Latvija

Some things about Latvia (which is spelled "Latvija" here):

- Streetlights go from green to yellow to red to red+yellow to green. Smart! Prepares people to get ready to start driving again.

- Seriously, daylight hours- how is it possible for the sun to stay up for 15+ hours?? Does the sun not go down in the summer? Is it like Alaska? How did I not know that this phenomenon happened in some European countries?

- Latvians, for the most part, speak admirable English. They really are amazing- most of them seem to speak Latvian, Russian, and English. I can barely manage English and Korean.

- Taxi drivers are the same the world over. Going from our hotel to Old Town always costs about the same amount of money (less than three lats), but the amount we pay to go from Old Town back to our hotel varies enormously (from five lats to seventeen (!) lats).

- The weather here is unpredictable and temperamental. I think one day can change up to nearly 20 degrees Celsius, with the sun going from bright and shiny and hot to nonexistent in about twenty seconds flat. It can be sunny, with nary a cloud in the sky, and then raining, and then foggy and damp, and then sunny again all within an hour. It's causing a lot of the staff to become rather ill, though I'm trying to keep myself healthy by drinking massive amounts of water and staying away from the sickest crew members.

It's been a trying experience, being on set. I love traveling, but being in transit so frequently and for such extended periods of time is exhausting.

More later. I have to go be emotionally unstable with my co-workers, the little lambs that are frustrated because they can't communicate with the rest of the crew.