I walked home via a different route today. It would have been really nice, but the sun was in my eyes for more than half of it. I checked on google after I got home and the route I took was 5 kilometres and it took me about 52 minutes to walk. I totally thought that the walk would have taken a full hour, but unfortunately not.
In some ways the new route was nicer, for a long stretch of it you walk by a big open park and I get to cross the river, but on the other hand, it forces me to walk along a busy road for most of it. I know I will definitely not take this route in the late morning/early afternoon again, the sun was just too much directly in my eyes.
It was nice for variety and I will try it again at some point, but I like the original way better. I could walk along Richmond, a main street, but since I live a few big blocks east of it, I can also just walk through the residential areas. If anyone ever comes to visit (like my friend Fiona is coming in a few weeks) I will show this beautiful area. The houses are all amazing and the streets are all lined with trees and the colours are amazing right now.
Anyway, since I've been trying to find a way to extend my walk to an hour long, I think I will just walk a few blocks further east and then double back a bit.
Now I have settled into my schedule, which unfortunately does not involve a whole lot of at-school-time. I only actually need to go to school 2 or 3 days a week, sometimes 4 if I have a lesson. This is why I need to guaruntee that I walk at least an hour each time. I should also leave the house and get some exercise even on the days when I don't have anything. This weekend, I barely left the apartment and my legs ached when I walked to catch the bus on Sunday afternoon (I hadn't been out of the apartment since Friday evening).
Long story short (I lie) is that while I have been walking a lot more since moving here, I most likely haven't lost any weight and I'm not really in any better shape. I need to step things up in the exercise department.

New topic!
Now that I've finished my film soundtrack and got the tentative initial approval from the director, I have moved on to school composition work. The piano trio has developed slowly over the last 2 days, but it needs to go faster. A professional piano trio is coming to our school and they are doing a student composer masterclass type thing, so I need to have about 3 minutes of my piece suitable for them to read through so I can get some feedback. At the same time, my teacher wants me to have the whole piece generally sketched out in some detail for my next lesson. I think I'll give myself until friday to do that, then I'll spend the weekend filling in a3 minute section with more detail so that it might be ready for the end of the month (when I need to have it ready to send to the ensemble). It's all a matter of making sure I have as much done as I can so that I can make the best use of the resources; my teacher for this lesson as well as the ensemble. I think I'll have a day after my lesson in order to add some suggestions from my lesson in order to get it ready to send off.
It seems odd that I will be sending it to them to learn a section, but I will have worked on it quite a bit by the time they actually play it for me. I'll keep in mind that I will be wanting to listen for the concepts and style that they play rather than the specific notes, which will undoubtedly have changed.

I'll keep rambling-
A week or two ago, I had some bloodwork done through the student health services lab. Just the standard diabetes tests. This would have been the test of how my summer and first month of living here has been. My HbA1C wasn't bad; 7.2 when the targets are 7.0 or 6.5. I'm not even certain about what my previous result was, but somehow I have it in my head that this was a step backwards. While I try not to let numbers rule my life, I can't help but be disappointed. Not by the numbers, but by my perception... I really felt like I had made some monumental improvements over the summer, but I suppose not.
I'm posting about it now to admit that yes, it did get to me, but now I'm back on track.