Day Three: I LIVE HERE! Day Four: Water would've been a good choice last night.

So, I’m piecing together my life from the last day and a half, so bear with me if this is scattered.

Yesterday, we met with Don (the director of the International School) and Karolina, my teacher, and chatted and gave them their large things of paperwork, and toured the school.  It’s SOOOOO FANTASTIC I love it so much.  

My school!  The International School of Estonia

The school is brightly colored, and they are all such wonderful people. 

I start meetings tomorrow, so I’m excited to get started with that.  Karolina is excited to get started with me, and I am very excited to start learning from her and it’ll be a really cool experience.  I’m thrilled.

Cafeteria... Don said the food is good 3 days out of the week, 1 day its phenomenal, and 1 day it's like "Well I probably wouldn't choose to eat that again..."

 After that, we walked around Tallinn for a while, and saw the sights of the whole area… we went to the music academy and to the US Embassy, and we poked around Tallinn looking in different shops and eating lunch.  It was great.   The weather was very nice, and it was a great day for walking around.

We met up with Tiina and then went to have a drink with her, while we waited for Virgo Veldi (famous Estonian sax player) and Siim (teacher at the music high school type thing, also a sax player) to come to dinner with us.  We ate dinner and drank…perhaps more of the latter than we should have but… it was a good night.  I had filet mignon with wild mushroom sauce, a little salad, and a baked gold potato We were in a jazz club, and there was a live performance with this great bass player named James who, as it turns out, is from Detroit and has family all over Ohio, and knew where Van Wert and Lima and all those places were.  He was really awesome, and gave us a shout out so that was super cool too.  Then I met these people from Finland who were sitting behind us, and literally the one girl Mari came up and asked me if I was American, and then asked me what the ____ I was doing in Estonia, because it’s so small and America is so big and why would I leave there?  I ended up chatting with the Finnish people for a long time, and hanging out with them, and they want me to come visit them, so maybe I will!

In editing this story for the saving face aspect, as I know that many people from all walks of life read this, I will cut through some of the juicy details of the evening (One fun fact: I broke up with vodka this morning for how he treated me last night.  We're no longer speaking, and have agreed to see other people.)  and skip ahead to where we got the cab.  I told the taxi where we were going, and he understood me!  Success!!  Not success was when he broke down about 2 blocks from our house, and we had to walk the rest of the way.  We did get home safely however so that was all good.

In the morning, I decided to sleep until my head no longer hurt, which was a while, and encountered my first Estonian thunderstorm!  EEEEK.  But, I didn’t see any lightening, so it was less scary.  It was actually kind of peaceful to have the rain falling outside my open bedroom window, and listen to it as I was sleeping.   I got up, showered, found some yummy food (chicken soup with rice and potatoes and dill) and watched some weird pseudo cop show, and then a REALLY old episode of Kate: Her Story which aired in America like… 6-8 months ago lol.  Aggravating fact: sites like Hulu and Bravo.com do not in fact stream to Estonia…so I can’t watch my stories.  I really want to see Housewives……….boo.  Oh well.  As Eric pointed out to me today, I’m in Estonia and that’s better than watching Caroline destroy Danielle which I so desperately want to do.  Haha.  Anyway, I’m over it.

I just killed a massive 2” hornet in my room.

Tomorrow, I start meetings with the school, and I’m thrilled to bits.  I can’t wait to get in there and start doing lots of super cool stuff.  I’ll keep you posted on tomorrow!!  I’m going to bed soon, because I’m a total slug and not doing anything today.  It’s great.

Maintain,
Virginia