Our Day with Hurricane Katia

While our home-city Karachi is being flooded by continuous raining, since last night, Latvia has been feeling the effects of hurricane Katia that has made lots of trouble all over the world already. We've got only an edge of it - however, still the wind is amazingly strong. Mamma had taken Asma out of the stroller, as other kids enjoyed the jungle-gym, and the wind was naughty enough to drive the stroller away!!! Later in the afternoon, Uzair and Hafsa got a wonderful idea for this windy day - they tied their baloons on really long strings and went outside in the wind to compete, whose baloon will fly higher. That was so much fun! :)

Medieval Castle Ruins in Cēsis

Today we went to close-by town of Cesis, where Mamma took us to see a really old castle from the Middle Ages (13th century). The castle is pretty much just ruins now but still there was plenty to see there - it has been made into a museum now.

As we paid for our tickets, the museum staff gave us special laterns we were to use on our adventure through the ruins. We guessed that the laterns are made to look like exactly the ones people were using centuries ago - they were made of wood, with glass on three sides and a small door on the fourth - for putting a candle inside. When we got our laterns, the candles were lighted already.

Our first stop was the western tower of the catle, which was preserved enough to climb up onto the top of it. We were climbing small, narrow and dark stairs (here our laterns were really handy for seeing the way), which were winding around the inside wall of the tower. Once we got to the top, we got a spledid view of surrounding area!

When we got down from the western tower, we explored the courtyard of the castle and the remaining bits of what has been preserved from the castle. On our way out, we took a peek into the dungeon, where the lords of the castle kept their prisoners!!!

We also visited a jewelry shop, where we saw ancient Baltic jewelry - the real excavated ones and the modern day copies of them. Uzair was totally blown away by a real knight's armour set - the rings shirt, helmet, real sword and shield. The rings shirt only weighed 12 kgs, so we realized that medieval knights had to carry quite a lot of kgs on them. Hafsa was captured by the medieval Baltic jewelry. We saw a fully dressed bride. The lady at the museum was kind enough to let Hafsa wear the medieval bride's crown! You can imagine, how special Hafsa felt. :) Interestingly, also medieval men wore quite a lot of jewerly on them. We also saw a medieval money making press and the money made that way.

After the castle ruins, we visited our 'old friends' the black swan family in a nearby park. When we saw them a few weeks ago, they had six cute little ducklings. When we saw them today - the birdies had grown into nearly fully grown swans!

Below is a link to a folder with photos from this our trip. Take a look and enjoy!

Photos from our trip to Cēsis Medieval Castle

Home-cooked biscuits

Making good use of Vecmamma's oven, we baked our own biscuits. They came out totally delicious! As you can see in the photos, even Asma agreed on this. :)

What a house!

Uzair loves carpentry work. When we visited Mamma's cousins in Jelgava, he managed to make his very own house from wood with some directions from Dzintars uncle. Uzair spent several hours sawing the boards and then nailing them together into a really neat little house.

Sand sculptures

At the beginning of September, we visited our Mamma's cousins in Jelgava city. Our relatives kindly took us on a tour of the city, which included a stop at one of the local parks, where we saw an exibition of sand sculptures. These sculptures were made this summer as a competition of international sculptors from all over the world. The topic of the exibition is "Circus", as you can very well guess it from the pictures. All the sculptures are covered by some protective layer, wich preserves them in such harsh weather conditions as rain and strong winds. However, still some parts of the sculptures have already collapsed. We were told that during winters, the same park hosts another competition of sculptors - but in cold season, they make sculptures of ice!!! The ice sculptures stay in the park until spring, when the warmer weather comes and they melt. :) You can take a look at more scupltures here: sand sculptures

Colourful tomatoes!

Did you know that tomatoes come not only in red colour but also in yellow, pinkish and even green (yes, ripe!)? Take a look at all the varieties.

Fog

August is the month of beautiful fogs in Latvia. Nearly every morning, we could see it out of our window. Sometimes, it was really thick!

We searched the Internet to see, what fog actually is. It turned out that fog is water droplets that have condensed from the air. The same as clouds! When air has been warm and humid during the day, evaporated water molecules are spread thoughout it. Then, when the temperature drops, the cooling air causes the water molecules to turn from a vapour (a gas) into liquid droplets. These droplets are so small they can hang in the air. But they are heavy enough to lie low near the ground. Sometimes they attach to the grass forming dew.

In August, our Vecmamma takes special care of her tomatoes in the greenhouse - even though the nights are warm, she has to make sure that the doors of the greenhouse are always shut. If the fog manages to come into the greenhouse and settle on the unripe tomatoes, then they will not get ripe any more - without turning red, they will turn black and start decaying instead.

These pictures of fog we took from our balcony early in the morning.