Day 42: I'm the king of the world!

Today I experienced the most stressful 5 minutes of my life. You see, I had to send my first month's rent to France with internet banking and I've never done an international bank transfer before. With my bank, there is a time constraint in which you can transfer money - after 8am and before 3.30pm. I soon realised that this meant 8am UK time, and 10am Latvia time. And I had to be at the university to film at 10.30am.

It started off fine. I entered all the details I had, ticked the right boxes and pressed confirm - but I got an error message. My heart was pounding at this point, my eyes darting to the clock every 2 minutes. I went back, re-typed it all in and again and another error message popped up!

I was so close to this.

The main thing that worried me was that it might have been debiting money every time I pressed confirm. Of course it wasn't, but your mind can play tricks on you in times of distress. Eventually, it worked and a smile stretched across my face. This is why I work with words and cameras, not numbers.

Panic over, I went to the university to conduct an interview with a member of the Student Union - I'm getting good at these! Clouds started to cast but we still had some shots to do of Valmiera, including go up to the tower of the church to get a landscape view of the town. The stairs to the top of the church tower were a killer.

The last of eight flights of stairs.

The staircases were so narrow and the overhead beams were very low. I wondered if we were ever going to make it to the top. It was the faint light in the distance that kept us going. We each took a gasp of air as soon as our heads entered the fresh air. I nearly screamed "I'm the king of the world" reminiscent of Jack's famous line in Titanic but didn't want to risk embarrassment.

My favourite shot from above.

After getting some shots of the university library, that was the filming for the day complete. We chose the right time to stop. Just after I was mocking recent English weather, sudden lightning flashed, monstrous thunder roared and a lot of rain poured.

Seeing as I had already started bleeding my bank account dry, I thought to myself why not book my flights today. I found the perfect flights, quite cheap and good times. I am trying to arrive in Nice just in time for moving in to the house so I don't have to stay in a hotel. I actually would have cried if there was an error message. Thankfully, there wasn't and I now have my house sorted and flights booked. What else needs to be done? Oh yes, shopping! I'll have to be wise and leave that until I get back to England though. Bloody baggage fees.

In the evening, the other film intern, a Latvian friend from the university (and staying in the same dorms) and I went to eat pizza in the restaurant I visited last month and promised myself I'd go back to. Upon return home, me and our Latvian friend were just relaxing when he asked if I could dance. To cut a long story short, I have now experienced my first taste of Latvian dancing...

...and definitely not my last!

Tomorrow, my film crew and I will go to a nearby town called Cesis, approximately 45 minutes away by bus, to capture some scenes of Latvia other than Valmiera. Hopefully, this terrible weather will die down by then. Fingers crossed!