1/31/2011

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes.....

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spring is all around me, and so the feeling grows....
I am making my own version of this song now as they did in the "Love Actually" movie.
Today when I came to Tartu from the village, the sun was shining. And the sun was warm. It wasn't the cold sunny typical Estonian winter day as the snow was melting a bit and I felt once again that the spring is close. In the UK there's already +5 degrees and I guess the flowers are blooming or starting to do so.
The feeling that spring is coming, is so good. You can feel the energy rushing through your body, you're smiling when you see the roads that are almost clean from the snow or have wet snow on them. It's not muddy yet, but it's not a lot of snow everywhere either. The perfect warm winter weather. You feel like you could do everything now. It's like waking up from a long sleep or dream. It's probably typical for Estonians that when winter comes, they become more closed up and smile a lot less than they do in the summer. People are more tired. Well, this is actually psychological. There's a thing in our brain that's named suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) that stimulates in the pineal gland the synthesis of melatonin from serotonine. This synthesis is dependant on the amount of light. The less light there is, the more melatonin is produced. Production and the effects of melatonin are starting to influence us couple of hours before going to sleep and it's the duration of the influence is directly dependant on the length of the dark period. Melatonin makes people more sleepy and also reduces their body temperatures. So, the more dark time we have here in Estonia, the sleepier we are. And people don't smile often when they are tired. They just want to go to sleep.
In the spring the days are getting longer, there's not that much dark period any more and people feel like waking up. Easy logic.
That's why this sunny, warm, spring-alike weather makes me feel the way I do. I get hints that it's time to wake up. Time to live more than ever.
Which I shall do with my greatest pleasure.


1/25/2011

My 2011 so far

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I am all the time promising myself that I'll post the things I've done this year to here. Unfortunately I'm still too lazy. But I'll at least try to write some things down.
So...
My new year kicked off in the village. I was there until the evening of the 1st. It wasn't anything special. I wasn't in the mood to celebrate, so being in the village was good. On the second I went to Värska with my family where I saw a lot of people I know. Estonia is still very small. (and gets smaller every day) So I had my first exam on the 5th f January and on the same evening I had my first leaving party with psychos. We went to Püssikas and stayed there the whole evening. It was great and being together with psychos is always very interesting. I think if there had been any no-psychos then they would have been bored or they would have looked at us as if we are some kind of freaks. Inside topics are always so great. So, we had really great time and later at night we decided to crash into a leaving party of our (or some of us) friend. This was in the other end of the town. So we went there. On the way we had fun in the Raekoja plats and were fighting in snow. I ended up very snowy. The person who was supposed to leave, was Heili. So in her place I saw a lot of people I know from my high school. It was really great. When it got time for Heili to go and catch her bus, me and some people decided to take the taxi home because some people had the exam in psychology the following morning. Bless them! They still came to my party! I just love my friends! So I when I finally got home, I just went to sleep.
The following day I went to Tiina's birthday and made some homework. On the seventh I went to the village office to help Huko with some EVS stuff. In the evening I went to O's place with L and H was also there. We chatted and had a great time. We visited H&L also, as he lives right next to O. (I know it sounds weird when I write with short names, but it's better like this. People can't track everybody so easily). The following day or something like that I went to the village as there were some trainings and I was supposed to volunteer also. It was great because I watched movies with L and M and there was also some sauna... I also was a hairdresser for O and coloured her hair with Henna paste at night in sauna. I stayed in the village altogether until the morning of 16th. I met some EVS volunteers from Viljandi and me and M planned our leaving party.
On the 17th and 18th I was in Tartu. I had my last exam. After that I went to Rõuge to see some of my friends and have a very delayed christmas party with them. I taught Maris and Maive to play Carcassonne. On the 21st I went back to Tartu. Some people from the village were supposed to come to my apartement for a party. It was a great party and we had so much fun. M spilt some wine on the corridor floor and once the noise got too loud so my neighbour came to knock on my door to ask if we had killed someone and told us to be more quiet. Most of the people stayed overnight so we had to sleep like fish in a tin. But it was okay. The following morning when I was supposed to go to my choir camp, I decided that I will go in the afternoon, so it was plenty of time to wake up and come back to reality again. My apartement was a mess, but we had had a great time. I also met a friend of L who's working in Tallinn. He's a psycho, too.
On Saturday afternoon I went to Nõo because of my choir camp. I learnt some new songs... Good. Now I have sang all the songs in the songbook for at least once so that's good. In the evening I got back to Tartu with Kaspar, so I got back fast. I had time to clean up my apartement. :)
The following morning I went skating with Karo and some inhabitants and co-inhabs to Lauluväljak. It was really good to skate again after a year's brake. I didn't fall down once and skated most of the time with one inhab. It was great. The more time we had spent skating, the better she got at it. Karo has always got so many great ideas about different things to do with the inhabs outside the village. She's just awesome.
On Sunday afternoon I came home and had this problem with the machines.
Right now I'm still at home but I will go to the village and then to Tartu for Helikoosolek and back to village tomorrow. And I will have my pre-departure this weekend. It came so suddenly, but at least I will have this done. Then I'm free from that in Feb. It's gonna be a busy week and the next one will be busy as well.
At least I remembered everything I have done so far. It's impressive...

And it's a long post again....

1/24/2011

7 years old and still acts like a 1-year old puppy...

6

I love my dog. He never grows up. Or it seems so.
Every time I decide to go for a walk with him, he's acting the same- barking and jumping around and just can't sit still until I change his collar. When going outside the house then he tries to open the door and then runs. But the collar isn't that long. Only about 10m. So he stops and tries to pull me along. Luckily I have learnt not to fall down or slip along with that dog. In the beginning e.g. when it was muddy outside, then I was just dragged along with my crazy dog. So, when walking my dog has no solidarity, that a dog of his age should have, at all. He just walks from left to right, jumps whenever he seems to notice something interesting next to the road. And he digs. He digs big wholes into the snow or in the ground if that's possible. When he is halfway below the ground or under the snow, he looks a lot like a santa or a mudangel. Lovely. And sometimes he manages to catch a mouse, so he throws it into the air, catches and tortures and uses it like a bubble gum. It's rude for the mouse, but I can't save the mouse- I'd get bitten. And finally he eats the mouse. It really looks disgusting... But that's my dog. And then he finds a new place to dig. He sometimes chases birds and runs around in the garden without noticing where he's running. So it's not so rare that he crashes into a building or garden.
Right now he's asleep next to me. So calm. So big. So lovely. And my sister's crazy cat is also sleeping in weird poses next to my dog. I'm in a Zoo. Lovely zoo.
I'm gonna miss my dog and it's crazyness when I'll be gone.
At least Danny recognizes my voice in the phone when it's put on the speakers. He starts to lick the phone.... But when I'm having a video conversation with my family then Danny just looks at the camera really weird. Like seeing a ghost or something like that.
So calm. Not teasing each other but both are sleeping (my sister's cat is also in the picture). Cute.

1/23/2011

Some follow-up letters sometimes turn out to be funny....

2

1 - Go to wikipedia and hit random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to flickr.com and click on “explore the last seven days”. Third picture no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use photoshop or similar (picnik.com is a free online photo editor) to put it all together.
5 - Post it with this text in the caption.

I usually don't do things that are said in this kind of letters but this one sounded interesting. This turned out just funny and a really great composition.

Machines really don't like me

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Today it seems that almost all the machines in the world are hating me. I firstly tried to give away my empty bottles in Lembitu Konsum but the machine broke right before I could go... It wasn't full, it broke. Then I walked through half the city with my big bags full of bottles and in Tartu pood I could finally give them away.
When I finally got to the bus station I wanted to take some cash out because I didn't have enough for my bus ride. The bus just drove to the departure place and then I discovered that both- Tasku and the bus station automats were broken. Nice. So I missed that bus and went to Kaubamaja to take some cash out. I wanted to take 5 Euros. The machine only allowed 10 Euros as the minimum. Okay. I took 10. What if I didn't have that much money on my account? What if I had only like 7 Euros? I so hate this Euro stuff.... It seems that I have so little money and it all goes away fast, also...

But, right now I'm on the bus and driving home. And imagine my surpise- the Wifi in this bus is actually working! When I came to Tartu then it didn't work....

Oh, and it was a great Friday night. I'll write about that when I get home. It's hard to type in here as the bus is moving...

1/20/2011

Freedom!

6

After a very long time I decided I need to post something. I haven't been very motivated to post something here. But now....
I just came back from my youth center where I signed my EVS contract. I found out that my weekly pocket money is pretty good, I will have a possibility to use a bicycle in UK, my first two days will be some kind of introduction of the surrounding area for me, a shopping, some trainings... Sounds like a really cool project. I'm happier than I've been in a long time.
I also got today my last exam results and will hand in the application for a free from school tomorrow. Total freedom for the whole month.
Me and Matthias will have a leaving party in the village next week also.

Right now I'm already waiting to go. Of course, it's a bit sad to go, but I know I will love my life there as much as I will love it here. And what's life without challenges and adventures. My biggest adventure so far is about to begin.
I'm sad that I have to leave my friends behind and I will miss a lot of people here. There are so many things I wish I had time to do here, but.... I'll come back after a year. I've already agreed to go to see G on my first free weekend, I've agreed to see my old classmate in Weston also.
I will enjoy my last month in here as much as possible.

Right now I will go to make some bread. I put it to come up yesterday evening and it is now double the size it was yesterday. Yummy.
And tomorrow.... I will have a small party with my friends from the village in my apartement. And the choir camp will be this weekend.

I've already started to fill my free time.

I just can't control myself.... :)

1/07/2011

1

I just got feeling that I wan't to do some beautiful mathematical calculations. With x-s and y-s in it.
I haven't done it more than a year now....

1/04/2011

1/03/2011

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My lecturer had written into his slides the word "guitar" in Estonian with g, not with k :) Nice!

Welcome year 2011!

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It's time for a new post.
Firstly, I will tell that the year when my blog was full of quotes, is over. I will upload the last quote of 2010 when I get back to my apartment tomorrow.
So, the first thing I said this year was "Welcome Euro" in a very ironic way. My year exchange was calm and I'm happy about it. It didn't feel like the time to party. I have no idea what this year brings to me, there is Euro now...I guess I'll party when the feeling is right. Maybe this week, because, I will probably get my EVS answer. Who knows...
Anyway.
About 2010: it was probably the most amazing year I have ever had in my life. It was full of happiness, new people, friends, a lot of action, great time, work, school and everything I enjoyed. I had a great summer, a busy autumn. The weather was ideal for me- very hot and very cold. A lot of things happened. It was the year of changes. I guess I grew a lot more during this year in my mind than I did during the past years. So far I can tell that 2010 was perfect. I will miss it.

This year has been okay so far- I've worked, made gingerbread, played guitar (I can finally play "Machines" in a way that it sound similar to original), gone to Värska, studied, received my first exam result of this year and so on.
And I've had luck in avoiding touching the Estonian Euro. I guess it won't be for long, but I'll do my best to avoid it as long as possible :)

So, I hope to find out about my future tomorrow, although tomorrow is a promise to no one, as I have learnt....