Projekti „Aktiivne noorsootöö Valgamaal“ toetab SA Archimedese noorteagentuur Erasmus+ programmist.
By the time I am writing this, there is snow everywhere. It’s so amazing to wake up and that the first thing you see was snow covering even the smallest leave, that my mornings are not bad anymore. I feel like a kid when I’m going by the streets kicking mounds of snow and I know that people here think there is something wrong with me, but this is so new to me that I don’t want to pretend not being happy. I feel blissful with this kind of winter. And yes I have tried to eat snow from the sky.
There is just one little thing wrong with Estonian winter. I am having some troubles with the daylight, or the lack of daylight to be more accurate. Even though I am quite active, when I leave work around 6 o’clock, it’s already dark and my body understands this as bed time. Drinking a lot of caffeine doesn’t seem healthy or effective. So please, help me giving me some tricks or advise to endure that situation. PLEEEEEASE. Me, Nadja and Nina will be eternally in debt with you (Tolly is always closed studying Estonian so he doesn’t care).
Anyway, my friends came to visit me, or Tõrva, or both!!! They arrive on Friday so they came with me to work. We played with my youngsters volleyball and they were amazed about my work place in Ritsu. That day I take them to the caves in Helme and even if it was dark soon, they were impressed with the landscape and the ruins of the castle.
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So, another question for locals, there is a lot of history about soviet times, but you have medium age castles and Tallinn's Old Town is one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe. Where can I find more info about that if there is (besides Wikipedia)? It can be a book, a museum or we can have a coffee if you want.-
On Saturday another friend was joining us and our place weren’t so full ever. It was really nice to be all together spending quality time –that was the day that Tõrva high school was celebrating its 100th anniversary- and enjoying the fireworks.
We also had our own party at home playing some card games and Twister. After that we went to Judas, the local pub, as everybody because we find a lot of people we already knew and we met new ones.
So a big and short night but enoght to show our friends how we live here even-though we are not in the city.
The Sunday was full of amusement. As the –almost official- mum of the group I had to wake up everybody. Task much more difficult as you could imagine. I prepared the breakfast and we all started the day. After get ready to go outside, we took the discs and we headed the way to play Disc golf in the forest. I had never played that. EVER. But I got a great 2nd position. Even it started to snow we didn’t care and our guests had a nice tour in the forest. They were impressed about our life in Tõrva. In the afternoon, after have lunch the plan turn more relaxed and we cuddle in the sofa watching ‘It’. It isn’t scary at all but thanks to Nadja, Haris and Philipp I’ve got several scares. That night everybody left and me and Nadja decided not to guest anybody for some long time.
There is another thing I want to share with you because I was also visiting some new places. Again I was in Tallinn to meet my friends there. I and Nina needed to go to Tallinn for ‘work’ issues on Sunday so we went some days earlier to enjoy a full weekend there. I’ve been in Kaila waterfalls in the outside of Tallinn, around 1hour away. It was kind of Spanish meeting because only the Spanish people in Tallinn had a day off. We took some photos, we talk a lot and we had lunch in the stares of one posh house that torn out to be a hotel/museum/restaurant. That night we were having some fun in the city in a cool pub called Red emperor’s. You can play pool there and people are always up for a match. Next day we woke up to start a wonderful trip destination Narva. We arrive there really late and it was already dark so we couldn’t see much but the entire road trip made it worth it. The next photos are examples of this.
On Sunday we had a visit to the museum Lennusadam. The fact of arriving there were itself an adventure cause thanks to our Tallinn friends’ instructions we got lost –just a bit, Google maps is the greatest-, but anyway, we were the first to arrive to the museum. BUMM! Again we enjoy like children. There are a lot of activities and the whole museum is an interactive activity. We learned plain of things related with the sea, security measures, how strong a 15km/s storm can be, how amazing we look in captain’s uniforms and please, -that is an especially advice for my Tallinn friends- don’t fall in the Baltic sea, it’s 8ºC and that is become horribly frozen in less than 3min as we were taught.
3 days after this little trip, we assisted to ‘Lahe koolipäev’ which motto is ‘meie vabadus’. It was absolutely fantastic. They fulfilled the event with several performances, a lot of good food, interactive activities and a bunch of gifts. Now I am all time listening to ‘NOËP - Rooftop’ thanks to the performance of Andres Kõpper, I know that the song of ‘Siin me kokku saime’ that is everywhere means ‘we met here’ and I saw the most famous actor in Estonia, Tõnis Niinemts, almost fall when he was fancying in a hoverboard – ‘¡Por chulo!’ We will say in Spain- but I think that the most emotive performance was thanks to Rasmus Puur and his band. This last musician and also compositor got on me chicken skin when his band played one of the Estonian national songs and everybody stood up singing. I had a sample of the singing nation in a workday.
It looks like winter has arrived and in the Defence League we are already panning the 2018 summer camp. I am so excited with all the possibilities that this brings! And Nina too! We are already dreaming with that! Like kids. I have a theory about this activities and it is related with who will enjoy the most.
ES:
No tengo ni idea de cómo resumir este Noviembre, pero mi agenda tiene Diciembre lleno y es lo único que me llena la cabeza ahora mismo. La Navidad y las fiestas. Si me dejáis cambiar el resumen en español por una reflexión de lo que he vivido, esta sería que cada día me veo más en un país como Estonia. Aquí tienes que hacerte un hueco en la gente y eso cuesta, no es como en España que, a veces, la gente se muestra dispuesta a todo en el momento de conocerte y luego, más tarde esas palabras ya no tienen valor. En España sabemos que eso es así, estamos conformes con lo que significa fingir en orden a preservar un ambiente amigable y de fiesta. Aquí la gente tiene su vida y sus rutinas y, aunque aún tengo que descubrir como lo hacen para conseguir crearlas si las relaciones son tan estrechas en el sentido de pocas y cortas, ellos no se molestan en iniciar una charla de ascensor y el ‘Hola, ¿qué tal?’ es bastante inútil desde su perspectiva, pues la conversación debe de estar fundamentada en algo con peso. Puede parecer que el gobierno les cobra por hablar y puede parecer que son raros (y lo son en ese sentido y, recalco, desde nuestra perspectiva), pero la gente es amable, buena y humilde. Y estoy rodeada de esa gente lo que hace que yo sea así también. Un dato, Estonia tiene a Noviembre de 2017 1.315.635 habitantes, las posibilidades de hacer, de alcanzar, de experimentar, de crear y vivir están al alcance de todos y ahora también al mío.
