What a week!

HUGE weekend. In no particular order.

First, the Superbowl. Friends in Indiana have been reporting on the mass craziness in Indianapolis the last week. Although not really a fan of the New York Giants or the New England Patriots (I would root for da Bears being a Chicago girl, as well as the Lions because I have never met a bigger Lions fan than Roberts), I love Superbowl Sunday; the team loyalties, friendly rivalries, awesome snacks, entertaining commercials and all the hype surrounding the halftime show (Bruce and the E Street Band in ’09 was THE best halftime show ever, won't try to compare Madonna). Last year we watched a recording the following day at a friend’s house, and it was not as exciting as watching real time.

Second, the 34^th International Short Film Festival, here in Clermont-Ferrand. This year the festival started on January 27^th and the final day was February the 4^th, Saturday. The event, which originated in 1979, has become the world's first cinema event dedicated to short films. It is the second largest film festival in France after Cannes in terms of audience and professional attendance, but first in terms of number of spectators, as the Cannes festival only allows professionals in theatres. In 2009, the Festival attracted 137,196 visitors from all over the world to Clermont-Ferrand (according to the official website). Last year we missed out on attending by not knowing it was a short film festival, and thinking that Lauris would not be able to handle full-length films. Side note, there were six films representing Latvija in the international competition: Korida (Jānis Cimermanis), Opera Heartbeats (Inese Stāde), Parādi man skaņu (Agnese Laizane), Soup (Maira Dobele), Tārpiņš (Nīls Skarpāns) and Ursus (Reinis Pētersons).

Note the Latvian flag on the left

Third, the kickoff to the Fête des vins de France at the Vinidôme, at the Grand Halle d’Auvergne, here in Clermont-Ferrand. It’s all the expatriates have been talking about these past weeks, with over 450 exhibitors from 350 wineries. According to their website, this is one of the five biggest exhibitions of French wines and last year attracted nearly 53,000 visitors. Last year we missed out for two reasons, the first being that we didn’t have a car (and public transportation would have been do-able but complicated) and the second that I was breastfeeding Lauris, and would have only been able to watch Roberts “tasting.”

So, a very active weekend for us… except we didn’t attend any of these events. With the Superbowl broadcast in the early morning hours we had reserved for attempted sleep, the short film festival in its final day and the fête des vins still… well, containing alcohol, we skipped out on all of the above in order to concentrate solely on the biggest event of the weekend – Mikus’s one week birthday.

Photo: Inga Lucāne