Sun update :)

I'm writing this at 7pm and it's not yet dark out! Yesterday when I left the house at 5:40 for the train the sun was already on it's way up! Tonight we've got daylight savings, meaning tomorrow night at 8pm it won't be dark yet! Hooray!!!

We've still got several centimeters of snow on the ground (in Sigulda, not Riga), but we've started trying to sprout some herbs and veggies under flourescent bulbs in our basement. It is highly exciting to be getting ready for a summer full of fresh salads right from our back yard.

And I love that my kids at school are regularly asking me to open a window (even though it's still hovering around 0 outside) so they can get a "smell of spring". We actually had a New Year's style countdown for 1:44 in our classroom last Friday because the kids knew that was the official beginning of spring. So any time the snow decides to read the memo so we can start seeing some green it will be great! (Until then, still working hard to have appreciation for the white....it's better than gray, right?)

Living like a camel

In my morning train reading this week, I uncovered the analogy of living like a camel or living like a horse. A camel needs very little food and water, it chews and re-chews for a long time. A horse will eat and eat, it is never satisfied and is always looking for more. (Disclaimer: a) I am paraphrasing and b) I'm not an animal expert so I'm taking it at face value that this is generally true of camels and horses.) The idea is that many of us are horses in life, always looking for the next thrill in life, never really satisfied in the moment. We need more and more and more just to feel alive. Camels, on the other hand, take what they are given and get the most they possibly can out of it, appreciate it, use it, and re-use it when the going gets tough. So I'm choosing to try to be more of a camel in life, savoring the moment.

Case and point, there has been a fresh layer of snow (on the already exisiting several inches) every morning this week. At first I found myself doing the typical grumblings in my head, wishing the snow away and fiercely hoping for spring to show up soon. But as I was having my train potato time, I recognized that it really was the beautiful kind of snow cover that makes the world a brighter place because every single branch and rooftop white. I thought, why shouldn't I look at this snowfall as magical and breathtaking as the first snowfall of the year? The snow doesn't know that I'm really waiting for spring, so I've been looking at it through new eyes all week, appreciating that which currently is, because that's what I've been given. It's kind of like taking yourself outside of time for a moment, so you're not stressing about that which has been or will be, and training yourself to just be with what you've got (not being biased because it's March and the calendar says it should be spring, but just being....), if that makes sense..... It's a bit of work inside your mind to get to that point, but it's nice.

In other news, I'm also remembering what it means to be a decent human being again. That might sound sad or even horrible, but Riga took it out of me. I've actually been embarrassed by my own non-decent human being-ness at moments (but the good news is, it's not too late and I can still fix it)! For example, I found myself elbowing and pushing to get in the line to get off the train in Sigulda and when another passenger actually took a step back and let me into the line with a smile, I'm sure I turned beet red as I thought "oh, yeah, that's the polite and decent way to exit a train".

I can pinpoint the day when I started having to be rude and pushy on public transport. KB and I had gone to the beach on one of those perfect summer days together with our friend PP. When we were preparing to come home, the first train was absolutely packed full - people were literally pushing themselves in with body parts still hanging out, sucking tummies in when the doors closed, just to get on that train. PP (who'd been living in LV a while longer than us) pushed himself into that train, while we held back and politely said, we'll wait for the next train. I remember him waving goodbye to use before the door closed - if he didn't have a smile and a beer bottle in his hand, I'm sorry to say, it would've looked like he was being deported. Two more trains came and went, each time it was the same story, until finally KB and I realized, if we wanted to make it home that night, we were going to have to shove our way in too. It was the worst experience, where mothers were actually crying out that their children were squashed and couldn't breathe, and that's where I started learning that being polite wasn't always going to help you survive here. So I'm really relieved and glad to be in a place that is letting me get back some of that decent human being-ness.

What else? The second graders are great, as always. What other job do you constantly get to hear funny and innocent quotes from people who are growing so quickly and working figuring out the world? For example, "I'm sooo glad it's lunch time! I'm hungry as a .... as a .... raccoon!"

Finally, there is always a good story to tell about Mims the Wondercat. She still continues to love spicy food and was the entertainment point of our guests last night as she devoured spicy Mexican chicken (prepared by a friend in true Mexican style and just on the borderline for me of being able to eat it)! And she's always been fascinated with closets (figuring out how to break into them and pull out all kinds of treasures), so living in the new house is no exception and one of her first maneuvers was to figure out how to open these closet doors. The newest development is that she has now figured out how to open a closet, close the door behind herself and just make a nest for herself in our clothes. She scared the life our of me today when I opened the closet and started digging for a sweatshirt and all of a sudden her head popped up. Who knew you might have to baby-proof a closets and drawers for a cat?

And fire

It's such a great meditation to just sit and stare at the fire at night. I can see how it's programmed into our genes that flames are calming and therapeutic.

I like the train

So far I'm actually really enjoying the commute. The waking up at 5am I could probably do without (coffee and I have become reacquainted on a best friends basis again), but the hour train ride is actually doing me some good. When people first see me at work in the mornings they've been commenting how good, happy, peaceful I look (already awake for 3 hours and productive instead of having just rolled out of bed)!

I spend the morning commute preparing myself for the day (I want to say it in Latvian - es noskanojos dienai - I "tune" myself for the day) and it's great. I've been writing in my journal again which is helping me get things out of my head and makes space for other more valuable stuff. I've been reading passages to help myself start the day out right. Then I have been doing some homework for my online class. Finally, I allow myself a bit of "train potato" (my mom's word, play on couch potato) time just watching the sun rise as I'm approaching Riga, listening to some of my favorite songs on the MP3 player. I'm at school half an hour before most people, so I get a lot done and never feel rushed. It's really quite a good way to start the day.

On the way home it's an unwinding process. The train is usually really loud and full on the way home (though no problems with finding a seat yet), but I pretty much pass out as soon as the train starts moving on the way home (as I'm known to do in moving vehicles). I totally love after school naps, but it's easy to let an after school nap just take up the whole evening, so it's nice to just get a bit of shut eye on the train and be refreshed when I get home. I sleep about half the way home and wake up to read whatever novel I'm reading for the second half of the journey. The train gets emptier and quieter as we approach Sigulda, and by the time we are in Sigulda I hear only Latvian. (It's a such a glaring difference now that I travel back and forth how much Russian you hear in Riga, and I've yet to hear any Russian in Sigulda.) Then I have the walk home during which I might see a car or two but mainly I'm listening to dogs, cats, birds and snow. It's incredible. I'm not really good at leaving my work at work, but I have been totally able to do that in the last two weeks.

My walk to the train in the mornings I'm sure still looks a little funny from a bird's eye view. I leave the house cautiously early, twenty minutes before the train departs, knowing it is consistently only a seven minute walk to the train. The first three minutes I walk and it is totally silent save my own footsteps (also incredible). But since it's so quiet, the last four minutes of walk time I'm listening to the train warm up in the mornings, making all kinds of crazy sighing, spurting, breathing noises, all the time sounding to me like it's getting ready to close it's doors and take off without me. Have I mentioned at this time of year the walk is through ever changing mixtures of ice, slush and serious puddles (and it's a bit tricky to predict what's what so early in the morning)? So my morning walk that begins peacefully turns into some sort of crazy dance of me trying to pick up the pace and not end up on my bottom in a puddle. I'm sure it's quite amusing and I always have a silent smile at myself when I make it onto the train with more than ten minutes to spare, knowing I'll be doing the same thing again tomorrow.... :)

Oh, and this will only make the most sense to people who are seasoned passengers of Riga's public transport, but it is a breath of fresh air in the mornings to hear the conductor say, "Labrit, milie un cienijamie pasazieri, ludzu sagatovijiet savas biletes!" ("Good morning, dear and respected passengers, please prepare you tickets!") I won't even get into the words you are likely to hear on Riga's public tranpsort (a large part of which inspired me to buy the MP3 player for tuning out purposes), but it's like night and day. I like it.

Three decades

Birthdays have always been a big deal for me. Ever since I was young, I've had a particular dislike of St. Patrick's Day because it was in "my" month and all that green and shamrocky stuff took away from what in my mind should have been a purple month all about me. (Save shamrock shakes served at McDonald's during the month of March, those were also invented just for me and they can stay.) There was a rule growing up that we weren't allowed to talk about birthdays until exactly one month before the fact. (Torture at the time, but I now fully understand the need for adults to maintain their sanity, and I've enforced that same rule in my own classroom.) You can believe come February 5, I was all about planning for March 5. At least that's the way I remember it. It's no wonder at some point I captured the nickname Birthday Princess...

So I've always made a big deal about celebrating it, but at the same time internally, from a very young age, birthdays have been a serious time of reflection for me in a way that I'm sure was well beyond my years. On my 13th birthday after all my friends had gone home after the party, I cried crocodile tears because I was no longer a child. (I remember my mom comforting me and finally calming me by putting it into perspective and saying "If you think you feel old because you're a teenager now, imagine how I feel - I have a daughter who's a teenager now!") I'm quite sure 10 was even traumatic for me because I was already in the double digits. I recognize this is not the standard reaction for most children who just can't wait to grow up and be teenagers. I can only attribute it to some kind of deep, soulful understanding that a good childhood really is the happiest, safest time of our lives, and already then, without really knowing it, I knew it would only get harder from here on out and I was trying to savor it while I still had it. Maybe that's one of the many reasons I'm a teacher, so I can still have access to that part of life and if possible help make it a bit happier for those souls who are still lucky enough to be in that carefree time.

26 was another big reflective one for me. I was past a quarter of a century and close enough to 30 that I really dissected my life and set some serious goals for myself as to what I wanted to accomplish by the time I reached 30. Mostly it had to do with getting my life in order so that I'd be ready to have a family. Clearly I could plan all I wanted, but life had different plans for me. So yesterday, when I passed that looming three decade mark in my life, I found that I'm still a bit dazed and confused at how dramatically life can change in a relatively short period of time. I'm still diligently and sometimes painfully working on finding some kind of balance between what I was, what I am and what I'd like to be. And yet I keep coming up on this idea of life leading me to a more laidback space, where I just might learn to let it go and to just be.

At any rate, I definitely don't have it figured out just yet. The more I experience, the less I know. In one sense, that's exciting, in the other sense, I sort of feel I've hit a point where it's just a bit too much right now. I was recently talking with a colleague about this very thing - living outside your comfort zone is good, it pushes you to grow as a person, but at the same time, you still need just enough comfort to feel ok with it all. And that's where I am, on this birthday. I've heard over and over again how the 30s are better than the 20s, and that is something I am definitely looking forward to!

All that being said, March 5 was quite a nice day for me this year. I got lots of flowers at work again, so that you could already smell spring from my classroom coming up the steps to the second floor! I even received a basket of flowers with warm wishes from Africa which was a terrific surprise! :) I also have plenty of chocolate to keep me sane at work for the next month, which is very necessary (certainly not because of the students, but the politics of the school) and I received a beautiful stone necklace from my students. The day had started bright and early before the sun with a birthday card in the mailbox of our new home - my parents had sent it just three days before and it miraculously arrived right on my birthday. (I realize I'm getting more sentimental when a card made me cry!) And the day ended with us visiting a friend who had just recently climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and been on a safari in Tanzania, so we went to watch her slideshow of photos. Absolutely beautiful and breathtaking - there is so much more to see and do in the next three (plus) decades, that is for sure... As we were leaving, the conversation ended with this friend telling us how she has gone out and done all these amazing things in life because came to realize that the only thing holding her back in life is herself. And that's what was on my mind as I fell asleep on March 5 the thirtieth, the purplest, and simultaneously happiest and most reflective day of the year....

On a new path

"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives." (Henry David Thoreau)

This quote showed up just at the right time (as so many things is life tend to do). New town, new home, new decade of my life....good time to work on charting out a new path.... :)