What's in Estonia?: You Tell Me

Okay, so I haven’t written in a while, and this is bad. So what have I been up to?

Most importantly, a detail I forgot to mention last week, despite its importance. On Tuesday, I ran with an Estonian!! One of the guys on the team was apparently slated for a workout, and so he just hopped in with mine. It was wonderful!!! It was my first time running with another human being in over 5 weeks. But it was also a tease. It hasn’t happened again yet. And this week, I got my ass handed to me, because I was dehydrated (unbeknownst to me at the time). So a quick up and a quick DIVE for the bottom. wee.

Well, classes upon returning to Helsinki were crap. I went to class on Monday… and proceeded to learn nothing new about the USSR. Ugh. On Tuesday my group presented our case for “the international performance of Russia depends on the economic situation of Putin’s Russia”. It was a vague topic, we were not given a clear agenda, and so our grade is equally nebulous. Our professor said he would see other presentations before arriving at a final score. Ugh. Then I RACED to Law (the class I missed last week) to discover that it had been cancelled without my knowing. *GUNBLAST*

Fortunately, Russian language class was stimulating this week, as the professor realized the class’ overall level and upped the difficulty. I am pleased. It’s engaging, and it is possible to learn a little. Yay. Unfortunately, I was RACING to my Law course, because I received a package from the Migration Board rejecting my health insurance. woot. I am currently trying to work this out. Stupid heads…

I also am getting nervous because I have not heard from my internship in Novgorod, Russia to work in the orphanage. And I get very nervous when my plans don’t flesh out quickly. So I’ve been somewhat of a wreck waiting to see what happens. I won a scholarship to go on that program, but they’re taking an unnecessarily long time to do everything. This = frustrating.

So what has gone well this week?!

Well, let me tell you that as well.

Due to my angst over the Novgorod internship, I contacted an acquaintance of mine who lives in Abakan, Russia - in the Khakassia oblast (not to be confused with Abkhassia – where the Georgian crisis occurred). But this is southern Siberia and the area containing the largest array of burial sites from prehistoric times in Central Asia – it’s known as the Central Asian Archeological Mecca. So if Novgorod fails and this idea pans out, I’ll get to work in archeological digs in the morning and teach English in the afternoons/evenings. I hope this maybe works out? I’ve wanted to go to Abakan ever since I met this friend, and this would be an incredible way of doing it!!

And tonight, I rejoined with my old flatmates, Timofey and Auda, to see a movie about the Soviet occupation. It was a documentary of RIDICULOUSLY intense proportions. It was the most brutally graphic demonstration of the USSR’s repression that I’ve ever seen. What a downer… But I joined them with a colleague of theirs (a native Estonian) and we discussed the film afterwards. It was a very interesting discussion of purpose, historical identification, societal perception… *sigh* I was in heaven. It was lovely.

AAAANNNNDDD… Out of this discussion, it was revealed to me that the Estonian knows a Russian who runs a camp just east of Lake Baikal in Russia. This to the east of Khakassia, just above Mongolia. But these camps are “constantly in need of English speakers”. So she’s gonna see if her friends is organizing camps this summer, and I may be able to work there also!!! Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world (almost 2 miles deep) and has its own species of seal that inhabits it. But working in a camp where I get to be in a bilingual environment?!?! And a summer camp in southern Siberia would be rural living to the max. Definitely a more “trying” summer – although the orphanage would hardly be a “walk in the park”.

The orphanage program is still my number one pick, but if I could go do archeological digs and teach English or work a camp for Mongolian minorities in Russia… That would be awesome as well. I hope something fleshes out in these programs… Anything!

But today I went around with Kelsey and Genevieve all around Tartu. We decided that we had been tourists in Helsinki, but we hadn’t been tourists in the very town we lived in. So here are some pictures of the churches in Tartu – my main fascination when sight-seeing. Churches were just built to inspire, so I find them more interesting than government offices. Let’s face it. Hahaha.