Estonian Day No. 45.

What I forgot to say yesterday: meeting Janika (a girl from class 12 who talks damn good English and kinda looks slightly after me) on the corridor, she told me after a short chat that by now I can say "tšau" without any accent. So first I was reeeeeally happy! And then I thought: how much bloody accent can you have saying a word with only four letters? And if your accent is so bad there - how much worse is it with longer words or whole sentences...? That was the point when I decided to cast my mind off this topic. :D

Today I decided to write a test in ajalugu. I mean, I thought I would have to do it, and then, when our teacher was handing out the test sheets, she asked me if I wanted one too. That was the point when I lost all my panic I had had before and said, very relaxed: "I can try." So I tried. I'll get maximum a 3, but still, I felt good afterwards because I had shown some ambition. Maybe I should've been a little ambitious some time earlier and learned for the test...

In German, I had to talk about the different schooltypes in Germany, and then answer the question whether it's true that only "difficult" people without discipline and immigrants go to Hauptschule. That kind of hit me. I never would've thought of such a question.

After school, Ilona asked me "Did you know that your first physics test was the best one in all the class?" I answered frankly "yes." They had had a teachers' conference and had a look at different test results together. There she had noticed this. Then she said "You had 88% in the first test in English!" So I kinda apologized, and told her that the second one was better, and that I'll try harder in the future. Her reaction: "Do you have some complex?!" That was nice.

Now I just went online on eKool and found out that I got a 5 in the last keemia test. That's soooo great! Already my fourth 5! (Out of the only four grades I got till now!) And in chemistry! Even in Germany I was not always that good...!


Later the same day.

Uuuaaaaah! I am soooo happy! Eva, my host sister in Germany, just told me that she will probably spend a part of her autumn holidays in Gera! And then she will meet my mother, and my sister, and my brother, and my brother-in-law, and my best friend too, maybe! And somehow I am reeeeally excited about this whole thing although it actually doesn't have much to do with me. But still, I love it.

Estonian Day No. 44.

We wrote a test in geograafia today. That one was nice, it was all about stuff I did somewhen in class 5 and somehow still knew. And luckily it was easy stuff that I liked that time - I still remember class 5: lots of tests about this and I always got mark 1 (German mark 1, remember!), then the subject changed and I got a 4. Well...  So today there was only one task which I couldn't do because I didn't understand what to do. So if I got all the rest correct, I'll get a 5 there. ;) I hope so.

Afterwards, we had keemia. Since Eva, my host sister in Germany, had told me that Estonians always write small letters to each other, I discovered that they really do. And I started doing it today, too. In chemistry, we are sitting around octagonal tables in smaller groups, and I - er - communicated with two girls from my table. It might have been clever to do it in English because the teacher wouldn't understand (especially when we told each other how much we liked chemistry...) but we did most of it in Estonian and I used English only when I couldn't express myself in Estonian. So that was really great! I found that my Estonian is already better than I had thought. But writing is always easier than speaking.

Matemaatika was very simple again, as was inglise keele (i just found out via eKool that I got a 5 there), and in ajakirjandus we finished our poster. Now it's not exactly what I would've produced if I had been able to express myself some better, but still, it's pretty good. Then I went on reading "The Amber Spyglass" by Philip Pullman in the library, waiting for Ilona to get home with her.

I just wrote an eMail to my mother. Since it feels like we have potatoes about 35 times a day, I asked her to send me some of her favourite recipes to be able to vary in potatoe-meals.

Since I went to floorball on Monday my feet have been hurting. I had to borrow some shoes from Ilona because I couldn't get my sports shoes clean - I had to use them outside. (Actually, our kehaline teacher doesn't seem to have a clear plan what to do: in one lesson we would go outside and practice spear throw, in the next stay inside and do some rope skipping, then go outside again to have her explain high and crouch start to us, next time we're inside to exercise some võrkpall techniques, and - and this was my (least) favourite lesson - play some floorball inside first and then go outside to do a test in running 500m crosscountry  in the rain.) But her feet are a bit smaller than mine. I thought it wouldn't be too bad and it standing the pain was really not too difficult, but taking on those shoes again would kind of kill me. So I'm gonna go to Tartu next Sunday and have a look for some sports shoes.

And I experience how it feels to abandon someone and miss her so much that it hurts inside my very heart. Kallis, ma armastan sind. Ma tulen kodusse juulis.

Estonian Day No. 43.

In ajakirjandus, we had to do poster about the history of the Estonian journalism - as a time line. I joined a nice group and they decided to do it different than the others. So first they drew the time line zig-zagging across the paper. I helped doing the design. Then I said - as a joke! - "hey, you wanna do it different? Let's do it in English!"

And we did. That was nice, but unfortunately we didn't have enough time to finish it. So we'll do that in the next lesson. 

Matemaatika was funny as always. The teacher explained two different systems of how to write numbers to us. I understood, but many others didn't. That was kinda amusing. I mean, I'm not happy that half of the class doesn't understand, I'm just quite proud of myself when I get what the teacher says even when it's Estonian. I tried to help Ivika, but as usually I was very bad at explaining. :(

In kehaline, there was a moment when the teacher tried to demonstrate something with me and explained it shortly in fast Estonian. I looked at her, confused, and somebody said: "Ta on sakslane!" What did the teacher answer? "Ma tean, ma tean...!" That was weird but somehow funny, too.

Later in the same lesson, Ivika asked me if she and Airen-Anett could interview me for the school newspaper. I agreed. After school, I went with Triin and Kristi to the supermarket near the school and wanted to go home afterwards, when I got a call from my host mother's mobile phone. It was Ivika. I hadn't quite got the fact that she wanted to do the interview right after the lessons. So I went back to school and talked about my Estonian life. In English. That was nice.

Back home, I got quite confused. Leonie called and talked to me in our normal, fast German. Then Ilona came home and we communicated in half English, half Estonian. Sitting on the computer, Kristi chatted with me in English, mixed with some Estonian words from time to time, when Jonas came online and wrote to me in German. So, as always, it was hard not to mix all the languages up! But it was nice to talk to all of  them. Just kinda difficult.

I just finished baking muffins. Cutting in general isn't very nice. And cutting yourself within the first two minutes of baking that will take you more than an hour is not exactly what I would recommend. Cutting yourself in exactly the same place two minutes later is nothing I would recommend at all. Now I'm writing my blog while my muffins more or less slowly (okay, rather less slowly) vanish - depending on how often my brothers and my father walk more or less accidentally (okay, rather less accidentally) along the kitchen. Well, that's a big compliment, isn't it? :D

Later the same day.


Just found it:

Estonian Day No. 42.

Meeting Lisa was fun. I had the description of how to get to the shops and yet we somehow went another way but arrived where we wanted to be all the same. Second-hand shops are really ridiculous. They have some nice stuff sometimes, but only in sizes that no normal person fits in, and everything else you would only wear for theme parties. Luckily, I was looking for something to wear for the reggae theme party next Saturday.

And I really found a nice skirt in the first shop. In this street, there were said to be four or five shops. Lisa and me found three, and one was closed - what a pity! That one seemed to sell everything for 0,30€!!! Well, the next shop was even more funny than the first one though it was much smaller. They had a jacket that was all golden, and trousers made of snake skin. But the stuff there was far cheaper. I even tried one of the four wedding gowns on (who the hell would ever look for a wedding gown in a second-hand shop?!), it was quite pretty, just not very white anymore, and it fit really well, and it was only 12€... But despite this blog's name, reason won and I left it in the shop.

Afterwards, Lisa showed me a nice pizzeria where they had 24cm-pizzas for max. 3€ and we had lunch. It was really tasty! There seemed to be some manga-fans-meeting that day in Tartu, so weird people in strange costumes ran around, also in that pizzeria, but it was fun to watch them.

Later, I brought Lisa to the bus station and met Laura, my younger support person. We went to a nice cafe in Tasku that Kätlin had shown me and where we had celebrated Leonie's birthday, and we had some special house cake - that one is really amazing! Then we walked through the vanalinn and up to Toomemägi, then we already seperated again. Laura was nice, I like her.

Today, I got a 5 in füüsika. I was sooo happy! I am very glad that my teacher always translates the tests for me. That's incredibly kind of him. After choir, I finally managed to talk to my music teacher about where to get a guitar. He showed me a home page and promised to have a look himself and tell me when he finds something. Again and again, there are moments when I can't believe how much the teachers do for me. This was one of them. Another one was when my journalism teacher started teaching half of the lesson in English so that I can understand and participate. I really appreciate that!

I went to the Floorball training today. It was hard because nobody explained anything, but I did my best and I think I wasn't much worse than the other girls. ;) Back home, I talked to Leonie on the phone for half an hour. It just feels too good to speak real German...

Estonian Day No. 41.

 Yesterday was amazing!

Monique's host mother had (some weeks ago) the idea that on the fair in Palamusse all the South Estonian exchange students could come with their families and meet. So we did that yesterday. At about 9o'clock, Ilona, Ahti, Andreas, and me left the house and arrived in Palamusse 40min later. There we walked around. Ilona told me that 40 years ago the most famous Estonian movie (among Estonians) had been filmed in Palamusse and that's why everybody (in Estonia) knows this place. It was really nice, but I still didn't know why we had left so early. The evening before, Ilona had said that we would leave quite early because otherwise there wouldn't be any parking space left. But when we arrived, there was plenty of space, and not many people walked around.

So we met all the others at 11. There were ten of us: Eduardo (MEX), Monique (AUS), Isabell (GER), Lisa (AUT), Ursina (GER), Matthias (GER), Aaron (BEL), Marlis (CHI), Maarie (GER), and me (GER). We talked a lot, but later left our families and had a closer look at the fair. We soon more or less lost each other and went on walking in smaller groups. Step by step, it became clear to me, why we had to come so early: Ursina said, that usually about 20'000 people visit this fair in Palamusse every year, and really, there was an astonishing lot of people there! The shops were nice, and you could find nearly everything: traditional clothes, warm clothes, jewellery, fruits, pans, wellies, soap, candels, books, wooden statues, blacksmith's stuff, ... There were even ten or twelve Krishna Discipals, but they were not for sale.

All the time we had really good luck with the weather, it was very cool (autumn...) but the sun was shining. Later, it rained a lot, so we quickly searched for our families, who wanted to go home anyway. My family had already left, so Lisa's parents brought me to Lähte. When I left their car, the sun was shining again, and all the ground was nearly dry. I started walking home. Five minutes later, it started drizzling. Another two minutes later, it rained hard. The wind was so strong, that the rain came nearly horizontaly from the right. I walked faster and indeed managed the way that I usually needed exactly 30 minutes for in 23 minutes. That was nice.

Today, I'll have a look at Tartu's second hand shops, together with Lisa. Afterwards, I'll meet Laura, my younger support person.

Estonian Day No. 39.

Yesterday was - well, not fine but okay. I'm still alive, ain't I?

After Ilona had said that since it's the Day of European Languages, I might even speak French. I was absolutely shocked of the thought because the more Estonian I learn the more French I forget - but still, the idea of it was somehow attracting.

So, when it was my turn, I walked confidently (or I hope that's what it looked like) to the stage and said three or so Estonian sentences, then added some French which I had carefully prepared in my mind before, talked a bit of German and finally did the main part in English. I even made all the audience laugh. That was great! Unfortunately, I was so nervous that after I had brilliantly said all the part that I had thought of as the beginning, I had forgotten all the parts of whose order I hadn't been certain of and wanted to improvise once I had started speaking. So this kind of went totally wrong and I left about 70% of my almost perfect speech out. After four minutes, they found me begging for specific or just general questions, and after they hadn't any, I remembered some of my half-prepared part and finally left the stage another minute later, probably brightly red all over the face - as always when I'm nervous.

In the evening, we visited a colleague of Ilona's. She is a Mathematic teacher at Lähte ÜG, but I actually saw her for the first time in school today. Her daughter is of the same age as I am and also plays the piano. So when I arrived she showed it to me and I played half of "Sur Le Fil" and when she gave me the guitar I played a part of Katie Melua's "I cried for you" (see also: Three German Days Left.) but I hate steel strings and soon stopped. Then we went downstairs and had really nice tea with Ilona and her colleague. I liked it there.

Leonie and me with our newly
built satellites, she has
her brother's on her head.

Oskar's satellite with a
broken leg, hardly able to
stand for over three seconds.

Today, I panicked because I thought it would be my mother's birthday already next Saturday and I wouldn't be able to send a package in time and half-freaked out, I tried to explain the word "Luftpolsterfolie" in English, then realized that I have another five days' time and finally remembered that it's my father's birthday today. Then I went to Tartu and created satellites with Leonie and her oldest host brother.

Oskar's, my, and Leonie's satellites. 

Estonian Day No. 37.

This morning, Ilona pointed out that I've been in my family for exactly one month already. That kind of hit me - in a nice, but surprising way. Don't know why.

Yesterday, my German teacher asked me if I could tell about my first impressions of my exchange year two days later (tomorrow, Thursday). I agreed.

She said it would be really great, because some guy who just came back from his exchange year in Argentina will talk about that, too, so they thought, I might just add some sentences. I agreed.

She said it might be nice to introduce myself in Estonian, just to show what I've learned already. I was a bit troubled but I had to introduce myself so often here that I knew I would manage that without any bigger problems, and I agreed.

She said, since we did it because of the Day of European Languages, it might make sense to say something in German, too, because some of the students understand it, and do the rest in English. I was really not sure if I could do that because when I have to speak many different languages within little time I get to mix them up, so I took my time until finally I agreed.

I asked what exactly she meant by "the students", so she told me that all of the pupils of the gümnaasium will listen to me. That kind of struck me so surprisingly that I somehow - you're right - agreed.

Afterwards she added that this guy who had been to Argentina will speak for about half an hour so I'll get the other fifteen minutes. After having agreed five times, how could I possibly change my mind then?

So, tomorrow in the first lesson, I'm gonna talk for quite a lot of time in three different languages about my first impressions of Estonia in front of about 250 pupils plus teachers. What the hell went wrong? I am soooo bloody nervous! "I can't do this all on my own, no, I am no superman!"

Estonian Day No. 36.

Thank you, my love.

♥

Estonian Day No. 35.

Leonie became 16 today. Yesterday, Kätlin and I decided to organize a surprise party for her. Today, we organized it - or nearly organized it. We both didn't have any idea how to do it, so in school I thought about just celebrating in the YFU Office in Tartu. So I told it Kätlin and asked her to get some cookies. I got no answer. Sitting in the bus to Tartu, I asked her if she had the cookies already, and how we'd get Leonie to our party. I still got no answer. Having arrived in Tartu, I called her and we met in Kaubamaja, where she and Lisanne were designing a birthday congratulations card. She asked then how we'd meet Leonie and if Ursula or Diina from YFU knew that we were coming. We then realized that we didn't have any plan. Kätlin tried to call Leonie and had no luck, me neither. So I called Ilona to let her call Leonie's host mother and ask if she knew where Leonie was. Then I got Leonie finally on the phone and about 30 seconds later we met. She was really happy about the card and the cookies that Kätlin had got for her.

Together we walked to the YFU Office which was closed (!) though it should have been opened for another 15min. Our plan had totally failed... Instead we just went to a cafe in Tasku and had some cake and a lot of good laughs there. That was an amazing party.

On my bus back to Lähte I cried. I read the message that Jasmin had sent me during my preparation seminar back in Germany, saying that she loved me and was looking forward to having me back soon. 

Estonian Day No. 34.

I went with Ilona, Ahti and Andreas to my host grandparent yesterday and helped to harvest the apples.

Today, I met Kätlin in Tartu, after posting twelve more postcards. We went to a cafe and had some delicious cake. At home again, I finished reading "A Dance With Dragons" and baked muffins.

Estonian Day No. 32.

After we had come home last Sunday, we made apple juice from the apples Ilona and Ahti had harvested in the grandparents' garden:

 

 On Tuesday, I started writing songs again. German lyrics. I just was suddenly inspired in the middle of the physics lesson. I need a guitar. Seriously. Gonna talk to my music teacher on Monday.

I also sent a package. Kaie from my class was so kind to help me but still we spent about 20mins in the post office in Lähte - never thought that it might be that complicated to send a simple package...

On Wednesday, I went to Tartu to meet Leonie there. After some complications buying the ticket, I arrived safely. ;) I withdraw some money, took my photos in the photoshop, went to Hesburger, bought some postcards and stamps (yes, again...) and ate Kohuke and ice cream with Leonie. That was nice.

Yesterday was the highlight of the fox week. During the fox week, the pupils from 10th class (the foxes) have to do everything the pupils from 12th class tell them to do. Yesterday, we all had to come to school in clothes of the other gender (girls in boys' clothes and the other way round) and carry around our school stuff in bowls. In the morning, we had to eat all kinds of disgusting stuff. Getting it down was nearly impossible, keeping it down even harder. We also did a lot of funny games.

In the afternoon, we got blindfolded and they crashed a raw egg on our heads. Then they would take us by the hand and lead us all over the school grounds and we had to do different tasks, including running (over the grass) and crawling (through sand and mud) and jumping (in puddles) and rolling (downhill) and turning (in between all this to get confused and dizzy) around. That was great!

Ahti took me and Ilona home. There I first had a loooong shower to get all the egg, mud, and paintings of marker and lipstick off my body. Later, I went to a party with Rainis and Juhani.

Today, I was really tired - as always. School was okay, at home I slept for two hours and talked to Leonie on the phone for another hour. Now I'll get myself something to eat.

Estonian Day No. 27.

On Wednesday I had four tests (English, Mathematics, Chemistry, and Media) of which I wrote two (English, and Mathematics) and a half (Chemistry), and of those I understood one (English) and a half (Mathematics). 

On Friday we had sportipäev. It was nearly nice. :D We had some team disciplines like tug-of-war and only three others. So that was okay. In Estonia, they have three sports' days every year: this one was the first because it was the National Day of Health. And really - I didn't hurt myself! That was very surprising, especially after what happened in Germany... 

Afterwards, I went to Tartu to meet Leonie. I bought some birthday presents for several people and new postcards and stamps - total assets: 14,28€. Later, we met Aaron and Isabell by accident and walked along the city together.

Saturday - the day after -, I tidied up my room and wrote my 18 (eighteen!) postcards. Then I took the bus to Tartu and met Leonie. We ate Kohuke and postet my postcards. Then we met Isabell and afterwards Aaron and his support person Susan (by purpose). We went to Hesburger. After having eaten, we sat around in a park. Leonie, Isabell and I left to visit Kätlin, who was ill and couldn't join us in town. (On the way, we ate Kohuke.) There we watched some videos of her former parties and had a look at the photos of her exchange year in Russia. Isabell told us about a great pizzeria, so we went there and ate pitsa. 

Isabell and Leonie with a statue holding a guitar case.

On the way to Statoil, where Juhani would pick us up, we took some photos. In Statoil, I ate a bar of Daim. That made all in all five (!) "meals" in Tartu within seven hours. Well...

Juhani brought Leonie home and some time later, we arrived at our place. Isabell stayed with me that night. We had some tea (I had caught a cold) and went to bed.

Today, we slept long (yay!) and had pannkoogid. Then, Ilona asked us whether we wanted to come and visit the grandmother or whether we would like to stay in Tartu while they visited her. Since I wanted to have a look at a beautiful cemetery I had seen on my trips to Tartu and the weather was great for taking photos, Isabell joined me and Ilona and Ahti brought us there. 

After having taken lots of photos, we walked to the kesklinn and had some Kohuke on the way there. - Die Tendenz geht zum Zweit-Kohuke...

 

 

A bus to Jõgeva came, so Isabell went home from Tartu already. I walked around in the city - Kätlin visited her own grandmother, too, so she couldn't meet me - and bought an English pocket guide of Tartu and another present. Ilona called some minutes later and we went home together.