Just keep pedaling

Tuesday/ teisipäev	Pudding
Wednesday/ kolmapäev	Berries and Bike Ride
Thursday/ neljapäev	Sign Sign Sign
Friday/ reede	Tarzan

Tuesday:

So today I decided to make the family some traditional South African pudding. Peppermint Crisp fridge tart. We rode to the shop nearby and I tried to find the ingredients that were closest to the ones I normally use. Which was harder than I thought it would be.  For example I ended up getting a type of caramel syrup instead of the normal caramel in a tin and there was no condense milk that I could find. The peppermint chocolate ended up being a dark chocolate with a little bit of a mint flavor. In the end it worked out fine. Didn’t taste quite as good but it was the best I could do with what I had. 

Wednesday:

I was woken by a knock on my window, I got up to have a look what was there. Opened the curtain to see a little pink note stuck on the window. “ärka üles Cianne! -Wake up Cianne!’ 

 

 

We spent some of the morning picking little red berries from the bushes in the garden which Epp has spent the day cleaning, they will be used to make jam.

The afternoon was very sunny (it’s been cloudy most of the time so it was nice to have some sun) so Mari and I went for a long bike ride through the forest. We went along a little sand track through tall pine trees which shaded us from the sun, which then opened to a larger track. We rode for a long time, I saw a sign saying 15km to the next town, then when we got there another sign saying 15km to the next town, and the 12km and so on. We did the whole track so it took a while. A tip for anyone who wants to go for a bike ride through a forest . . . keep your mouth closed. There are so many bugs, don’t know how many I swallowed and a few flew into my eyes as well. I was thinking I needed goggles, funny thing is as I thought this someone rode past us on a bike and yup they had goggles on haha.

So as we were riding we came upon a little castle tucked away in the trees. Mari gave me a little history lesson on the man who build it, Glehn.  We took a walk through the old plant house. I didn’t even notice it at first because it just looked like a pile of rocks. Turns out it was built into the ground, so when we walked around the side I was shocked to see an arched tunnel leading to a whole room made of stone. Bits of the roof had fallen away and we could see the green trees towering above. The roof itself looked somewhat like a group of spider webs linking together. I could just picture it when it was first built, teeming with all sorts of different plants and flowers. (I will put a video up next week)

Riding through the forest reminded me a lot about twilight . . . and then I had to laugh at myself because here I was riding a bike through a beautiful forest in a tiny European country and I was thinking of a teen vampire movie.

Thursday:

Well I had to go to the migration office today to get permission to stay in Estonia for a year. So at the camp we spent a long time filling out forms (those of us that weren’t from anywhere in Europe) we also had to write a letter explaining why we wanted to stay in Estonia for a year and what we would be doing here. So I wrote this lovely long letter blabbing on in my neatest handwriting and right at the very end, the last sentence on the page . . . I wrote the date wrong. So everyone had a bit of a laugh and I had to start again. Well now I had to sit and sign paper after paper after paper and then some more papers. 

On the way home we each got and ice cream, (me, Mari and Epp) The ice cream here is really good, very creamy. I have been told that Estonians like cream.

This evening I went to the Keila youth group with Epp. There were only eight people in total. But it was nice, we played a few games, did a bit of Bible study and that was it. Only problem is that Keila is a bit far to travel out every Thursday evening so I will try another youth that is closer to home next week with one of my new classmates. 

Friday:

Well today we were up nice and early, had some breakfast and then Mari and I hopped on the bikes and were off through the forest to an adventure park thing called Nomme seikluspark. So we begin the ride and I’m feeling very low on energy, probably because I was still waking up. We rode for a while and the familiar signs popped up along the way. 15km to this place then 12km to this place then 6 then 10 then another 12 and so on.

I eventually saw the blue roof of the center appear through the trees and was relieved to know we had arrived. We strapped ourselves to harnesses had a quick set of instructions and then were off. It was set up in five different tracks. Each track was a set of obstacles set between trees starting closer to the ground and gradually getting higher and higher. There were beams and wires to balance across as well as swinging ropes and nets. I felt like Tarzan jumping from one wooden platform up in the trees to the next, although Tarzan wasn’t strapped to a harness and tied onto ropes with a carabiner.

At the end of each track to get down we had to go down a Foefie Slide/ Flying fox (yes I had to Google how to spell foefie slide) which flew above some trees and across some water to finally land in a green net which you have to grab onto otherwise you just go flying backwards.

The ride back seemed to go on forever but surprisingly I had a lot more energy so it was fine. The signs came by, 15km, 12km, 6km, 15km and each time I saw one I could’t help thinking of Dory from ‘finding nemo’ and how she sang that really annoying song, ‘Just keep swimming. . .’ so that tune was stuck in my head. ‘just keep pedaling, just keep pedaling, just keep pedaling, pedaling, pedaling’

When we arrived home we realized we had five minutes to get to a little restaurant which we were invited to for my host sisters grandmothers birthday. So I quickly put on some jeans, sprayed some perfume, slapped on my worn in shoes and hoped on the bike again and we were off down the road to meet with my host sisters grandmother and cousins. When we got there and were seated I looked at the big tv hanging on the wall and what did I see . . . a little blue fish, Dory. Finding nemo was playing on the TV.
I was very proud of myself because I ordered my dessert (chocolate cake) in Estonian :)