Kilraughts YFC enjoy the 'Latvian Experience'

We were joined by two leaders; James one of our vice presidents and Heather the events co-ordinator from headquarters. We arrived in Riga, travelled to the hostel and had our breakfast, as we had travelled all night. It was very different but gradually we got used to it through the week, the porridge just didn’t taste like ours at home!

Our theme for the exchange was “A Healthy Lifestyle is the Key to Social Inclusion.” We were introduced to the Latvian and Danish exchangees and each did presentations about our groups, YFC and 4H.

We had our energiser at 18.50am every morning to wake us up before breakfast. We played many team-building games throughout the week, which were very enjoyable. We had talks about discrimination, rural and urban lifestyles and did role-plays and group debating to help us understand these. We had cultural evenings where we learned about the other countries, we taught the Latvians a lot about Northern Ireland which they didn’t know before! They taught us some Latvian dances, which were great fun to learn!

We visited Sigulda, the local town, and talked to the locals about discrimination, we even dressed Jason up - he’s the one in the red dress! (See photos). We went to Wildcats one day an outdoor activity centre very near the hostel. We did many scary courses; some of us were braver than others.

Next day we visited a deer farm. We saw many deer and we had our lunch there, the farmer and his wife had cooked us Hungarian deer soup, which was one of the tastier dishes we had! On the way back we went on the sky tram over the river to Sigulda. On our last day we did a 22km hike around Sigulda, which was very strenuous! That evening we had a bar-be-que but no movies after, as we were too exhausted!

After saying our goodbyes to everyone we went to Riga, the capital of Latvia, and had some retail therapy! We also went on a boat tour through Riga. We then went to the airport for our journey home. We arrived in Dublin and got the minibus home, not much chatting, as most of us were sleeping after such a tiring, eventful and fun week!

We all learned so much in the week, from the food they eat in Latvia and Denmark, their culture, the difference between their way of life and ours, social inclusion, new games and so much more. We made many new friends who we hope to see over here next year. We all had great fun every day; it was an experience we will never forget!