Riga Bear Exhibit

In August, the Riga City Festival is held, so we ran into the city to join the fun.  They usually have tons of food booths and vendors selling handicrafts and such, but this time we were pleasantly surprised by a sort of exhibit involving painted bears representing different world countries.  On the way there, we noticed that Ikea was advertising their new and only store opening here in Latvia and had to get a picture.  We became IKEA fans in Utah before we joined the foreign service.  Many a time we would hop on over on a Saturday to get a little dose of "foreign" that we were craving while waiting to hear if we were accepted into the foreign service.  It may have been because of the free babysitting, yummy cinnamon rolls, and ice cream too. ;)  Anyway, going to an IKEA abroad actually takes us back to home when we're feeling homesick, so we're glad to have one here for the last year we're in Latvia!

So we didn't really find out who was sponsoring the bear exhibit, but did notice this bear promoting respect for all life and responsibility for nature and animals, and then all of the other bears represented a country from around the world.  They were beautiful, and represented the countries through colors, pictures, and patterns painted on them.  There was also an Albert Einstein bear with a quote by him about peace and understanding in the world.

Some countries were right on (it's hard to represent the USA with such a large country and variety of landscape and highlights, so the Statue of Liberty is perfect).

Others were represented a little differently than we would have thought.  Like Angola, the bear represents mostly countryside and nature, which wasn't what we experienced living in the capital of Luanda.

France

Ireland and New Zealand

 

  China and Turkey

 

Ukraine and Latvia

 

Moldova and Portugal

 

Of course we recognized the Namibian bear and had to get a picture--great memories of our time on Safari there!

And Peru as we were thinking about my niece Madison just getting back from her mission to Peru for our church.

Sweden and Israel

Azerbaijan

It was so fun to see how many bears we could guess, and most of them were the countries we've traveled to as a family.  It took us about an hour to make it through the exhibit, which was a fun way to spend time at the festival!