There’s a huge surge in interest in the demographic make up of my Estonian class and the varying reasons people have for being here. So here we go.  It’s up to you how much you want to consider this account fictional, but it’s at least pretty fictional.

• Ralph is from Northern England.  He has a general interest in languages, and figured Estonia was a cheap place to visit and pick up some bits of the language.  Ralph only has time to spend a week in the summer, but he also comes to Estonia to study in the winter.
• Franz is Swiss.  He speaks seemingly all the Northern European languages, and has an especially solid foundation in Finnish, which means he has a vague understanding of Estonian and is among the first in the class to pick up some of the more subtle bits.  (The first after the Finns, rather.)  Unfortunately, his accent is atrocious, in English and Estonian, so you really have to work hard to figure out what insightful thing he’s saying.  It’s unclear what Fritz does for a living.
• Natasha is Ukrainian and wants to be a translator.  Her English, Russian, and Ukrainian are flawless, and her Estonian is great.  She actually lives here and has quite a few Estonian friends, so she sounds great and has a good vocab
• Pavel is Serbian, and has been living in Estonia for a few years.  His English is great, and his Estonian is pretty good.  He’s got an Estonian significant-other, though it’s unclear what sort of name that other might have, if you catch my drift.
• Burak is Turkish, or at least Turkishish.  He comes to Estonia every summer and winter.  He likes languages, but he doesn’t pile them on like some of the others in the class.  He’s between jobs at the minute, but he’s working in America, and some pretty out of the way parts as well.
• Mare is from another Baltic country, which is probably LAtvia, because you don’t meet many Lithuanians around here.  She’s here pretty much just to have fun and stay up late, which isn’t to say that her Estonian isn’t good and that she doesn’t work hard.  It’s just that she’s always a lot more excited about stuff going on after class than class itself.  I can’t blame her.
• Jane and Jane (!) are grad students from somewhere in Western Europe, though I haven’t any idea what they study.  Politics or something.  They want to have a better understanding of the politico-culturo-whatever situation in the country.
• Oli and his younger brother Levi are Finnish.  The younger ones lives here and wants to learn the language..  cause, you know, obviously.  The older one seems to be here for moral support- Levi isn’t terribly social and I think he likes having his brother around.   Oli is a hot air balloon enthusiast…  So that’s something.
• Martti has lived all over Europe, but he’s originally Finnish.  He’s in high school.  He has to learn Estonian so he can remain in high school here.  I don’t know what his alternative is, but he’s gotta take tests in biology and physics and do word problems in Estonian, etc.  All at the end of the summer.  He’s good, and that he speaks Finnish certainly helps, but…  I think he’s kinda screwed.
• Senada is Croatian.  I have no idea of anything about her; she’s rather quiet.
• Billy is American.  His family is Estonian, but he managed to never learn the language.  He’s here seeking his father’s approval.  Good luck, buddy.
• Gavin is from Western Canada, near Yellow Knife.  I have no idea why he’s here, but I suppose YK is one of those places that makes Estonia seem modern and cool and something.

Alright. Oh, I forgot one.

• Brent is American.  He’s in grad school in the US, studying linguistics.  People are generally confused when he says he’s studying Estonian.  Why not Finnish?  Or Mandarin? How many languages does he speak?  Really?  Only two?  Hmmn.  Well good luck.  He’s definitely the slowest in the group, but he’s quick with his dictionary and he works harder than everyone else.  He has to; he’s kinda dumb.  If he were nicer, he’s be a candidate for the Mr. Congeniality award at language camp.

So.  That’s my class.  Oh, and the teacher is a real live high school teacher, so that’s cool.  She’s super nice, but I don’t know anything about her.  She wears her hair in a braid, and kinda loves to makes fun of Estonia, Estonians, and Estonian, but she’s obviously quite proud of her weird country, compatriots, and language.

Is there a c-word for language?  Cause that would make that last sentence a little bit more  fun.  Oh well.  It’s bed time.

Man,  this has taken me awhile.  I figured rather than just uploading some photos, I would do them all, which is clearly a bad idea, but that’s kind of my forte. On Saturday I left on a trip to the Northeast part of the country.  We went to an old oil shale mine that has been converted into an oil shale museum, so that was nice.  Then we went to a place called Rakvere, which has a castle.  The Rakvere Castle was super weird.  When we got there, it seemed normal enough for an old castle, until we realized that in the castle courtyard there was some kind of karaoke contest.  The current song was..  I’m not sure what it’s called, and I’m not going to look it up, but suffice to say that the singer was there to remind you of the mess you left when you went away.  We toured the castle, which tour was light on history and heavy on showing us old swords and old guns and the old torture room.  Still, it was cool and there were nice views.

Things got a bit weirder when we left the inside of the castle, and instead of a karaoke contest, there was the first of maybe six belly-dancing performances.  I got one picture.  It was odd.  There were some cool goats there though, so I got some good pictures of the goats. Afterwards we went to a little cottage place in a small town and went swimming in the Baltic.  Not as cold as Northern California, not nearly as cold as Norway, but still a little more cold than what I hope the ocean in heaven to be like.

Sunday morning we went to some old manor houses that were owned by Baltic Germans.  There were nice and well-maintained, but for the most part they were old houses, you know?  Anyhow, after that we went to the first National Forest in the Soviet Union.  It was pretty, and I got some good pics.  Hooray!  So here are a ton of pics.  I’ll do a separate post with videos in a second.

I hope these are all self explanatory, but I’m not going to add anything. Also: sorry that it’s going to take three days to load.

That title is misleading.

As Colin pointed out, there weren’t any pictures in this post.  Please go here.

Yo!  So I took a fun trip this weekend to the Northeast part of the country, visited a mine, a national forest, a castle, and some old German manor houses.  Very cool, and I got a ton of pictures.  They require commentary, which requires time, which requires I don’t do homework and skip my run.  So in lieu of a real weekend wrap-up, here are pictures I took of myself.  More to come.  Maybe I’ll even talk about class.

HEY DID YOU KNOW I WAS IN ESTONIA?!?!!

Seriously, I should just stop doing titles, but then what will twitter say?

Okay. So there are photos. That’s a good thing.

Today is Wednesday, at it’s 2:00, which means I’ve had three full days of classes. Like I said earlier, I’d been put in the Lower Intermediate class or something, which is scary because I’m always the dumbest, slowest guy in the class (though my pronunciation ain’t the worst!). It’s actually kinda fun- I mean, being the slow kid. When I have to pick a case for something, and I just can’t get it right (Like saying Tallinnas instead of Tallinast), it totally reminds me of Spanish II in high school.  The only problem was, back then I was the one kinda sorting speaking Spanish and rolling my eyes when someone replaced a le with a la.  Idiots.  Point being, it’s finally irrefutable proof that the apex of my life was somewhere around 11th grade.

Despite being a dummy, I’m really enjoying the class.  My biggest problem is really just vocabulary- the structures are so far almost sorta understandable.  The case system is complex, which was expected and might even get its own post later.  I’ve been working my flashcards pretty hard, and I even knew a word that the seemingly near-fluent Russian girl didn’t know.  (Ettekandja is ‘waitress’, kelner is ‘waiter’.  There, now you know too!)

There’s still a fair amount of awesome that comes with adults struggling to tell time, or stuttering through Must kohv, suhkrita, or talking about how they’re going to watch their clothes.  It’s fun.  Anyhow, I don’t want to give the impression that everyone is as dumb as I am, but learning language as an adult is hard, and we’re all proving that.  Just a little bit harder for me.

Final note: being a vegetarian in Estonia has finally been an advantage, or if not an advantage, something that my peers appreciate rather than are annoyed by.  We played this game in class where everyone had an index card with two statements on it, and you had to find someone who agreed to the statements.  The statements included Ma olen taimetoitlane, ‘I am a vegetarian’, Ma ei söö kala ‘I don’t eat fish’, Mulle ei meildi kana “I don’t like chicken,” and several other similar ones  When word got out that I was, in fact, taimetoitlane, I became the star of the class.  Maybe just got one goofy little practice session, but I take whatever victories I can get.