Totally frozen.It was minus 2 Celsius the whole weekend and I think my body went into hibernation mode. Any time I wasn't sightseeing or freezing to death I was either eating or napping.
We took the bus south from Tartu to Võru early Friday morning and waited in a candy-shop-slash-cafe for a couple hours waiting for our connecting bus to take us to the Estonian-Latvian border. Linda's father was to pick us up from there and take us to Linda's home in the town of Ape. Linda is a pseudo-Estonian like myself; her mother is fully Latvian, her father is fully Estonian, and she grew up in Latvia but speaks Estonian fluently.
A Kalev candy store in Võru.Her town is small. I mean tiny. I think the population is around 2000 or something. Linda's house is nice, though, and we had a sauna after dinner on Friday. It was wonderful.
Saturday morning the ground was white with frost as we drove to the closest normal-sized city of Aluksne, about 30 minutes away. Linda showed me the song stage and the lake with the mysterious moving island and the castle, but I was so cold that my favorite part of the afternoon was eating alphabet french fries in a small cafe.
Song stage. 
Castle. Later that day we drove back over the border to Estonia to visit her aunt and uncle on their farm. There was an Estonian "kiik," or swing, and we played on that until our fingers were numb.
Linda on the swing. Sunday we walked around Ape a bit and then celebrated Estonian father's day with Linda's family before heading back to Tartu.
What a happy family, eh? ___
I've kind-of settled into a routine over here. During the week I sit in cafes working on grad school essays and applications, studying for the GRE, and trying to decide what coures to take when I return to OSU for the winter and spring terms, and during the weekends I travel and play. For instance, this weekend I'm off to Tallinn to meet up with an old friend and go to a choir concert.
I have exactly five weeks left until I come home and all of a sudden it seems like I have hardly any time left at all.
1 comment:
2000 ppl is small? Okay, I agree, but it's still bigger than my hometown.
As old as cold gets, I miss it. I long for my lungs to hurt from almost freezing, rather than from the burning garbage of 15 million people.
I, too, plan to leave in EXACTLY 5 weeks, but I'm tinkering with the idea of kicking in in Hamburg for a couple of nights and seeing family. I thought I was super eager to get back home that I didn't want to stop anywhere. I realize now I just want Western Civilization... that'll feel like home enough.
Also, I'll get some more cool stamps in my passport... I already have Germany, but I'll take doubles over blank pages. India cheated me once though... they put a fifth stamp on a page instead of starting a new one... the jerks! Of all the nerve!
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