Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is it. I leave tomorrow.
And how do I feel on the eve of my departure? Honestly, I feel strangely... conflicted. Not like I expected at all.
I have been through a lot during these past four months. I have learned a ton and I feel like I've grown up a lot. My academic goals have come into focus. I feel like I've discovered completely new facets of myself over here. Although I made only a few friends here, they are wonderful and I will miss them terribly. And believe it or not, there have already been occasions when I'm able to remember an Estonian word or expression but not the English equivalent. ... A small part of me has become quite attached to this frigid, soggy little country.
However, my consolation is that I will be back this summer. In 6 months it will be St. John's Day, Jaanipäev, the biggest holiday in Estonia after Christmas. I'll be here by then, and hopefully I'll get to stick around until after my birthday at the end of July.
But at the moment, I'm packed and ready to go. I've been packed and ready to go since Monday. All week long, my relatives have been stopping by to give me boxes of chocolate and bottles of liqueur to take home, and by this afternoon both of my suitcases were threatening to overstep the 23kg weight limit. Tomorrow morning at 5am I'll heave them downstairs, say my final farewells to the apartment, and let my relative groggily drive me to the airport. After that, I travel for 15 hours and arrive at PDX around midday tomorrow.
So. This is it. I hope you enjoyed reading about my Estonian shenanigans. I may start up a real-life blog someday to chronicle my boring Corvallis life, but don't count on it.
Be well. Happy holidays. May all your adventures be awesome.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Leaving Tartu
It's been an eventful week. In Estonian, I would use the phrase "sündmusrikas."
Wednesday night I hosted a White Elephant goodbye party for myself at a cute restaurant/pub in Tartu for my folk dance friends. I was really pleased with how it turned out, mostly just because people showed up. Afterwards we all went clubbing, and at 2am I realized that I needed french fries *right now* and for the first time in my life I had the exciting experience of walking through the Mcdonald's drivethru.
Thursday morning I woke up surprisingly early, packed up 90% of what remained in my room and handed it off to Piret and Margus, who were in town for a funeral.
I then spent the rest of the day wandering around Tartu, doing things and going places I hadn't seen yet. I walked around Jaani Kirik, the Botanical Gardens, Toomemägi, the leaning art museum. My flatmates and I made dinner together for the first and last time. Afterwards we went out for cake and took photos of Christmas lights.
Friday I packed up the last of my room and moved out. My Turkish roommates Tijen and Tugba sent me off at the bus station as snow started to fall.
Margus and Piret picked me up from the Tallinn bus station and we went straight to their summer home in Noa Rootsi. I spent a relaxing weekend drinking mulled wine and playing board games, and Sunday I went to Marje's in Haapsalu.
Monday I came back to Tallinn and visited with Heljo and Nikolai and their children and grandchildren. We watched a video of my solo performance at the 1996 Esto and the subsequent interview. I am always slightly mortified whenever I watch it.
Tuesday I had borsch and mashed potatoes at Heige and Uno's house. I then spent the evening chatting with Riho. Riho is a musical genius and is an ex-patriot Estonian like myself . He was born and grew up in Toronto, and is now studying composition at a highly respected Estonian music school. We gossiped and listened to Simon and Garfunkel until around 1am.
Wednesday I visited with Reet for a few hours and then hurried back downtown to meet up with Maret. Maret is a personell manager at Viru Hotell downtown, and had invited me to come to the company Christmas party at the Estonian open-air museum at Rocca al Mare. ... Of *course* I had to accept an offer like that. Wednesday evneing was rather cold, a few degrees below freezing, and humidity was around 97%. The ground was covered in a dusting of snow and frozen rain. We arrived at Rocca al Mare at around 4pm and helped finish setting up. The little pub on the museum grounds had been reserved for our Christmas party and was decorated simply and tastefully. The evening started with a candle-lit choir concert in the Sutlepa Chapel and afterwards we all hurried back to the pub and ate, danced and drank for hours. We all had a jolly old time. Once we were finally kicked out of the museum at 10pm we took the bus back into town and carried on at a dance club I probably won't ever go back to.
I got home at around 12:30am.
And then I realized that I hadn't even started packing for my trip to Stockholm yet. I'm spending Thursday-Sunday visiting my uncle in Sweden and have been putting off the tedious chore of actually *packing* for this trip since arriving in Tallinn. ... Bad idea. I ended up having to dig through the piles and piles of clothes that I had simply thrown into black garbage bags last week when I moved out of my dorm room at Tartu. I nearly drowned in my own possessions trying to find my long underwear, but luckily I succeeded and threw them in with the rest of my slightly mis-matched clothes. I sank into bed around 3:15am, dreading the 8am alarm I had set.
But you know how it goes. I inherited the over-preparedness (read: paranoid) gene from mom. So here I am, in the Tallinn airport, two and a half hours early for my flight, surrounded by European businessmen and pots of unimpressive coffee.
Eight more days until I come home... it's starting to sink in that I'm leaving very, very soon. I'm beginning to feel odd, conflicting emotions about the whole thing. But more than anything, above all, I want to be home.
Wednesday night I hosted a White Elephant goodbye party for myself at a cute restaurant/pub in Tartu for my folk dance friends. I was really pleased with how it turned out, mostly just because people showed up. Afterwards we all went clubbing, and at 2am I realized that I needed french fries *right now* and for the first time in my life I had the exciting experience of walking through the Mcdonald's drivethru.
Thursday morning I woke up surprisingly early, packed up 90% of what remained in my room and handed it off to Piret and Margus, who were in town for a funeral.
I then spent the rest of the day wandering around Tartu, doing things and going places I hadn't seen yet. I walked around Jaani Kirik, the Botanical Gardens, Toomemägi, the leaning art museum. My flatmates and I made dinner together for the first and last time. Afterwards we went out for cake and took photos of Christmas lights.
Friday I packed up the last of my room and moved out. My Turkish roommates Tijen and Tugba sent me off at the bus station as snow started to fall.
Margus and Piret picked me up from the Tallinn bus station and we went straight to their summer home in Noa Rootsi. I spent a relaxing weekend drinking mulled wine and playing board games, and Sunday I went to Marje's in Haapsalu.
Monday I came back to Tallinn and visited with Heljo and Nikolai and their children and grandchildren. We watched a video of my solo performance at the 1996 Esto and the subsequent interview. I am always slightly mortified whenever I watch it.
Tuesday I had borsch and mashed potatoes at Heige and Uno's house. I then spent the evening chatting with Riho. Riho is a musical genius and is an ex-patriot Estonian like myself . He was born and grew up in Toronto, and is now studying composition at a highly respected Estonian music school. We gossiped and listened to Simon and Garfunkel until around 1am.
Wednesday I visited with Reet for a few hours and then hurried back downtown to meet up with Maret. Maret is a personell manager at Viru Hotell downtown, and had invited me to come to the company Christmas party at the Estonian open-air museum at Rocca al Mare. ... Of *course* I had to accept an offer like that. Wednesday evneing was rather cold, a few degrees below freezing, and humidity was around 97%. The ground was covered in a dusting of snow and frozen rain. We arrived at Rocca al Mare at around 4pm and helped finish setting up. The little pub on the museum grounds had been reserved for our Christmas party and was decorated simply and tastefully. The evening started with a candle-lit choir concert in the Sutlepa Chapel and afterwards we all hurried back to the pub and ate, danced and drank for hours. We all had a jolly old time. Once we were finally kicked out of the museum at 10pm we took the bus back into town and carried on at a dance club I probably won't ever go back to.
I got home at around 12:30am.
And then I realized that I hadn't even started packing for my trip to Stockholm yet. I'm spending Thursday-Sunday visiting my uncle in Sweden and have been putting off the tedious chore of actually *packing* for this trip since arriving in Tallinn. ... Bad idea. I ended up having to dig through the piles and piles of clothes that I had simply thrown into black garbage bags last week when I moved out of my dorm room at Tartu. I nearly drowned in my own possessions trying to find my long underwear, but luckily I succeeded and threw them in with the rest of my slightly mis-matched clothes. I sank into bed around 3:15am, dreading the 8am alarm I had set.
But you know how it goes. I inherited the over-preparedness (read: paranoid) gene from mom. So here I am, in the Tallinn airport, two and a half hours early for my flight, surrounded by European businessmen and pots of unimpressive coffee.
Eight more days until I come home... it's starting to sink in that I'm leaving very, very soon. I'm beginning to feel odd, conflicting emotions about the whole thing. But more than anything, above all, I want to be home.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thanksgiving 2008
Most years I have a hard time deciding if I love Thanksgiving food or Christmas food more. Maybe I ought to make a list.
Turkey vs. Estonian blood sausage -- Sausage wins.
Mashed potatoes vs. Sauerkraut -- Tie.
Stuffing vs. Sült -- Stuffing wins. By a long shot.
Pumpkin pie vs. Mom's raisin bread fresh out of the oven -- ooohh... tie.
Broccoli goop vs. ...Broccoli goop -- Win. We have this every holiday and it's amazing.
Okay I can't choose. Thankfully, I live in America, where I can celebrate both and I don't have to choose. Poor Estonians. They don't have Thanksgiving. ...That is, most years they don't have Thanksgiving.
Enter Maarika, the Culinarily Enlightened One.
Since Thanksgiving is such a big deal in my family, I knew I was going to feel lonely and depressed witout them. So I decided way back in October that I was going to put on the best Thanksgiving Estonia has ever seen. The first week of November I started organizing menus and talking to my relatives in Tallinn. I e-mailed Mom for recipes. I freaked out a lot. Mom reassured me that my relatives have never had a Thanksgiving before, so if I messed up they wouldn't have anything better to compare it to. Mom found and sent me the gaudiest, corniest Thanksgiving decorations she could find, along with happy Pilgrim cards and cans of pumpkin puree. ... This was the first major holiday meal I was going to be responsible for. This was going to be epic.
On real Thanksgiving, I didn't do much. Went to folk dance practice, ate some gingerbread cookies, listened to ABBA on repeat. On Friday, though, I took the bus up to Tallinn and my Thanksgiving madness began.
Grocery bill: 757.54 EEK (not including the birds)
Number of cooks: 4
Total number of mimosas: 12
Number of pumpkin pies: 2
Total kilos of turkey: 14
Corniness threat level: Orange.
Number of consumers: 12
Number of American flags used: Never enough.
Everything tasted, looked and smelled perfect. My Thanksgiving dinner was such a success that I'm tempted to try it again someday....
But one last thing.
Happy first of December! I'm home in 18 days!
Turkey vs. Estonian blood sausage -- Sausage wins.
Mashed potatoes vs. Sauerkraut -- Tie.
Stuffing vs. Sült -- Stuffing wins. By a long shot.
Pumpkin pie vs. Mom's raisin bread fresh out of the oven -- ooohh... tie.
Broccoli goop vs. ...Broccoli goop -- Win. We have this every holiday and it's amazing.
Okay I can't choose. Thankfully, I live in America, where I can celebrate both and I don't have to choose. Poor Estonians. They don't have Thanksgiving. ...That is, most years they don't have Thanksgiving.
Enter Maarika, the Culinarily Enlightened One.
Since Thanksgiving is such a big deal in my family, I knew I was going to feel lonely and depressed witout them. So I decided way back in October that I was going to put on the best Thanksgiving Estonia has ever seen. The first week of November I started organizing menus and talking to my relatives in Tallinn. I e-mailed Mom for recipes. I freaked out a lot. Mom reassured me that my relatives have never had a Thanksgiving before, so if I messed up they wouldn't have anything better to compare it to. Mom found and sent me the gaudiest, corniest Thanksgiving decorations she could find, along with happy Pilgrim cards and cans of pumpkin puree. ... This was the first major holiday meal I was going to be responsible for. This was going to be epic.
On real Thanksgiving, I didn't do much. Went to folk dance practice, ate some gingerbread cookies, listened to ABBA on repeat. On Friday, though, I took the bus up to Tallinn and my Thanksgiving madness began.
Grocery bill: 757.54 EEK (not including the birds)
Number of cooks: 4
Total number of mimosas: 12
Number of pumpkin pies: 2
Total kilos of turkey: 14
Corniness threat level: Orange.
Number of consumers: 12
Number of American flags used: Never enough.
Everything tasted, looked and smelled perfect. My Thanksgiving dinner was such a success that I'm tempted to try it again someday....
But one last thing.
Happy first of December! I'm home in 18 days!
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