Monday, March 30, 2009

Friendlies!!

So. Goodness.

I went to "make sauna" on Saturday with the Estonian runners, and as usual it was ridiculously hot. But I met, Aloh, their best middle distance runner, who is fresh from his months in the Estonian army (its a requirement for every male to serve 8-11 months). Mario, Rainier, and Ander was there as well. It was a good evening, much talk, and I was better hydrated, so I was able to stand 4 trips into the sauna this time. But yes, I still sweat TONS in the 170 degrees Fahrenheit. But it was good.

Then I caught up briefly with Genevieve, Peter, and Kelsey who were having dinner with Indrek and Christina - new Estonian friends. It was a pleasant conversation, but I had to go to bed earlier than normal, because I was exhausted - a theme of late for some reason.

Sunday

I got a call... early... 7AM. My good friend, Alison, was in Estonia!! Alison and I went on the Rhodes Maymester to St Petersburg, Russia last year. We also have worked Orientation for Rhodes together and had a few classes. Needless to say, I love spending time with Alison. But she's been spending this semester in Yaroslavl', Russia on an EXTREMELY intensive Russian language program. This week is her spring break, so she and her friend, Katie, decided that it was time to leave Russia (considering they got their re-entry visas finally). So they took a train to Tallinn, and then they bused down to Tartu...

...Except at 7AM they missed their bus. Daylight savings occurred in Europe on midnight on Sunday, and nobody told them (I totally forgot, as always with daylight savings). So they got on a bus an hour later and headed to Tartu. 730AM I get another call, this time from Kelsey. She and Peter remembered that it was daylight savings, and knew that I had forgotten and went to the train station to pick up the "Ruskies". But the "Ruskies" had missed the bus, although the gesture was not lost on me. I have such good friends here!

But Alison and Katie arrived just fine, and we went to Werner (my new favorite place) for some much-needed coffee and breakfast. We traded stories about study abroad, crazy host families, cultural differences, thoughts on home, everything. Then Peter, Kelsey, and Genevieve came to do their Sunday homework, so we chatted with them for a while. Then I took the Ruskies to the art museum (so worth a second trip) and a souvenir shop. Then we walked around town - Toome Hill, Town Hall Square, Main University Building, Great Cathedral "ruins", St John's, etc. Then we ducked into an Italian place for some much needed "heavily-flavored food". They loved it.

Luckily, Sunday night was also the night of a free choir concert at the University Main Building, featuring the University of Tartu Female and Mixed Choirs. SOOOOO good. It was a wonderful cultural experience for me and the Ruskies, and it was just wonderful. Singing is HUGE in Estonia, so of course, these choirs were amazing. But afterwards, we sprinted to the bus station and they headed back to Tallinn.

It was a packed, yet seemingly short, day. But Alison and Katie LOVED Estonia, and they loved Tallinn (luckily they had 2 days in Tallinn once they returned). So I was happy to hear such adoration - made me feel like I was living in the coolest place on earth. And I think I am. I mean, by the end of the semester, I will have travelled to every major city in Estonia and seen most of the country. I will have a great sense of this country, and I am happy about that. I do wish I was in Russia, totally immersed in the language. But hearing their difficulties with their host families and communicating, made me think twice about that and has restarted the nervousness about the Novgorod Internship. Eh, whatever.

Monday

Well, today I woke up and had breakfast (duh). Then I had a 4-hour lecture in my Soviet Experience course... WOW. Most of the class apparently forgot, so there were only 12 of us in the lecture... WOW. The first 2 hours were great, and we had a pretty good discussion concerning the Brezhnev era. I actually was quite entertained. But then we started talking about Gorbachev era... and that DRAGGED for 2 hours. Quite frustrating. But it was good class overall. I am excited that we're finally at this point, because now we get to discuss the Transformation of Russia!!! This class is taught my a history professor, so it's MUCH more historical than I would like, but now we'll be getting into more of the stuff that I drool over... hopefully.

The professor invited is to Maime (*mime*) for drinks after the lecture, but I had to go run. I would have very much liked to have gone... and Sascha (USA) went and told me that it was a lot of fun, even though there was just the prof and 2 students. I felt bad and sad...

But today on my run, I decided that I had enough of the ice trail. While I enjoy the trail very much, the slippery ice and terrible running conditions have started getting to me. I need a change. So I'm going to run on the sidewalks around town. I have avoided this, because my shins are susceptible to stress fractures due to my nearly flat footedness. But running on ice isn't much better for them, and I know I've lost some endurance-based speed on the ice, and I need to get it back. So I'm just increasing the anti-stress fracture routines, and I'm running on sidewalks.
Today I ran on the eastern half of the city that's north of the river (east of my dorm). I ran along a major road, so the exhaust wasn't pleasant... and some of the houses were burning something, so there was increased smoke from the nothingness along the river, but it was nice. I basically ran along the vast majority of the Soviet-era apartment complexes where most of Tartu's citizens live. I had seen them at night, but seeing them in person in the daytime was interesting. Most of them were similar to the complexes I lived in when I was in St Petersburg last year, although the buildings were much smaller. Obviously Tartu wasn't high on the construction list, unlike St Petersburg, but I at least had some experience to compare to.

Overall the run went well, but I am lacking overall "endurance speed", but I'll get it back after several days of sidewalk running. Wednesday I think I might run to the HUGE greenhouses east of the city. They give off an eerie orange glow at night, and in some spots in town make it look like the sun is perpetually setting. It'd be interesting to see these things... hahaha. We'll see. I get my Russian exam back tomorrow *EEEEK* (no response from my professor), and I have a 3-hour lecture in EU/Russian relations. Let's see how this goes.........

Oh, and Happy Re-United Americans after the Estonian choir concert!!





And my favorite paintings in the Art Museum:





















1 comment: