Welcome Party Fall'09

We are glad to greet you, our exchange student!

With the beginning of new learning year for scholars and students, we see new exchange students again, again and again in Riga streets and in almost all univerisities . Every study semester brings to us new people, more and more from the countries we did not have representatives before or not so much. There are a lot of students now from Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Luxemburg, far away Canada, Japan, United States, Georgia. Exchange students stay basically one study semester, around 30 % of them stay two semesters or all year long. We are glad that Latvia as the Erasmus destination becomes more and more popular for young people abroad!

As usually ESN Riga Team greets everybody who comes to us. Like tradition became already an Orientation Week with every-day introduction activities like: City Tour, excursion around faculties, Pub Crawl, visiting LIDO restaurant and playing bowling. This active week finishes Welcome Party organized for a weekend which introduces Latvian national type of having rest and fun on the nature with sauna, lakes around and typical Latvian weather – rain and sun together J.

Welcome Party was organized near the historical town Cesis in a place „Kuchni”. „Kuchni” consists of cosy three guest houses, special place with a stage for performances and the lake in between. Perfect place for Welcome Party! Exchange students enjoyed a  lot  opportunity for socializing in three different places and changed them time to time during the whole event. That was a lot of place also to make the ice-braking games, to walk and play some volleyball and football before the evening program. The stage was used for a special evening program arranged by ESN Riga Team. The dress-code was fashionable, stylish clothes but that was only official information before the starting. The idea of the performance was to change clothes between members of groups (everybody was divided to the 8 groups of 8-13 people) and after to create a performance by each group. The show was excellent! Participants made flamenko shows, dances in pairs, interactive acitivities with the audience during the performing, sing songs and even one of the most active groups was dancing on the jury`s table in order to impress them the most. Yeah, that was not easy for jury to decide who is the winner and boys are aware now what does it mean to wear the woman`s hills all night long!

In the next sunny day students were full of energy to visit next events organized for them about what ESN Team informed them in their specially prepared presentations. One student form Spain even asked why is this event not arranged for two-three days? Something more to think for ESN Riga Team. But now we welcome you in Riga and we hope you will enjoy to be here a lot!

By Anastasija Belostocka
ESN Riga Board member and PR manager