get some sleep.

PS As I posted this, I looked at the little weather thing to the right, and it reported gusts at 47mph. Getting higher… and sleep is getting farther away.

My friend Ieva gave me a stack of small books in Latvian for me to read. It was daunting at first, but last night I started the first one. Sure, I have to read it with my Latvian/English dictionary open… words like bedajas (he mourned) and caloja (she babbled) are not the first ones you learn in a new language.

I haven’t finished it yet, but I have a feeling that I know how it ends. It’s about a young girl whose mother dies and her father remarries, but then he dies and she’s left to live with her stepmother and 2 stepsisters. So sad. But, they’ve all just recieved an invitation to a ball at the King’s castle!

Yup, you’re right, I’m reading “Pelnruškite”! In English, we’d call her Cinderella. Funny… this was the first movie I saw as a child. :)