Slightly Absent

I haven't written in what seems like a long, long time again. I seem to have lost my drive for writing, partially because I've been pushing all my energy into photography-related things. I'm learning new tricks with Photoshop and am even playing around more with colours and contrast. The results are good so far.

Easter was spent with a group of friends at our friend Ilze's house out in Jurmala. We had a feast of home-made Latvian style pancakes filled with ground beef, bananas and Nutella, and cheese. Soy cheese for me, of course. The fantastic soy cheese I picked up on that weekend trip to Brussels :) We also walked to the beach, took many photos, and then decorated eggs the good old Latvian way. Lots and lots of onion skins. The eggs also turned out lovely, and were then bashed to near smithereens during our friendly egg-wars.

The weather has been better in Riga, too. The week after Brussels (which was a weekend trip of running around seeing everything we could possibly see and eating everything we could possibly eat -- including escargot -- which was DELICIOUS) we still had snow in Latvia, and the weather got rainy and damp and disgusting. Then it miraculously all passed and one day the snow was gone! Today was about 45ºF, which allowed me to go for my first run of the Spring season and spend most of my time outside for the rest of the afternoon.

In the evening I was to meet relatives to go to a play at The Stage Theatre, but there was a huge miscommunication and two of the main actors were in some other Latvian city putting on some other play, so... everyone was apologised to and invited to come back the next weekend or to get a refund. So next weekend it is! Instead we backtracked a bit to Gallery kim? to catch the last three Baltic Student Film Festival shorts and then have a delicious dinner at Meta Cafe. The Spikeri area of Riga used to be kind of shady, but in the past year has improved by leaps and bounds and is quickly becoming a hipster/indie hot spot for galleries, concerts and good eats. Whereas before I would have told people to think twice before heading out there, I'd recommend it now. Even with all the drunks and slightly creepy people still around. But they exist in groups and generally stay to themselves.

Something Something

The past month has gone by pretty quickly. Lately I've been feeling like my life is a rubber band. It gets stretched out then let loose, over and over. Everything is perpetual.

Tomorrow I jet off to Brussels with Ilze and Davids for the weekend. We're going to visit our friend Monika, as well as to revel in the 50-degree weather. It's still below 20 here.

We've also had a good stream of snowy days, which pleases me immensely. Ilze and I finally made it out to Cesis a few weekends ago for our first ever snowboarding lesson. It went relatively well considering we knew nothing going into it. I fell a few times, but nothing I couldn't bounce back from. Once quite literally. Lately I've been worried that we won't have any snow left to let us go try boarding a second time, but if it keeps up like this, I might get a chance come April.

Last weekend I went with a childhood friend and her boyfriend (who are visiting Latvia from the States) to Sigulda, where we hoped to ride down the bob/luge/skeleton track in what is essentially several mattresses tied together on tiny wheels. But there was some kind of competition going on, so we were turned away and went bowling instead. Bowling also turned out to be fun.

Today I'm also off to get my third Latvian visa stamped into my passport. Except this time it's all about repatriation, baby! That's right, family members who may be reading this, I am an official repatriate to the Republic of Latvia. What this means is that I get a 5-year residential permit with little to no strings attached, didn't have to pay to submit my documents, and am generally smiled upon more than when I was just a temporary resident.

I now don't need a work visa to hang around or work in Latvia. I can just be here, if I so choose (to do nothing). This does not make me a citizen, it does not mean I have given up US citizenship, this does not mean I can vote in Latvia. It doesn't sound all that great, but really, it's quite exciting.

In other news, I was in the newspaper Diena a week or so ago, and I also indirectly found out my GRE scores. The article was good, the scores were kind of painful. As expected.

Palatine in "Schmap"

If you go to www.schmap.com and check out their Rome map and pictures -- specifically the section about Palatine -- you'll find one of my shots from my 2009 Rome trip. The photo is one of many the Schmap people chose from Flickr.com members. Woot. My picture is now one of hundreds of others for the Rome guide:

happy searching!

Look around by clicking the right or left arrow of the Palatine pictures on the right side of the screen. Eventually you may find mine :)