Talking about training

Did I mention my idea of putting my training sessions online for the world to see, so that I would maybe stick to them?
Anyways, since overcoming the bout of ill health in the first half of this month, I have become serious about endurance training again (I have been running for years now, with intermissions...).

In fact, today I registered to participate in the Stockholm Marathon 2008, there would also be the Riga Marathon (but only some two weeks before that in Stockholm, which is big and beautiful and the 30. anniversary marathon - hey, it's as old as I am!).

And, I will have to get back home sort of early (mid-June, which is the plan anyway), to try and get in a little more training in the mountains, for I'd love to participate in the Bergmarathon (mountain marathon) which is mainly about just simply finishing it... which is no wonder, for it is a distance of 70 km, and that with an elevation change of 4300 m (yep, more than 4 km of up and down - there is hardly a hill around the Traunsee, the lake this "marathon" circles, which participants don't have to get up and down...).

But first, let's just see about continuing my training, now that days are getting shorter and shorter!

By the way: Yesterday I was out for an hour, not too heavy or fast, but a good pace for me. Today, (more of) a recovery run of 30 minutes at a low pace (and, according to my training tools - Suunto t6 and Training Manager software - it was indeed of a maintaining training effect).
Tomorrow, no or alternative (strength) training; Thursday a break (because of my work load at university and school).

L'Auberge FM4: Riga

FM4, the Austrian alternative radio station, has a new feature of reporting on studies abroad at destinations off the beaten track. Recently, I have finally come around to write up some info on Riga, and today it was published and yours truly was on the radio...

If anyone wants to have a look, it's here - and it's in German:
http://fm4.orf.at/auslandssemester/220539/main

First of all, the picture I said I should also show:

From Latvia (with ...

A bit of a difference to the picture of the beach in August which is part of the article... ;-)
This is not the same beach, but the same coast. But, it's in mid-October.

Also, if somebody wants to know more about party life in Riga, and read it in German, check out my colleague's blog: http://www.rigablog.de/
(The link can even be found among the comments to my piece - he was across the road, if you can call it that, and listening to the FM4 stream online!)

Anša Epnera kino maratons

My running training is finally getting back on track:
To the point that I have participated in the first running event ;-)

There is a movie marathon on this weekend (and no, I have to admit I have known hardly anything about this Latvian documentary movie maker, Ansis Epners, and still don't know more than that's what he was). And as part of it, there was the "Kino skrejiens," the "running cinema:" A car in front showing one of Epners' movies, on marathon running, and a bunch of runners in tow. Which was actually a lot of fun, because it went not too far or too fast, but still nicely. Not least, because it was nice to be running on the Krastmala, the road along the Daugava River's bank, flanked by police cars guiding the traffic around us or even stopping it for us...
Not too often that runners get to have that.

At the finish (seen in the picture above), an army truck was waiting for us, with tea and porridge. Quite typical Latvian fare, and actually not the worst "sports nutrition." (I am eagerly waiting for my first drink mixes of Clif Bar's new "Clif Shot Hot Drink" line, e.g. this -it was difficult enough to get them, but I love those products; and I count that convergence as a good sign...)

Erasmus Conference

Latvijas Universitate held a little conference on/for the Erasmus program's 20th anniversary, with different talks. Most interesting to me, talks by different Latvian exchange students on their experiences going abroad...

... and what did the two who had gone to Austria have to say?
That our bureaucracy was pretty crazy, for one thing (which I understood even in Latvian).

Later I had a chance to talk to Linda (exchange coordinator at LU) and a colleague of hers, chatting about such formalities and about how lecturer and especially new professor positions were actually decided on ... The lowdown: Austria doesn't have the excuse of having been occupied by the USSR and suffering from bad bureaucratic habits taken on during that time. But, maybe we invented much of that already during Habsburg times... and are still exceedingly good at crazy bureaucracy.

It is getting cold

Hoarfrost on some of the grass, windshields iced up, a thin sheet of ice on puddles... and I went out for a nice 10 km run. My training software stills argues I were hardly doing anything (and it seems to me, my main reason for using it is to see about that).
Have been awfully tired, and the time when we have sunlight is already decreasing considerably. I guess I will want to find a table lamp ... and I'm rather curious to see what things will be like a few months from now, when it's light only for a few hours.
At least, this year Austria has already been getting some snow, so maybe, if or when it gets cold, there may also be snow (unlike last year).
All in all, all just routine....

A little break

Haven't been writing for a while as school work and university studies have been keeping me rather busy... and it's been even worse combined with my own work plans (writing, mainly), endurance training (I'd love to run in Rigas Marathon in May 2008), a sleep deficit from getting up early but not going to sleep early (and if so, not being able to sleep all that well because of all the din), and still having a bit of a cold.

Still, I much prefer having too much to do to feeling as if I weren't productive in any which way...

Today (or, in the meantime, this is yesterday), it was the last day of school before the week of rudens brivdienas - fall break, if you will. University continues, of course, but at least there'll be something of a breather. And I can appreciate it, by now.
I want to get a bit more serious about endurance training (and it will get more difficult with sunrise coming ever later, sunset ever earlier, and the weather getting colder and wetter) - maybe something to also blog, to keep a public record which may be more motivation?!
I also need to get on with my own writing.
(And there is some work to be done for my studies, let alone lessons and tests for my EFL teaching to be prepared!)

What's been happening:
I needed a letter confirming I were a student, now at LU, and studying English... there was some displeasure at first, so I asked three people for help... In the end, it was sorted out with the one I first asked (and quite rightly and correctly, it would seem - I haven't yet picked up the actual thing, but have been told it was now ready), while the two more people didn't even answer to my request...
At Agenskalna gimnazija, I am (still more or less) settled in now; first test dates are set (poor kids ;-) ; lessons are advancing (more or less); homework is being done - or oftentimes, not; the electronic administration/chronicling of attendance, lessons and homework is being used.

Registering the place of residence, in the end, went nicely and easily.
(This was the last official thing I absolutely needed to do - at least, being the law-abiding, conscientious EU citizen I am... then again, if I totally were, I probably should still tell the Austrian Embassy here that here is where I now were.)
Monday morning, there were just too many people; Tuesday evening, no one... went in, said what I needed to do, filled in address, pass number and the all-important personas kods, and got a paper in return affirming that I had declared my place of residence.
And that was that.

The tax book I supposedly needed proved to be the hitch:
Yes, you may work as soon as you get a personas kods. I.e., as an EU citizen, you have the residence permit.
You are only considered a "resident" of Latvia after some 6 months, however. Therefore, until then - if I understood that correctly - you have to pay even more taxes than otherwise...

Oh, and - considering all the coughing and sniffling as warning - I went and got a flu shot. Had the director of school (besides the issue about that tax book) also check about that... after all, I would not be insured the way a Latvian teacher is right now, and the offer/info I had read about flu shots was for teachers. Sweet as the principal is, to make sure, she even told the lady from the registration that I didn't speak Latvian ... that same lady then, when I came by, "complained" that that had been quite a misinformation. Guess I am learning something, after all....
And, that was basically the only "problem" there: Of course it was a bit of an unusual situation, but I just had to pay the same as everyone (and as a flu shot costs in Austria), the vaccine is the same as it would be back home, sanitary procedure is also up to code... no problem here.

Thursday, I got the second package from home... some more clothes (I had ordered myself, anyway), finally, some chile pepper sauces I had been pining for, and, as silly as it may sound, Clif Bars.... Guess I am officially hooked on them (and now, waiting for an order of their new hot sports drinks to arrive)...

Enough catching up; hopefully, I'll be writing a bit more regularly, again!

Reading the Future...

Starting the weekend with a cup of hot dark chocolate at Emila Gustava Shokolade.
This may be worth making a habit of... and looking at the empty cup, I wonder why nobody (as far as I know) ever tried to divine the future from the remaining chocolate in the cup (except, I think I finally know why it comes with a spoon: Not for putting in sugar, but for getting out some of the last bits of the chocolate. Which means that you would influence the shapes that you will find ;-)

Skolotaju diena

Teacher's Day, when (some of) the teachers get the heck out of school. Okay, not quite so bad, but there was an excursion, and it was very nice...

We went to Dikļu pils, Dikli palace/manor/castle (http://www.diklupils.lv/).

(Latvian is a bit strange when it comes to the "pils". The usual translation is castle, but many are more like manor houses.)
Who cares about semantics. The place is nice, the food made Latvian cuisine's predilection for being rather down-to-earth an excellent recommendation; it was simple, but nicely prepared and presented, and very good that way. (I am just reading Nina Planck's "real food," and I am sure she would approve of that kind of food.)

I am not necessarily all that talkative, but my -still- rather low level of knowledge in Latvian has started to bother me. I'd like to get in touch with the art scene in Riga, for example, but don't like being quite so dependent on English. Yet, studying both Latvian and Russian now (and I should have started to review Chinese, finally), it is not easy...

Latvia had been showing itself from its usual autumnal - rainy - side, but on the way back we made a stop on the beach anyway. My, I like that kind of beach: somewhat rainy, windy, deserted, waves rolling in...

Yesterday's view

From Latvia (with ...

Feeling like a person...

... unfortunately, I'm feeling like a person who's caught a cold, which I have (and it manages to be one of the least bad ones I have ever had, and yet one of the worst: during the day, I don't quite have my voice, but there are hardly any other signs of it; in the evening, I have a racking cough that just won't stop.)

Getting the residence permit, in the end, went rather anti-climactically:
I went to the Office of Migration and Citizenship Affairs on the indicated day, had to wait for a pretty long time, as per usual, had to sign a receipt for the document I had not yet received, waited a bit more, and got the residence permit.
Basically, it's just a slip of paper (not nearly as impressive as the visa for visiting some countries), but it declares your "personas kods," the personal registration number which, in a case like mine, is also what's needed to be in a position to take a job.
(Apparently, it really is the case that EU citizens do not need a work permit of its own. The personas kods works as your tax number, and that's basically what you need.)
Still, it does help me to feel like I've really become a person.

Yesterday, after that, I also went to - finally - open a bank account. I figure I'll need it; Latvia is modern enough not to pay you in cash. In fact, the bank seems to think so too because I also needed to opt into (yes, obligatorily) Latvia's pension plan which runs off the taxes you pay. So, it's not really anything that makes for more costs - it is a modern way to go about things, though.

Today at the school, I handed in my copy of that document... and just got the news that, as of yesterday, I'm an official employee.
Oh my, the responsibility! What a burden! Those poor kids!
Nah, I love it (I can't quite tell for my students, but I think they at least have a teacher who's more engaged than their usual teachers may be - nothing against them, don't get me wrong!, but there is a difference between foreign noobs and established local characters.)