june 18

June 18

 

There is never a dull day in Latvia.  We ventured to town today and hung out at Romix’s house for a little while in the morning while he went to get the van fixed and were able to use the internet and such. Then we met up with Ingmars and Niks and walked around and went bowling because we had promised Agate that we would.  The bowling ally was very nice, much nicer than any I have seen in the states and very clean.  Ingmars won by a lot but it was a lot of fun for all of us!  The bowling ally was located in the center part of town which was basically a giant park were it was pedestrian only.  There were some small cafes and a miniature golf course (minus the windmills and all that fancy jazz most places have that we think of) and some engineless go-carts that kids were peddling around.  The playground was enormous with several swings and slides and things to climb on and to be quite honest I had to keep myself from running to play on it!  Alongside all of this was the beach so we took a stroll down by the waves, which were numerous.  On the sand near the walkway was another small playground with these crazy swings for two people and monkey bars and all other sorts of bars.  Naturally, all of the guys decided to do pull to do pull-ups and dips and all the other manly things that men do when they are together in the presence of things to climb on.  And naturally, Agate watched and laughed and cheered them all on. 

 

Once we ventured back downtown, we had some wonderful Latvian pizza (I specify because it is different than what we are used to, mainly thinner and different toppings) for lunch at this little place before heading off to get a car from a friend to drive since the van was not ready yet.  After our fun-filled day of playing we returned to Roman’s house for some coffee and cake while we watched the movie Cars (which all of us highly recommend, by the way).  The journey back to camp was, well, eventful.   A little over a kilometer outside of town the car just stopped going.  Now, this car was old and was a stick-shift so when it started jerking we didn’t think much of it and Romans thought the gas light just didn’t work, however we came to found out otherwise.  We weren’t far at all from the gas station so we pushed (yes, both of us) the car to the side of the road and then went to the gas station to fill up the water bottle we had in the car with gas.  Upon return Romans tried to start up the car and we did not have success until he started it while we pushed.  I imagine it was a funny site to see these two crazy Americans pushing this tiny little car and then running after it and jumping inside!  But all is well and we are more than fine and now we have a funny to tell.  We had more gas at camp for Romans to fill the car with before returning home so it is all good.  Tomorrow we will be doing more work to finish preparing for the pastors that are coming on Friday so it will be a busy day indeed. So now as the darkness is starting to finally consume the horizon at a quarter to one in the morning I think I will head to bed. Ciao.