For the past 2 months, I have been learning diving at the Penticton Community Centre pool. We learned the basic dives such as back, tuck, pike.... I hope to do the next level and learn technique and new dives.

In October, I decided to start learning to play the bagpipes. My teacher's name is Geordie Young of the Caledonian Pipe Band. The most difficult part of the bagpipes is reading all the notes properly and making sure my fingers are straight. Most instruments make you curl/bend your fingers, but with the chanter (the practice pipe), you have to make sure your fingers are completely straight. I'm learning my first song now, after a couple of months of learning notes and note changes.

Today I learnt about christmas around the world and their traditions. Christmas in Russia wasn't celebrated very much in the time of the Soviet Union. But now it is celebrate every year, and is celebrated on January 10 (some catholics celebrate on the  25th of December), so they had a 40 day  advent calender. They have many traditions such as: fasting (not eating for a period of time), traditional foods (borsch, solyanka, kutia), and lastly the prayers. But Russia isn't the only one with different traditions, other countries also do, such as Latvia.

Latvia's version of  Christmas doesn't have  too much of the tradition factors, but they do have the first ever Christmas tree (as seen in the picture up top), in 1510 they thought Germany had the first, but it is proven that its in Townsquare, Riga, Latvia. Though this culture doesn't have too many traditions,  lets see if Ireland has more.

Ireland's christmas is catholic like North America,but its advent of a ''feast of epiphany" until January 6. In Gaelic Ireland, Christmas is known as "Nolliag" and Father Christmas "daidi na nollaig" and Santa is "san nioclas."  There is also a traditional short tune called "The Wren", this goes back to ancient times when there was a real wren and it was killed and been carried around in a "holy bush". This is a essay on Christmas culture around the world  on Russia, Latvia, and Ireland.