Visitors

Kelli's visit was great! We explored Riga and even went to Tallinn with Tom, the other Fulbrighter. Kelli said very simply while we were walking home from the Sky bar for my birthday, "So, this is how Rose lives her life." Well, maybe those aren't the exact words, but I'm sure it went something like that. I think out of the few days she was here, we had not too bad of weather. Some were rainy and others were cloudy. I can't remember if any of them were sunny. That is life in Latvia. Hopefully the sun will shine more while I'm here. :) "Yeah right", is what the natives are saying as they are reading this.
Not too much happened as far as out-of-the-ordinary goes. Kelli, correct me if I'm wrong and add a comment.
We left very early to fly to Barcelona. Thanks to my good friend Marta, we had no worries getting to the airport. We had a great time. Again lots of rain, but God blessed us with one sunny day. It just so happened that on that day we walked along the beach. We tried some sangrias. The first time was yuck, but the second time Kelli tried and it was better. I had a freshly squeezed orange juice. It was quite tasty. We went to eat out A LOT during her stay but we were able to taste good meals and okay meals. On our last night in Barcelona, we happened to meet a nice guy in the restaurant from Wisconsin. He is now a facebook friend. We chatted for a while and decided to grab some more drinks. Needless to say, we consumed enough, especially for having two hours of sleep before having to leave for the airport the next day. I was tired! When I finally arrived in Munich to catch my connecting flight, I heard Latvian being spoken by some teenagers. Finally a language I recognize but still don't understand. I was finally going "home".
So overall, a very good visit from Kelli. Next... Nicholas' visit from France. He is still here so I will write about that experience as soon as he leaves. (So far, so good) Seeing a lot of things that I haven't seen yet. This is why visitors are good to have.

One last thing about the closing of Barcelona trip...Like I said earlier we had to get up pretty early the day of our flight; I forgot to mention our cab fare when we arrived at the airport. It was a total of 48 euros. That is quite a bit of money and Kelli and I didn't have that much. I recall only having a total of 41 euros so we were off by 10 dollars or so. Luckily, the cab driver always wanted to visit America and wanted a dollar bill to compensate for the missing amount. Kelli gave him a dollar and I added 5 more because it wasn't even close to being the total bill. Everything was fine after that. So the moral of the lesson, don't leave home without the dollar. It may be worth more than you think. :)