Arriving in Tartu

Okay. So I’m here. Everything is crazy. Everything is the same. I feel like England all over again.

The 5 ½ hour wait in Amsterdam totally killed me and Vana. [For all you noobs out there: Vana = my grandmother from Portland. It’s a shortened version of “Vanaema” which means “old mother” and so technically I go around calling my dear grandmother “Old one.”] We made it to Tallinn at around 15:00, and spent the afternoon with our relatives. Everything was so oddly familiar and yet strange. The smells. The people. The stores. The first thing I bought in Estonia was a bag full of assorted pastries (e.g. meat, cabbage, carrot) from a fantastic hole-in-the-wall bakery around the corner. I passed out around 18:00 and slept for 14 glorious hours.

This morning we shoved two of my three bags into the only 2008 Toyota Camry in the country and drove 2.5 hours to Tartu. I’m finally moved in. My 3^rd bag is coming on Friday.

I haven’t met my roommates yet, but I think a couple of them are here already, and by the looks of it they’re total slobs. I hate communal living. I hate it I hate it. But it’s close to campus and cheaper than an apartment. Luckily I’ve got a two-person room to myself, thank god.

I opened an Estonian bank account today (at SEB, for anyone who cares), which was exhilarating. Scary, too, because I probably signed my life away on one of the many documents they shoved in front of me, but since my technical vocabulary is still pathetically small, I couldn’t understand most of what was written. Ah well. Next Monday I’ll get a shiny orange debit card with my name on it, and that’s all I care about.

Things to do before classes start: get a mobile phone, go check out the International Student Office, visit the Mathematics-Computer Science Department, find a gym and a yoga studio, and buy food/school supplies. Ah, and take the Estonian Language Exam on Friday. That one scares the crap out of me.

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I’m already starting to feel stuck in the middle. [Take note; this will probably become a recurring theme.] I’m not American and I’m not Estonian. I’m not a tourist and I’m not a local. I know this place, and yet I’m totally alienated. Today I walked around town scowling because that’s what everyone else does. But that’s not me. Maarika is not a scowler. Maarika is also not what you’d call “reserved” or “soft-spoken” (Maarika does, however, enjoy speaking in third person). But everyone here is reserved - almost stand-offishly so - and the majority of women are very soft-spoken (read: poor conversationalists… read: boring). And so as not to feel like a foreigner, I found myself starting to take on these traits… refusing to make eye contact with strangers and getting all self-conscious about my lunch, lest it be deemed “unfeminine.”

So I think this whole “get a master’s degree in the motherland” adventure is going to boil down to a big ol’ test of my personal strength and self-confidence; essentially, my ability to hang onto my personality. Easy as pie, right?

Right?

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Estonian word of the day:

Nülgima (NEWL-ghee-maw): To skin. Kassi nülgima. [To skin a cat.]