Our visit to Lavia-October 2011

Christine Antoine Euriell Bienvenu Capucine Aumignon Laure-Line Bibila Mathilde Dubuisson Anas Muller L a Tappret

We were warmly welcome at school by Ilze and pupils dressed in traditional costumes. We were given some bread with jam!

Latvian people had prepared a wonderful hall, with the different flags !

Ilze delivered a very serious speech, as the headmistress of the school : such a powerful lady ;-)

Young pupils danced, they had prepared a dance for each country. They danced on Joe Dassin for the French!

The first GROUP PHOTO ! This trip really still holds the record for gourp photos !

We had a nice break with nice things to eat : fresh fruit, cakesHow nice !

We the visited school! We had very nice Latvian guides!

Technology in Latvia: They still study wood work as well ashousework! Learn how to be the perfect housekeeper! We know some French boys and men whod definitely need to take some extra course!

A very important place: the school cafeteria!

Smaller pupils!

Diana: our lovely guide!

Janis showed us the youth center and the gym! Come on Capucine: you can do it!

In the morning, we played dodgeball, volley ball and floorball with Latvian and Polish teams! We were all very hungry for lunch!

And here is the Turkish team, ready to enjoy their meals!

My lovely girls !

Romanian teachers, Ilze and Christine

Later, we joined Ingrida, the art teacher. Pupils had to create an eco-tree.

The Romanian tree.

The Turkish tree.

The Latvian tree

The French tree

The Polish tree.

Of course, our pupils explained, in English, what they used, and what could be seen.

We then all headed to the hall, where Latvian pupils had prepared some games for us: we started playing musical chairs. Some people really ran like Emils! Others just stuck to their chairs!

How low can you go?

Little party for pupils!

And of course : dinner time : Food was really delicious !

Very nice and big cake!

DAY 2 : Lets visit Sigulda !

We started with some king of summer sledge! It was very nice, very fast and funny!

La was ready to go !

The view was really amazing!

Everybody was smiling after going down! And we did it again!

After going down so fast, we went up very quietly

We waited for the cable car to reach our second destination: Sigulda natural Park!

The castle

Aurelia, Daniela and Bianca in the castle

This park is called folk song park. Its a very peaceful place, very relaxing. We took a little walk, among the nice statues.

We had lunch in a nice restaurant dedicated to wiches! Mathilde found HER toilets! Gnul proved she could be a very wonderful queen! It suits her, doesnt it?

The underground lakes! Beware of holes!

Will we ever see them again???? Who knows, we might be lucky! ;-)

Bye, Capucine!

Waiting

We needed nice boots to go to the second lake! It was really mysterious!

Our Turkish friends were brought to the Ottoman cemetery. We learnt that Turkish soldiers were in Cesis a long time ago!

Araika Lake fortress

One of my favourite activities: medieval sport!

Our guide and teacher told us how to throw a javelin, very useful against enemies!

We tried a lot!

And finally, Capucine and I managed to throw our javelins in the circle! Yeah!!!!

Archery! Very different styles and techniques!

Now: guessing game! Where is Capucine? Where is Euriell Bienvenu? Where is Ola? The most elegant warrior is of course Ilze!

After all that fighting, we neededa medieval soup !

And a last picture with our matre darmes

Visit to local authorities! We also caught a glimpse of a little shop where candles were made!

Visit of Cesis: our guide was Janis!

The castle Cesis is a lovely little city, full of little parks, with small ponds. The atmosphere is really quiet and peaceful. We were really lucky because the weather was fantastic: the light was superb, and the colors of the Latvian Fall were simply stunning!

Black swans

We visited the old smithy, where Bianca had the opportunity to be dressed as a Celtic princess! She simply enjoyed that!

Later, we enjoyed our medieval feast! We even danced! After dinner, we had a night tour round the castle! Very nice, and scary with the ghost stories and the visit down the oubliettes.

Lets vsit the capital: RIGA!

We had a guided tour round old Riga! The city is really lovely. We climbed up a church and we had a nice view of the city.

The exhibition in the church!

The famous black cat of Riga!

A synagogue

Visit of the Bank of Latvia!

Ilzes 25th birthday ! ;-)

Last dinner with our friends from Turkey! They had to leave the day after! Fortunately, well meet them all again in January 2012 in Istanbul!

Back to school!

Ilze, wearing her brand new birthday earrings!

The hall decorated by Ingrida with our eco trees!

English class: we played loto, with numbers in Polish, French and Latvian! Really hard! Our teacher was Ingridas sister who teaches English at school once a week!

Maths class

I didnt understand anything! But pupils did! Erick seems to be quite good at maths!

Later: sport activities for young people. Christine and I had a nice walk around school! Nature is beautiful there!

One of the last GROUP photo! Everybody was given their certificates!

Latvia

Romania

Poland

France

Last day in Riga!

The bridge with loverspadlocks

A little cruise on the canal

Back to France! Hushheverybody was tired!

See you all in Istanbul, dear friends!