(no subject)
тут недавно затронул тему про мои традиции на уроке английского, написал эссе. Я знаю что там нехватает пару абзацов, нету про Женьку, Айвара и Саню, но я когда его писал опаздывал в класс его здавать, поэтому недописал, вы уж простите меня грешного. Я вас всех люблюблюблюблюблю!! А так вообще читайте ;)
“Ligo” - The summer solstice celebration in Latvia
By the beginning of the second week of June, in Latvia, on all the TV stations you could notice frequently popping up commercials about cheap beer, cheese, marinated pork and the “Don’t Drink and Drive” ads. That’s because the summer solstice celebration on June 23rd is upcoming. This is the biggest national holiday in Latvia, which features drinking lots of beer, eating Latvian national cheese, cooking shish kebabs and jumping over the fire.
For my friends and me this is the day when we all get together. This tradition lasts for about 3 years. At first all of us would come back to our hometown - Ogre. I would come from US where I live and study, Yana would come back from Scotland, where she also lives and studies, Dmitry comes back from Ukraine, where he usually goes for summer vacation; Sergei comes back from Russia, from visiting his relatives. Aivar, Alex and Eugene actually never left the town, but we still consider them coming back from somewhere. We would meet up at mine or Dmitry’s apartment a couple days before Ligo, to talk about past, present and future.
Then we would start preparing. We would visit many supermarkets in both Riga and Ogre, to find the right stuff for the right price, like: cheap and good beer, pork for shish kebabs, fireworks and other foods. Afterwards, we would figure out who’s bringing the stereo to Alex’s house, who’s driving and who’s carrying what.
On the “D-Day”, by 6pm o’clock we would finish celebrating with our parents and head towards the party place. We would make a stop by the entrance to the apartment, significance of which I will explain later. Then we would go for about 40 minutes and finally arrive.
Alex would meet us by the fence, and his dog Rik would always jump on you, trying to knock you off and lick your face. Then we would start preparing food, but first we open couple beers. Then put the shish kebabs on fire, get all the food Alex prepared and set it up on the table outside. Also we would set up the tent over the table, because it’s weather’s tradition to rain every single time on that night. While meat is cooking we play ping-pong on the table in the garage.
When the meat is done, we put everything from the oven and shish kebab from the grill on the table, open bottle of vodka and sit down. One of us would call a first toast, for us being together again. We would eat, drink and have fun conversation for a while, while cooking another portion of shish kebab. At 12pm we would fire up fireworks and watch other neighbors doing so. The sky looks amazing every Ligo. Then we would probably dance outside and then go swimming by the dam. Swimming in the dark while drunk - what can be more fun? After spending half an hour in the water we would go back, have more vodka and dance on the street. Around 5am everyone is usually found sleeping somewhere.
In the morning we would wake up around 1pm and eat breakfast. While having breakfast, which usually consists of grilled chicken, we discuss and laugh about the details from the night before. After that we gather up and everyone, except Alex, goes to a Bus Station. There we would wait for a bus and after a ten minute ride we are home.
There are many reasons why this is so important to me. At first, coming back to celebrate Ligo with my friends means coming back home, from being absent for about a year. My parents are back in Latvia; my older brother is there, too. Meeting up everyone, spending time with my brother is such an amazing time for me.
My second reason is my friends. Dmitry, Sergei, Jana, Eugene, Aivar, Alex and I are best friends since kindergarten which we attended all together. We all are same age, our parents used to work in the same factory in Ogre, we went to the same school, had the same classes for 9 years and we lived almost in the same block.
I’ll try to get deeper into the friends here. Dmitry and I have been best friends since I remember. We used to walk to school together with Sergei every morning for years. We went to math, science and art contests during High School together. We share the same hobbies, interests and tastes. We liked the same girls. We visited millions of parties together.
Sergei is one of my closest friends, too. He lives 200 feet away from me, in a different apartment complex. I’ve known him since I was 4 years old. He is really tall, like 7 feet and he is so funny, because everything you tell him gets in his brain so slowly. It is probably because he is so tall. Him, Dmitry and I were always together during our school years and were in the same group in kindergarten.
Yana is the only girl in this company. While other girls were playing with Barbie’s she would hang out with us since second grade. In first grade Jana and I were sitting in the same desk for all our classes. Sergei and her always had this chemistry between them. You know those little toy cars, if you pull them back, they would go forward? Sergei pulled the car back, but instead of putting it on the floor or table he put it into Yana’s hair. She had to cut a part of her hair because of that. Now she lives in Scotland and studies in the University of Dundee. Her mom moved to England to live and work there when she was in 8th grade, her father lived in Riga. Her apartment was the best place to get together and party for many years until she got tired of us, being almost permanent residents of her place. She likes politics and is really artistic and honest person. We also went to a lot of contests in school with her.
I mentioned the stop we made by the apartment complex on the way to Alex’s house. This entrance is almost perfectly equally distributed between my, Dmitry’s and Sergei’s house. There we would gather every day before school, after school and anytime we would go out to do something together. It’s like our own secret place. I’m pretty sure Dmitry and Sergei still meet up there every morning before they go to Riga, where their college is located.
All of us spend our childhood together, and even though we all understand that life is going to split us apart, which is really sad, we contact each other almost every day, and stay in touch. We don’t want this to happen to us, how it happened to everyone else. We are going to be friends forever, and Ligo is one of those days which will not allow us to forget who we are.
“Ligo” - The summer solstice celebration in Latvia
By the beginning of the second week of June, in Latvia, on all the TV stations you could notice frequently popping up commercials about cheap beer, cheese, marinated pork and the “Don’t Drink and Drive” ads. That’s because the summer solstice celebration on June 23rd is upcoming. This is the biggest national holiday in Latvia, which features drinking lots of beer, eating Latvian national cheese, cooking shish kebabs and jumping over the fire.
For my friends and me this is the day when we all get together. This tradition lasts for about 3 years. At first all of us would come back to our hometown - Ogre. I would come from US where I live and study, Yana would come back from Scotland, where she also lives and studies, Dmitry comes back from Ukraine, where he usually goes for summer vacation; Sergei comes back from Russia, from visiting his relatives. Aivar, Alex and Eugene actually never left the town, but we still consider them coming back from somewhere. We would meet up at mine or Dmitry’s apartment a couple days before Ligo, to talk about past, present and future.
Then we would start preparing. We would visit many supermarkets in both Riga and Ogre, to find the right stuff for the right price, like: cheap and good beer, pork for shish kebabs, fireworks and other foods. Afterwards, we would figure out who’s bringing the stereo to Alex’s house, who’s driving and who’s carrying what.
On the “D-Day”, by 6pm o’clock we would finish celebrating with our parents and head towards the party place. We would make a stop by the entrance to the apartment, significance of which I will explain later. Then we would go for about 40 minutes and finally arrive.
Alex would meet us by the fence, and his dog Rik would always jump on you, trying to knock you off and lick your face. Then we would start preparing food, but first we open couple beers. Then put the shish kebabs on fire, get all the food Alex prepared and set it up on the table outside. Also we would set up the tent over the table, because it’s weather’s tradition to rain every single time on that night. While meat is cooking we play ping-pong on the table in the garage.
When the meat is done, we put everything from the oven and shish kebab from the grill on the table, open bottle of vodka and sit down. One of us would call a first toast, for us being together again. We would eat, drink and have fun conversation for a while, while cooking another portion of shish kebab. At 12pm we would fire up fireworks and watch other neighbors doing so. The sky looks amazing every Ligo. Then we would probably dance outside and then go swimming by the dam. Swimming in the dark while drunk - what can be more fun? After spending half an hour in the water we would go back, have more vodka and dance on the street. Around 5am everyone is usually found sleeping somewhere.
In the morning we would wake up around 1pm and eat breakfast. While having breakfast, which usually consists of grilled chicken, we discuss and laugh about the details from the night before. After that we gather up and everyone, except Alex, goes to a Bus Station. There we would wait for a bus and after a ten minute ride we are home.
There are many reasons why this is so important to me. At first, coming back to celebrate Ligo with my friends means coming back home, from being absent for about a year. My parents are back in Latvia; my older brother is there, too. Meeting up everyone, spending time with my brother is such an amazing time for me.
My second reason is my friends. Dmitry, Sergei, Jana, Eugene, Aivar, Alex and I are best friends since kindergarten which we attended all together. We all are same age, our parents used to work in the same factory in Ogre, we went to the same school, had the same classes for 9 years and we lived almost in the same block.
I’ll try to get deeper into the friends here. Dmitry and I have been best friends since I remember. We used to walk to school together with Sergei every morning for years. We went to math, science and art contests during High School together. We share the same hobbies, interests and tastes. We liked the same girls. We visited millions of parties together.
Sergei is one of my closest friends, too. He lives 200 feet away from me, in a different apartment complex. I’ve known him since I was 4 years old. He is really tall, like 7 feet and he is so funny, because everything you tell him gets in his brain so slowly. It is probably because he is so tall. Him, Dmitry and I were always together during our school years and were in the same group in kindergarten.
Yana is the only girl in this company. While other girls were playing with Barbie’s she would hang out with us since second grade. In first grade Jana and I were sitting in the same desk for all our classes. Sergei and her always had this chemistry between them. You know those little toy cars, if you pull them back, they would go forward? Sergei pulled the car back, but instead of putting it on the floor or table he put it into Yana’s hair. She had to cut a part of her hair because of that. Now she lives in Scotland and studies in the University of Dundee. Her mom moved to England to live and work there when she was in 8th grade, her father lived in Riga. Her apartment was the best place to get together and party for many years until she got tired of us, being almost permanent residents of her place. She likes politics and is really artistic and honest person. We also went to a lot of contests in school with her.
I mentioned the stop we made by the apartment complex on the way to Alex’s house. This entrance is almost perfectly equally distributed between my, Dmitry’s and Sergei’s house. There we would gather every day before school, after school and anytime we would go out to do something together. It’s like our own secret place. I’m pretty sure Dmitry and Sergei still meet up there every morning before they go to Riga, where their college is located.
All of us spend our childhood together, and even though we all understand that life is going to split us apart, which is really sad, we contact each other almost every day, and stay in touch. We don’t want this to happen to us, how it happened to everyone else. We are going to be friends forever, and Ligo is one of those days which will not allow us to forget who we are.