Latvian life....

Sveiki!

We finally have internet! Hooray! This weekend we are going to buy a router though, so we can go on the internet at the same time. However, our kitchen problem is not yet solved. We also found out that if we try to cook now, our stove could catch on fire. Lucikly we have a good insurance!

So, what has happened lately? NOTHING! We don't have much time to go out. Besides sleeping, eating and going to school, we basically read and write all day long. Could you imagine me not being able to sleep at night, getting up and writing an essay? No? Ask Saskia ;) Work hard, party hard mentality? After working hard, I'm already glad to place myself onto our comfortable couch to watch some German television :)

I guess our travelling plans can be place in the freezer next to our chicken legs. We will at least try to go to Lithuania when Zuzana comes! After our exams in December we will, hopefully, also have some days left for travelling (which we will have deserved by then!). Erasmus is so much fun :) I now understand why students of Riga Stradins like to go on Erasmus :)

At the uni everything is going well though. I finally decided on the courses I'm going to take during the next 3 months and my first 7 is a fact (it's not what I want, but it was for participation in a seminar only :) If everything goes well I will come home with 28,5 or 30 ECTS. Hooray, yet another problem solved!

• Foreign Policy Analysis
• Ethnopolitics or Crisis Communication
• European Constitution, Law and Politics
• International Political Economy
• Latvian
• German

We have met some nice people at our uni and in our building. So, that is a really positive thing about Riga! Hopefully we will find time to do some nice things together... This weekend the parents and the boyfriend of Saskia are coming over. This might also be a nice distraction from studying!

I don't know what else to write, so I give up for now. I will return to my materials on France and Germany and their foreign policy. I still have 5 essays to write by the end of the month, worth together about 11.000 words. Hooray!

Oh yeah, some peculiarities about Latvia and our uni to end with:

• If you need to receive change after having paid something, Latvians never put it in your hand. You can pick up the coins one by one, hoping the people in the line behind you are very patient :)
• Some teachers don't know a lot about how their course is organised. A teacher asked to his students: Is this a long module?
• One of my professors happens to be an important person in Latvia. He happens to be a well-known foreign policy analyst.
• Some people take walking straight very literally! They just keep on walking straight ahead, practically bumping in to people.

Ata!