1st Annual Santa Fun Run/Walk

Here are pictures of the 1st Annual Rotary International Santa Fun Run/Walk. There were over 200 people dressed in Santa suits running the streets of Riga.

Baltic Sea vs. Bay of Riga

Here is the exact location where the Baltic Sea mixes with the Bay of Riga. You can actually see both bodies of water meeting in the middle.

Art Nouveau

When you visit Riga you will see all of this Art Nouveau. Buildings throughout the city have statues and faces on the sides. It is one of the most impressive sites and one of the largest collections in Europe.

Prince Albert of Monaco

It was Monaco's National Day on Nov. 19 so they had a big celebration. I was walking around and Prince Albert looked out his window to say hello. He said he had been reading my blog and wanted to know what Obama was saying to me. Unfortunately, when he came to the window a lot of other people started waving their flags and cheering. I was not able to carry on a conversation with him so I went back to the hotel for lunch. Maybe I'll call him before we leave.

Monaco

Rhonda and I had a workshop in Monaco and Nice. Here is what Monaco looks like. Nice place but too crowded.

The Boot

This pink thing is attached to your front tire when you do not pay for parking. So far it has only happened one time to me. Once you get the boot there is a number to call and a guy comes to your car in a couple of minutes and takes the boot off. It usually costs about $5 to get it off.

Crocodile Dundee

You may have thought Croc. Dundee came from Australia. Wrong. He really came from Latvia. He left Latvia after WW II and went to Australia. This is a statue to him located in Dundaga, Latvia.

Emergency Room Visit

Here is a picture of Rhonda's stitches after her trip to the emergency room. The doctor looked like an old Ed Asner and the surgery room looked like you could change oil in the other bay. You could go deep sea fishing with the test line used and the doctor was trained as a veterinarian in the former Soviet Union.

Respected Again

It was amazing to watch the world celebrate the election. We happened to be in an airport watching CNN when the results were announced. People from around the world cheered.

Grain Storage

In Latvia this was how they stored their grain 100 years ago. There is a house built out of one of these and it's for SALE!

Wooden Castle

Here is a recreation of the wooden castles in Latvia. They created this castle to show how they were built when stone was not used.

Latvian Castle

Here are pictures of another castle in Latvia. This one was built on the river near Ogre.

Osek, Czech Republic

This is the town of Osek. It is located about 60 miles north of Prague near the German border. This is the town in which my Great, Great Grandfather Thomas Molacek and my Great Grandfather Joseph Molacek were born but left in the 1850's. We looked around the town and asked if anyone knew our family name. No one had heard of us but we did have a great traditional Czech meal...pork knuckle, 2 kinds of dumplings and 2 kinds of cabbage.

Prague

Here are some pictures of Prague. I had a meeting there so we found some time to look over the city. It was undamaged in WWII and is unbelievably gorgeous.

Fall Festival in Riga

Here are some pictures of the fall festival held in Riga. If you look close you can see that their instruments are veggies.

Segulda castles

Here are two castles located right by each other. One was built in the 1800's and the other was built during the 12th century.

WW II Bomb Shelter

Here is a bomb shelter that was built during World War II. It is abandoned now.

Fall Is Coming

We went back to Segulda this past weekend. These are some of the colors that are here in Latvia.

Rundale Palace

Rundāle Palace (Latvian: Rundāles pils; German: Schloss Ruhental, formerly also Ruhenthal and Ruhendahl) is the most important baroque palace in Latvia, situated at Pilsrundāle, 12 km ( 7 miles ) west of Bauska. It was constructed in the 1730s to a design by Bartolomeo Rastrelli as a summer residence of Ernst Johann von Biron, the duke of Courland. Following Biron's fall from grace, the palace stood empty until the 1760s, when Rastrelli returned to complete its interior decoration.

After Courland was absorbed by the Russian Empire in 1795, Catherine the Great presented the palace to her lover, Prince Zubov, who spent his declining years there. His young widow, Thekla Walentinowicz, a local landowner's daughter, remarried Count Shuvalov, thus bringing the palace to the Shuvalov family, with whom it remained until the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Hill of Crosses

On Sunday we drove to Lithuania to see the Hill of Crosses. This was started in the 1950's as a memorial. When the Soviets found it they bulldozed it under. The Lithuanians put it back up. This went on three times and finally the Soviets let it stay. Now it is an area people visit and add crosses. There were hundreds of thousands of crosses on the site. The Pope visited the site years ago.

Clean Up Latvia Day

On Saturday Sept. 13 ISL participated in the National Latvia Clean-up day. We had about 75 faculty, students, and parents join the fun. We walked in the forest and along the river cleaning up the area.