Christmas is coming!

Last week we were completely occupied by making JACis look extra pretty for the upcoming holidays. We put a lot of effort into our DIY-decorations and had a lot of fun cutting, glueing and folding paper into all manners of shapes. down here, you can see a few examples of our work ;)

All decoration done!

A gorgeous Christmas-flower

Little christmas-tree

Working on decorations with a Reindeer

As the cold comes naturally with this season, we needed something to keep warm on theses short and freezing days, so Deniss offered to show us how to cook  Borscht. Borscht is a hot soup of eastern european origin made from beets, bell peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and a chunk of meat! It is eaten with bread, sourcream and fat. The taste is quite spicy, and it really warms you up from the inside.

Chef Deniss at work.

Many vergetables need to be chopped.

The last big event of the week was Anas visiting us on Wednesday. It was his last day in Rezekne, so there was a little party in JACis for him. On the same day, we had some costumes around, so it was a lot of fun.

Thats all for today ;)

Romanian Week (1. to 5. December)

On 1st of December Romania celebrated National Day -The Great Union Day that marks the unification of Transilvania, but also of the provinces of Basarabia and Bucovina with the Romanian Kindom. In Romania this a big celebrations with a lot of military parades especially in the city Alba Iulia, the place where the Great Union took place in 1918.

As Georgiana, one of the volunteers, is from Romania, we celebrated on this occasion all week with different activities. On Monday we cook "pancove" - Romanian donuts which were very tasty!

 We had a special guest - Ion Sapdaru - a romanian actor and director who spent two month in Rezekne and had a collaboration with Joriks theatre. He talked about Romania, the significance of the 1st December but also about the most important cities from Romania and his work as an actor. It was a pleasure to host him! Thank you Ion Sapdaru for accepting our invitation!

On Wednesday, we all went to visit some fellow volunteers in Daugavpils. We met the people from Erfolg organization and we talked a lot about our projects and our work. It was very nice to meet them and to share from our experience. 

We also had time for a trip around the city : the inner city, the churches hill (were there are 5 churches from different confessions), the university and of course some shops. We were even interviewed for the local television, so as our friend said, this marked the beginning of our career on Latvian television (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knxUgsL22oY). The day finished with a french evening organized by Amandine, one of the Erfolg Organisation.

Thursday we had a romanian party. We played a few games and we enjoyed it a lot, we danced and we  listened to awesome music. We finished the day with by playing Settlers of Catan, one of the most beloved strategy games here.

Friday was a short day but we had enought time to find out something new about Romania through a documentary movie - Discover Romania - Wild Carpathia

on the weekend we went back to Daugavpils, but this time to support the winner of Popiela who opened the local contest in Daugavpils - PopClip. In the morning we had time to go to ice skating and to visit Mark Rothko Art Center. 

Nothing special happend...(10. to 23. November)

This is what you would say at the first view... But if you look carefuly at the last two weeks, you will see that a lot of interesting things happend. Actually these weeks were very important for the latvian people because they prepared for the Latvian Day.

On Tuesday the 11^th of November, Latvians celebrate Lāčplēsis day. Lāčplēsis ist he latvian national hero who fought bears and witches. They chose the date of 11^th November because on that date in 1919 latvian army won a battle against the German Army in order to become an independent state. For this celebration, we were invited to GORS concert hall to see a concert. Everyone was dressed up and very solemn. The event started with a long ceremony to honor people who did something special for Latvia in 2014. After that we had a short break with food and drinks. Then the concert began but it was no ordinary concert but a cinema show with live music. The movie was very old and without sound but the music fitted perfectly and was very good. 

Next day Clemence participated in an activity in school where she learned a lot of songs. On Thursday we had the next Latvian traditional event, a traditional Latvian dancing evening, where Clemence and Paul were invited and they learned many dances. It was great fun but after that they were very exhausted because Latvian dances are crazy! 

Also the preparation for a famous contest, organized by JACis started this week so, Paul, Clemence, Tanya, Kike, Vincent and Nastia  had the first meeting in order to prepare the performance for the Popiela that would take place on 29^thof November

The weekend was very long and a lot of stuff were happened:

For four days Clemence and Kike decided to visit the city Parnu in Estonia by hitchhiking.

The first step was to find a car until Riga on Friday the 14th of November. A very nice Russian trucker took them to Riga. He didn’t speack English, so they needed to use body language to communicate. He invited them to eat with him.

The second step was to find another car from Riga to Parnu in Estonia.

For sleeping at Parnu they didn’t find some another volunteer, so they couchsurfed.

On Saturday they visited the city. Parnu is the capital of summer in Estonia. It’s a beautiful city next to the sea. You can walk on a stone path in the middle of the sea. It’s very awesome.

The centre is also very interesting, with some historical places

The second night, they slept in a typical house without heating, only one matress and a fire.

In the same time Moritz went to Vilnius, Lithuania on a short city trip. The journey by bus was quite cumbersome, with unpaved roads and a crowded coach, but once there, Vilnius proved to be a beautiful town, featuring a lot of green spaces (if it wasn't for the season, that is), an impressive castle overlooking the wonderful old town as well as the skyscrapers across river Vilna and pretty friendly and welcoming people. There is an artist district which declared itself an independent state with a size of half a kilometer squared, along with a tongue in cheek constitution (Art. 12:"A dog has the right to be a dog") and plenty of artistic stores. A complete contrast to this alternative quarter is the giant mall "Akropolis" in Northern Vilnius, which could easily host all of Rezekne. There is even an ice skating rink, a cinema and a giant supermarket inside. All in all, it is completely recommended to visit this nice town, if you like big cities.

A wall commemorating the Human chain, which ended in Vilnius and led to the independence of the Baltic States

The Angel of Uzupis, overlooking the artist district

View over the old town from the castle

                                       

On Tuesday Latvians celebrated another big event, their day of independence. In order of that, police blocked the main street in Rezekne and there was a big run called “Tautas Skrejiens” with 3,4 km distance. Clemence and Paul participated and they had good fun. After that the people marched from cultural house to the “vienoti latvijai” statue in the middle of the town. Then there was a big ceremony with torches, a brassband, the mayor gave a speech and an impressive firework.  

GORS also celebrated this day with the opening of old coin expoositions a concert 

All in all it was a very nice day with awesome weather and its really interesting to see how Latvians celebrate their national pride.
On Friday we started the movie activity in JACis. We organized the poll room like a cinema room and we enyoed "How to train your dragon". 

Popiela (24. to 30. November)

It was a busy week for Jacis but also for the other people and youth of Rezekne.

On the 28th of November, an important event happened here: the 9th edition of Popiela. Six teams from Rezekne's schools prepared and presented very interesting performances on the stage of Jorik, the local theatre. The competition was held under the motto "Back to the 90's".

So, during this week, lot of people from JACis (Vineta, Kristaps, Justine, Viva, Katja, Vija and many others) organized this evenment: preparing decorations, finding sponsors, printing posters and diplomas, wrapping prizes etc.

At the same time, Tanja, Paul, Clémence, Kike, Nastja, Estere, Eriks and some dancers formed a team called "Only 3 days", rehearsed a lot and so, on the big day they won the price for the most stylish performance.

The winners were  (2-я средняя школа) "18-" .They will go to the finals in Daugavpils on Saturday 13th of November.

Between the performances we had a lot of artisctic moments. One of them was a rendition of "Lemon tree" by our friend, Yann who traveled the long way from Jaunpiebalga just to play for us.

Saturday 29. November, Georgiana and Clémence went to see a jazz concert by James Morrison (Australia) at Gors. It was a really great and beautiful moment. He was also funny ! He is a very good artist: he can play trumpet and Piano in the same time.

From the begining of November, Rezekne had a romanian guest: Ion Sapdaru. He worked in Jorik and during his project he showed  a romanian movie on Sunday, 30. November, "California Dreaming" by Cristian Nemescu. He is one of the main actors in this movie, the mayor, and he talked about the movie with the audiece. Ion is an incredible nice persons and we were pleased to meet him!

Time just flies by in JACis! (2.11.2014 -7.11. 2014)

Time just flies by in JACis! A week has passed, and it is time to tell you about the exciting things which happened.

The volunteers went to different schools in order to teach kids about their home countries and mother tongues. There were several very interesting lessons on Romanian geography, including a presentation, a true or false game and an exciting round of discussion. 

At roughly the same time, but in another classroom, a lesson on the German language happened. It is always exciting to go to classes, because it just allows you to reach a completely different crowd of kids, some of which you would've never met at JACis. And if they show up the next day, that is even better.

Speaking of what is going on in our "second home" JACis, we had quite pleasant visitors from Riga; they were the employees and volunteer of the "Jasma" youth center on their annual tour through Latgale. We decided to make caramelized bananas for them, a task that seemed easy on the paper, but herculean in reality. Soon, a feint smell of burned things filled the center, as we were frantically waving at the smoke detector in order to keep in from raising concern at the local fire brigade. The second batch turned out fine, though! We had some interesting exchanges with the Jasma people, and were even invited to visit them.

 The last big event of the week did not happen in JACis, but rather in the big "Pencil" (Zeimuls educational service center). We prepared a meeting of some locals and a group of Norwegian students, who were in town in order to study the renovation of Rezeknes sole synagogue, which is currently in a state of disrepair. The meeting went quite well despite some last minute changes and a fair bit of improvisation.But that did not totally mark the end of the flurry of interesting things that happened last week.

 On the weekend, our dear colleagues from Vecpiebalga came by, and the weekend was spent making them familiar with this lovely city of ours.