a lovely day in Riga

 What a beautiful fall morning in Riga!

Today we walked about 2 miles, crossed the Daugava River to a beautiful park.  We learned just yesterday that there would be a large cross county meet here today with children from all over Latvia and Irena's school would be represented and several of her friends would be racing.

It was a picture perfect fall morning, and if you watched closely you'd see the leaves drifting gently to the ground.

 We arrived at the park around 10:30 only to find that the races would not begin until 1pm.  We decided to walk back to our neighborhood, grab lunch and then take the tram back for the afternoon.  Here is a sweet picture of Evangeline on the tram.

These are Irena's closest friends from school. They were so surprised and excited to see her here.  You could tell that they had a tight bond.  She lives at school during the week, Monday - Friday, and she has been with some of these girls for 6 years now.

She had lots of fun introducing her friends to her new sisters.  Of course they were all speaking Latvian so we had no idea what they might be saying ... about our hair, our clothes :)  who knows ...  for the most part, they seemed happy to meet us.  They were shy and did not want to speak English with us.  Irena's English is very good, by the way.

This is her very best friend.  We had some good opportunities to talk today about her sadness of leaving her friends.  It's very real and significant.  While she is happy to have a family, she will also miss her friends.

It was a rare privilege to be able to take some pictures of Irena with her friends.  She does not have any photographs of her life from before we met her.  It's staggering to even say that out loud.  No pictures .. something that we have spilling out of drawers and boxes.  As these girls have been part of her past, I'm so happy we will now have some pictures of them for her to remember these special relationships.

The final farewell as they board their bus back to school.