Latvia Matters: The Adventures of a Large Man Who Stumbled Around in a Small Country

By Dr. Dale B. Sims

When Dale Sims received a Fulbright Scholarship to teach in the small country of Latvia, he left everything familiar and comfortable behind. His determination to do a good job of representing the United States of America presented a number of challenges, not the least of which were his own preconceived notions of other countries and cultures. Dr. Sims uses stories about his adventures to show the patience, concern, and good common sense that the Latvians expressed toward him.
As you read about the Latvians, you will be transported to their country, and you will wish that you could visit their land with Dr. Sims as a guide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499070491

Dr. Dale B. Sims

Dr. Sims has been a full-time professor at DBU since 1991 and currently serves as the dean of the College of Business. He has taught computer science and information systems courses. Previous to coming to DBU, he worked in a number of different technical positions in several industries. He worked in research and development for a major petroleum company, as a network and system manager, as a systems analyst/application programmer, and as a knowledge engineer working with AI. Dr. Sims earned a PhD at the University of North Texas in Information Science. He is a Fulbright Scholar, representing the United States as a scholar in Latvia during 2006. He was the 20112012 DBU Piper Outstanding Professor of the Year, and the 2012 DBU College of Business Faculty of the year. He is married to the wonderful Debbie Sims, who is an assistant principal of an elementary school in Grand Prairie where they live. Having grown up in farming country, he loves the great outdoors. He hunts, fishes, gardens, does carpentry work, and shoots skeet.

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Copyright © 2014 by Dr. Dale B. Sims.

ISBN: eBook 978-1-4990-7049-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 09/18/2014

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Chapter 1 Where Do I Go from Here?

Chapter 2 Getting There Is Half the Fun!

Chapter 3 Can I Get a Helping of Bark with That?

Chapter 4 Is It Cold in Latvia?

Chapter 5 Observations from a Bus

Chapter 6 Home Away from Home

Chapter 7 First Day on the Job

Chapter 8 Trying for Normal

Chapter 9 The Latvian Way

Chapter 10 Unexpected Things

Chapter 11 The Great Pagan Debate

Chapter 12 The Beggar

Chapter 13 Lecture Notes

Chapter 14 The Mob

Chapter 15 The Diplomat

Chapter 16 Can an American Sing?

Chapter 17 Debbie Comes for a Visit

Chapter 18 Kurzeme

Chapter 19 Just Visiting

Chapter 20 Fishing in Latvia

Chapter 21 The Birthday Party

Chapter 22 A Healthy Curiosity

Chapter 23 The Texas Party

Chapter 24 Leaving Latvia

Chapter 25/Epilogue Why Latvia Matters

Glossary

FOREWORD

R epresenting one’s country is a great honor. Many have dreamed of donning their national colors in the Olympic Games or perhaps speaking on behalf of their countries in important negotiations. Dr. Dale Sims, my teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend, saw an opportunity to represent his country as a United States Fulbright scholar in the small country of Latvia. Arriving in the midst of the country’s coldest winter in decades, Dr. Sims found himself in a strange land of unfamiliar tastes, sounds, and customs. The American’s hosts at first could have appeared as cold and distant as his surroundings yet proved to him something that he already knew—people all over the world are just people; they can be friendly and warm, they seek to be understood, they ask life’s big questions, they are proud of their culture and inquisitive of that of others. And, yes, in Latvia they also take their choir music very seriously.

As someone who has known Dr. Sims for nearly twenty years, I kept up with him during his Fulbright appointment in 2006. Along with his other colleagues at the Dallas Baptist University College of Business, I could not wait to receive every next edition of the journals he shared with us. Close to the end of his appointment, I also visited him in Latvia (my mother country). The man I found at the local college was recognized by all, was conversant in the local language, and was an excellent tour guide. His humility and single-minded mission to be a good representative of his country, state, and employer had won him many lifelong friends in his temporary hometown of Runaspils.

As the readers find themselves transported to Latvia with Dr. Sims in the pages of this book, they will feel like many a student in this Fulbright scholar’s classes over the years—they will feel like they are having a great conversation with the professor, captivating vignettes of unexpected experiences mixed with timeless lessons from the human experience. And just like Dr. Sims’s students in the USA and in Latvia, the readers will walk away from this conversation with the humble and genuine scholar uplifted, educated, and inspired to go out and be good representatives and, more importantly, good people.

Jekabs Bikis, PhD

CHAPTER 1

Where Do I Go from Here?

W hile I was basking in the glow of a newly minted doctorate, a good friend of mine told me to expect many doors of opportunity to open wide. The PhD will allow you to do things that you couldn’t do before, he said with confidence. I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about. Perhaps, I thought, he meant that I could now put the coveted PhD on my business card. Or maybe now I could insist that my students at the university call me Dr. Sims . What I did know for sure was that now I could wear a more impressive hood and gown at graduation ceremonies along with one of those weird little caps that looks like it belongs on some guy from the Middle Ages. Actually, I wasn’t sure what he meant.

A few years went by. I did put the PhD next to my name on my business cards. I didn’t insist that people call me Dr. Sims, although it felt good when they did. I broke down and spent big dollars to purchase the whole PhD hood and gown thing. I bought a really nice pickup truck. I grew a beard because I thought it made me look more like an academic. At least that’s what I told everyone. Actually I was just getting too lazy to shave and I thought it hid my double chin. Even after a few years, I still didn’t know what my friend was talking about.

One day I picked up a brochure at my university. There was information inside about something called a Fulbright Scholarship. I had heard of the Fulbright. We even had two Fulbright scholars teaching at the university. One was a musician who had graduated from Juilliard. The other was an artist who came from a noted family of artists. I figured that the Fulbright was for people who were young, hip, artistic, and brilliant genius types. I sure wouldn’t have put myself in any of those categories. I was nearing fifty. I was old-fashioned and conservative. I made fun of my own drawings. I plunked around on the banjo, which is just barely considered a musical instrument by most people. I played chess, but I got beat too often by my opponent to consider myself brilliant. I decided to keep the brochure anyway. Sometimes I would take it out of my desk drawer and read it again. One day I mentioned the scholarship to my wife, Debbie, and showed her the brochure.

What do you think? I asked her. She read it over carefully before answering.

Does this mean that you would teach in another country? she asked. I always get a little skittish when she replies to a question with a question.

Yessss, I replied slowly. Is that a problem?

She tilted her head slightly and looked at a place on the wall just over my left shoulder. Hmmmm, she said. A pause and then another, Hmmmm.

You do know that if I am chosen it would be a great honor, I said, hoping to break the silence. She looked at me as if I had just spoken to her in Swahili or Apache. I cleared my throat. Of course, the chances that I would be chosen are slim to none.

Debbie can be inscrutable when she is playing cards or talking to her husband. That is part of the mysterious side of her that I love.

Why do you say things like that? she asked. You are one of the most intelligent men I know, she said with a smile. I definitely think you should apply! Then she asked me to take out the trash, take her car to the gas station and fill it up, and change a burnt-out lightbulb.

Sometimes I wonder just how my value is assessed in our relationship. On the plus side, I repair things around the house, replace lightbulbs, help clean the house, do an occasional load or two of laundry, do the yard work, take care of the cars, and stuff like that. On the negative side, I have a tendency to procrastinate, eat too much, snore loudly, gripe to Deb about things she would rather not hear about, leave clothes and shoes lying around on an old rocking chair in the bedroom, etc. You get the picture. Anyway, Deb mysteriously loves me, and I just have to muster the grace to accept it.

Debbie and I first met in a small church in a small town in Kansas. I was working in a factory as a mill operator. Debbie was living at home, going to college, and working in a grocery store. She was about halfway finished with her degree in teaching. I had taken a few college courses but had dropped out because of economic necessity. Debbie’s dad had retired from the U.S. Navy. Behind his back, I called him The Admiral, although his rank when he retired was a long way down from that exalted position. He was a navy man through and through. There were two ways to do things—the wrong way and his way, which was always the right way. I know he was very disappointed when Debbie and I started dating. I think he imagined his daughter marrying a wealthy, cultured, educated man. Debbie’s mom was a hardheaded woman from a German family. Although her heart was as soft as her head was hard, she also let it be known that Debbie could do better than date a poor, uneducated man who worked in a factory.

When we married, they cried. When I finally earned my bachelor’s degree by working three jobs and going to school full time, they were shocked. When the grandkids came along, all previous issues with me seemed to recede into the distant past. When I earned a master’s degree, they were amazed. When a university in Dallas offered me a position as professor, they were flummoxed (I have always wanted to use that word in some context). After I earned my doctoral degree, they were some of my biggest supporters. Let me introduce you to my son-in-law, the doctor!

The application process for the Fulbright is interesting. The applicant must go to a certain Internet site. There are many countries listed at the application site that have great needs in the area of education. Those countries want American educators to live in their country and teach their students specific subjects. Beside each country listed is a description of the skill sets required. One thing that the applicant must decide is which award to apply for. I carefully scanned the country list. Many countries wanted someone to teach economics or politics or English or music or art. I teach the management of information systems. I teach such things as programming languages, networks and telecommunications, systems analysis and design, Web page design, and computer security and forensics. I saw several countries that requested a professor to teach technology courses. One that caught my attention was Latvia.

I would guess that most Americans haven’t heard of Latvia. If they have heard of the country, then they haven’t the foggiest idea of where it is on a world map. I was fortunate in that I had taught two young people from Latvia at my university. One of them, Jekabs, had gone on to get his master’s degree and was now working on his doctorate in economics. He had come back to my university to teach. His office was right down the hall from mine. The other young man was named Chrisjanis. He was still at the university, and I saw him regularly on campus. My preformed impression of Latvia came from my interaction with those two young men. They were bright and studious. They were quiet yet genial. They liked technology. I figured that Latvia was probably a pretty good place, based on my very superficial observations of the two Latvians I knew. I used the Internet to gather some information about the country.

Latvia is a small country on the Baltic Sea. It is south of Sweden and Finland, east of Germany and Poland, and west of Estonia and Russia. It is one of the Baltic States that broke away from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. About 1,000,000 people live in the capital city of Riga. There are approximately 3,000,000 Latvian citizens, but only about 2,500,000 live in the country. The rest are working in other countries and sending money home. Latvians have a high rate of liver failure from excessive alcohol use. They have a high rate of death by automobile accidents, probably related to alcoholism and liver failure. They speak Latvian (How obvious! I thought to myself), which is closely related to Lithuanian. Both languages seem to have sprung from the old Sanskrit.

All of those facts made the country sound exotic and slightly dangerous. So I applied and, miracle of miracles, I was accepted! The process is really a bit more complex than I made it out to be, but you will please forgive me if I spare you all the details. I made arrangements to leave the university for six months and set about the process of preparing to take leave from my family and friends.

The Department of State gave me a trip to Washington, D.C., so that I could get a briefing on the country and meet other Fulbrighters. We were informed that such luminaries as Thomas R. Pickering, John Lithgow, Hedwig Gorski, Sylvia Plath, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali are Fulbright scholars. More Fulbrighters have won Nobel Prizes than those from any other academic program. They told us that you really couldn’t call yourself a Fulbright scholar until after you had successfully completed your assignment. They also stressed that once you had accomplished that, then you were a Fulbright scholar for the rest of your life.

Later they broke us out into small groups where we were informed about customs, religion, history, and the current politics of the country we were going to work in. Things seemed to be quiet and stable there in Latvia.

The college where I would be teaching, Runaspils College, had never had a Fulbright scholar. It was located in a town of about 30,000 people, situated right on the Baltic coast, about 150 kilometers from the capital city. The name of the town was Runaspils. (Throughout this book, I will be changing the names of people and towns in order to protect them . . . and myself.) Professors and students at the university spoke English, but most of the townsfolk only spoke Latvian or Russian. That didn’t bother me. I was sure that I could learn another language because I already had a smattering of knowledge of some other languages such as German, Penn Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Texan vernacular, Southern drawl, and pig Latin. I figured I could easily add another one to the list. (Ah, the bliss of ignorance!)

I was told that the major religion was paganism or maybe pantheism, which was a bit worrisome to a Protestant who attends church every Sunday. I imagined long lines of Latvians making their way to pagan temples or worshipping around large trees in the forest.

I was also told that the U.S. ambassador to Latvia likes to meet the Fulbrighters and that I would probably be invited to some dinner parties. I decided to spend some money on a very nice dark suit and a nice shirt with French cuffs. This required that I also purchase some cuff links. I had some that I had purchased back in 1974, but somehow that ’70s look just didn’t seem to be the thing to wear to a dinner party hosted by an ambassador.

The last advice they gave me was to do everything in my power to be a good representative of my state. Since I would be representing Texas, they advised me to buy a cowboy hat and boots. Wear jeans and buy a belt with a big belt buckle, they told me. Take some things from your state to give away as gifts.

I took their advice and purchased all of those Texas things. I also made up some gift bags with Texas quarters, Texas postcards, Texas pins, and Texas flags. I even got some old Texas car license plates to give away.

Debbie couldn’t come with me. She was working on her doctorate. She didn’t want to take six months off and get behind the rest of her cohort. Our daughter Laura and son-in-law Jesse had just given us a grandson, and they needed help. So my wife stayed behind. It sounded so logical and sensible. Yet six months is six months! I would be in another country by myself for six months. Mrs. Sims and I had been married for twenty-nine years, and in all that period, the longest amount of time we had spent apart was two weeks. We knew it would be difficult, but we decided to press on. Laura and Jesse moved into our house to keep Debbie company and to save a bit of money. I sold my truck. I just couldn’t see paying insurance for six months on a truck that wouldn’t be used.

I began correspondence with some of the administrators and professors at Runaspils College. I found out that most of their students could not afford textbooks. I also discovered that the library at the college had very few books in English. That prompted me to take action. I took textbooks from my personal library and cajoled colleagues into giving up old texts. I was able to ship over three hundred textbooks to the college before I arrived. This tripled the number of English language books available to them.

A couple of weeks before I was ready to leave, I received a call from my uncle Frank. He had tried to call a friend of his and had dialed a wrong number. Frank is not like the rest of us. Instead of hanging up after discovering his mistake, he launched into a thirty-minute conversation with a perfect stranger. Somehow he found out that this stranger had some connection to Latvia through a pastor of a congregation in the capital city of Riga. This Latvian pastor was now visiting the U.S. and was staying with a family in Houston. Frank got some contact information and was passing it on to me. The pastor’s name was Petr. My uncle urged me to call him. Following his advice, I called Petr. He had a very thick accent, but he was understandable. He asked me to stay at his house in Riga. He said that his congregation was hosting the Latvian national teachers’ conference for two days in January. He asked me to hold some breakout sessions at the conference, two each day. He said that interpreters would be provided for all speakers. So I agreed to do it!

About that same time, I received an invitation from my colleague and former student Jekabs. His parents wanted me to stay in their home for a few days when I arrived in Latvia. It is hard to describe the gratitude I felt for people who were willing to host a perfect stranger. I worked out a deal where I would spend my first week with Petr’s family and my second week in Latvia with Jekabs’s family. From there I would travel on to Runaspils, where the college had a place all set up for me.

Finally, the day arrived for me to trek to Latvia. Debbie took me to the airport. I had preordered round-trip tickets, and I checked in at the airline desk to claim them. The young lady there looked over all the information twice. She turned to me and asked, Why are you not returning for six months? I patiently explained about the Fulbright.

I’m sorry, she said, but I cannot give you these tickets unless you have a permit to stay in the country for six months. Do you have that permit?

I searched through my luggage to find the paperwork that explained the process. I was sure that I had read somewhere in the paperwork that once I was actually in the country, our embassy personnel would help me apply for the necessary permits. I thought that the instructions said that I had up to fifty days to apply. But I couldn’t find that particular paper. I was sweating and muttering under my breath. I was sure that once I showed her the papers she would understand. After ten minutes of frantic searching, I just gave up trying to find the papers. I demanded to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor arrived and told me the same thing. We argued. I tried logic. I huffed and puffed, pouted and cajoled and wheedled, but all to no avail. Finally, I compromised. I accepted a ticket to come back in three months and decided that I would call and change it later. I was sure that the embassy would help. I just hoped that the rest of my trip didn’t hold any more unforeseen complications.

It was a somber departure that day in early January. Both Debbie and I are firstborn children. We are used to accepting responsibility and standing alone. We adhere to the stoic philosophy that life is tough—deal with it. Debbie has birthed children with barely a grimace. I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out in the same afternoon and didn’t miss a day of work. We figure that pain is just a part of life. Yet we cried like babies when we parted at the airport. I was glad that I had a beard. A beard and mustache hides quivering lips. A bearded man crying is usually not someone subject to ridicule. I dried up as best I could as I walked up the ramp to the plane. I was sure Debbie would miss me (the slobby-looking, overweight guy) but not as much as I would miss her

CHAPTER 2

Getting There Is Half the Fun!

I f a person wanted to make a trip from Texas to Latvia a hundred years ago , it would have been a real chore. That traveler would either make their way overland to the Texas Gulf coast or to the eastern coast of the United States. If they embarked from the Texas Gulf coast, they might have made their way to Galveston and purchased ship passage to perhaps Charleston, South Carolina. Before reaching Charleston, the ship might put in at Cuba or the Bahamas, or both, in order to drop off or take on passengers and supplies. From there our traveler would book passage on a ship bound for England. Depending on the weather and the type of ship, it could take anywhere from twenty days to three months to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes a ship would stop off at Madeira or the Azores or the Canary Islands before making its way to England. After making landfall in England, the traveler would then book passage on a ship bound for Baltic ports. The ship would go through the North Sea, around Denmark, and proceed into the Baltic Sea. Of course there would be stops along the way, perhaps at Norway, Holland, Germany, or Sweden. Finally, after many months at sea, our weary traveler would finally disembark at the great port of Riga, Latvia. The whole trip was a series of long jaunts punctuated by short stops at various ports of call. It sounds exotic and adventuresome, but I am sure that seasickness, crowded conditions, and lack of fresh water for bathing made it a lot less romantic.

A hundred years ago, there were no airplanes flying across the Atlantic. The Wright brothers were just starting to perfect a motor-powered flying machine. The only choice that a person had for traveling to Europe was to take a ship. But I live in a fortunate age. I could board an airplane in Dallas in the morning, and less than a day later, I would arrive in Riga.

If you look in the dictionary, you will find that the root of the word travel is travail. If you look up travail in Webster’s new Collegiate Dictionary, you will find these phrases and words: work, especially of a painful or laborious nature: toil. A physical or mental exertion or piece of work: task, effort. Agony, torment. Even though today we travel by plane, it doesn’t take the travail out of travel. Unless, of course, you have loads of money and can fly first class all the way. But alas, I was flying coach class, and I would be crammed into the plane with all of the other huddled masses yearning to breathe free. So I dressed in a way that I thought was appropriate.

My flight itinerary took me from Dallas to Chicago to Frankfurt to Riga. My flight to Chicago was uneventful. When I got there, I happened to catch a glimpse of a slightly harassed, slobby looking, overweight white guy carrying a bag. I remember thinking, Boy, I’m glad I’m not that guy! I did a double take and found that I was looking at my reflection in a large mirror. I suppose I sacrificed style for comfort. Surely there is a happy medium that one can attain when dressing for traveling long distances, but I don’t have a clue as to what that is.

I walked through the airport to the arrivals/departures board to see what my departure gate was. Lo and behold, there was no listing for a flight to Frankfurt, my first stop in Europe on the way to Latvia. I stopped an American Airlines customer service person and asked her about it. She said that I had to leave the terminal and outside I would find a monorail that would take me to terminal 5, the terminal for all international flights. I found the monorail that went to terminal 5 and, sure enough, there was a long row of International Flight Carriers ticket desks. People in exotic hats and headscarves speaking with the tongues of Babel crowded the hall. There was much crying of babies and waving of arms. Pushing through the crowds, I found my flight carrier desk right next to the desk for one of the Caribbean Island carriers. My carrier actually had three desks. The one that looked the least busy had a man and woman standing in front of it with nobody in line behind them. The man and woman were well dressed, talked in low tones, and smiled quite frequently. I immediately went to stand behind them. The service person was nodding his head and frantically typing something into a computer. Occasionally he would ask a question and the couple would calmly show him some more documentation. I just happened to look over at the representative at the Caribbean Island desk. He had turned to the person manning the international flight desk of another carrier that was situated next to him and said, I’m taking a lunch break, Mon! I’ll be sending all dese fine people over to you, Mon! He commanded the people in his line to go to the other line before disappearing like the grinning Cheshire cat through a door in back of the desks.

The customer service people were unperturbed. They acted like this was a daily occurrence. Now the other two desks were inundated with people. I was sure glad that I had picked the short line! Then my heart sank because I heard the woman in front of me exclaim, Oh, here they all are now! I looked around to see twenty college students, from Purdue by the look of their T-shirts, descend on the couple and surround the desk. There were hugs and kisses all around followed by the chatty exuberance of college students who are on a huge adventure to St. Petersburg by way of Frankfurt. I took a deep breath and just hunkered down for a wait. I looked at all the bright eager faces and imagined how great it was that they were getting a good international education. Then I heard the two young men closest to me talking about the trip.

"Yo, dude! I been checking out St. Petersburg on the Net. You know what? Like, the girls in Saint Pete are smokin’ hot! I don’t care what the professor says, I am so hitting the