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.
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