Alright, part two of today´s catch up on blogging. Essya´s trip to Estonia and our fall vacation together. Essya, as most of you know, is on exchange right now in Hungary, and being the only person from home I know on the continent, as well as being fantastic and an amazing friend, we obviously had to get together, so she flew out here on Oct 27th so that we could hang out for a week. My host brother and I went to pick her up, all that great stuff, we were having a horrible rain storm, we went home, talked way too much. Exciting stuff happened on Saturday when we went out to the farm that my host mom´s, Tiina, friends boyfriend owned. It was really beautiful, and it started snowing, and we watched movies that night, then went to sleep. The next day we woke up, and went on a walk around the farm, which was more of a guest ranch type thing, quite beautiful, all sorts of different places to sleep and things to do. We then drove to his saloon, which had buffalo in the building that you could pet and all sorts of cool decorations. It was sorta like a petting zoo, and you could feed the pigs and different animals, pretty neat. After this we went to his new milking facility for the cows, which was pretty cool, not a great sound, but I met a true Estonian milk cow, which has no horns, and we even managed to get Essie to pet it. The really not pleasant part was when we went to the next barn, which smelled terrible. We then went to the Toila spa, which has 6 saunas, a play pool and a real swimming pool, and the 4 younger of us splashed around and had a generally pretty good time. Then we went to a hotel, which we were quite certain was a front for some Russian mob stuff, but it was pretty nice. Next day we went to Narva, which is on the Russian boarder, Essya saw Russia for the first time, I had already been there before, and it again was really cool to be that close to Russia, hard to describe. then we went home.
Tuesday was Halloween, and we went out to a party, although we left the costumes behind, but people dressed up, although Halloween really isn't celebrated over here. Wednesday Essya met Katie, Arik, Gustavo, Rogério and Zaki, the south African from YFU, another exchange program, and we went out for dinner, and then out dancing. We had a good time, but Essie, the fashionista that she is, wore lovely, skin bearing shoes, which we then made her wander all over the downtown of Tallinn in. Needless to say, her feet were cold.
Friday we went out again with Zaki, and some of his friends from exchange who were living in Tartu, which was great, because Zaki left on the 28th of November, and we needed to see as much as possible of him as we could, he was really fun to be around. Saturday Essya took our family out for Indian food, and my host dad and counsellor, Vallo, said that I should probably be able to see Essya in March, which would be fantabulous, (mix between fantastic and fabulous). We met my new host family that night, had dinner with them, and they seemed pretty nice, although the little girl, Lisanna didn't talk to me all that much, even if i tried my Estonian (i know now that she talks a lot and is really great).
Next day, Sunday, Essya had to leave, but not before we wandered around Old Town Tallinn, in and out of churches and other buildings. We had cake and pie at a really great café that I had found, and we hung out until we had to take her to the airport, which was obviously pretty sad, but it was better knowing I would see her in 4-5 months rather than 9 months.
That was my week with Essya in October, which was really great. I will write about November, which was pretty boring, and my Lapland trip maybe later today or tomorrow.
love you all and hope you are all doing well, getting ready for Christmas or whatever you celebrate, if not, not getting sick. Elisabeth