fulbrightermara’s posterous

Kay,

Thanks for the message.  I don't have time to write much at the moment but I'll get back to you during the next few days. Life is difficult here - not for me because the American tax payers through Fulbright provide me with more than enough resources.  Riga is very expensive but here for me expenses are minimal.  As a friend of mine in Riga, the associated press correspondent, who has been living here for a long time and was my nephew's partner in a business here, says the country is going to hell. It is because of a handful of people at the top, the ones who drive the SUVs, who run everything not for the good of the country but to fill their own pockets -.  The average person here thinks he can't do anything to change the situation.  Much of it starts with the education system which is a mess.  If I hear the word grammar one more time from an English teacher here I will lunge at her throat. I had a great group, only 4 second year future English teachers, who, I hope, I have encouraged and motivated to do their part to break the change of soviet stagnation and Latvian negativism. More later.

Mara