A Good First Day, Indeed

So today was GORGEOUS… and I didn’t bring my camera with me to class today. Sad day. Right now (8:30 pm) the weather was exactly as it was this morning when I went to school at 9 am (my time). It’s incredibly foggy, but it’s freezing fog. So if the fog has anything to condensate upon, it pretty much instantly frosts. So it’s beautiful. Just very delicate, very fine “snow” everywhere. So it was very bright, very nice. But it was probably best I didn’t have my camera as all the slush had frozen again, so it was kind of slippery today, more so than usual. Falling on top of my camera would not have been good.

And I know I haven’t posted any pictures of Tartu itself, but I will get around to it, I promise. But I just haven’t had the time to walk around with a camera, but if this “fog” sticks around for tomorrow, I will DEFINITELY take photos, because that would be perfect, to show the winter beauty of Tartu.

But today was my first official class in Estonia!! It was Contemporary Issues in EU/Russian Relations. The professor is Arunas Molis from Vilnius, Lithuania. He has worked with several think tanks for strategic studies, but more impressive was his post as Lieutenant Minister of Defense for Lithuania. While being second in command of Lithuania’s military certainly isn’t a “vast” command, it’s at least great experience in strategic issues for an academic.

But his class will be a LOT of class participation, and I am excited about that. I plan to try to find a group to work with composed of only international students. There’s a few Americans in the class, but I’d prefer to be without them, honestly. Hahaha. I want to meet other people from other places!! Hahaha.

And today was my first practice with Coach Lemberg. It wasn’t a necessarily hard workout, 5x1000m at 6:00 pace, but considering I haven’t run in exactly a week due to the traveling and ridiculous ice… My legs are sore. But I am in a comfortable chair in the pub beneath my dorm with a nice warm pizza to comfort me. Hahaha. But the workout went flawlessly… except he has already noted/hated my bad form, and I have daily exercises now to try and correct it. But I met a few of his runners, and they all speak Russian!! So maybe if I get to run more with the team, I will be able to practice my Russian!!!! Yay!!

But I understood correctly about the awesomeness of the indoor track. It has banked turns, so it’s really fun to accelerate off the curves on this track. And there’s a rabbit system, which I never knew existed. There’s a red light in the ground every 5 meters just along the inside of Lane 1. Then you use a computer to say how far, how fast you’re wanting to pace, and the light system keeps pace for you!! As long as your body is with the light, you’re even. It’s awesome!!!!! Definitely made today’s workout much easier.

After the workout, I had pizza in the downstairs pub (so good) and was invited to go out with Timofey and Ada (my flatmates). I had such a good time with them!! They are so wonderful, and they loved hearing about American drinking games. Apparently, we will have to coordinate a lesson. And we have decided that Tuesday nights must become a weekly thing, so I am excited! Yay! Haha.

I will post in a few hours about Wednesday, but I thought I’d better stay on track for now.