Balloons

Sunday afternoon I went with Mari to a juggling class. Yes juggling as in juggling. Who would have thought I’m here in this little country going for juggling lessons. We started off with just simple juggling with three balls, she then showed us some different tricks which the small group of us practiced for a while. We then moved onto juggling with those batten things which I kept hitting myself in the head with whenever I tried to flip them.

Well my school (Tallinna 32. Keskkool) has this competition where one student from each class (all the way from the 1st grade to the 12th) has to go up and pop a balloon and inside one of the balloons is a note saying that class won 1500 euros for a class trip. On Tuesday this competition ran and my class said I should do it because it only runs once a year.
So I go up and there are all these balloons tied to a string across the hall. A whole lot of us line up and then the rest of the school watches and there is a drum roll, they count to three and then we pop the balloons and everyone opens the paper. Mine was stuck so I was fumbling for ages trying to open it, and the whole time I was worrying because I don’t know what it’s going to say and I can’t read Estonian. Well I didn’t have to worry about that because when I eventually got the paper open it had 1500E written on it. We won! My classmates said I was a lucky charm and that next year when it happens again they will call me back from NZ just to pop the balloon for them. We now just need to decide what we want to do as a class and where we want to go.

I’m learning new words in Estonian all the time but still struggling to make full sentences, I think that may still take some time. I say things like ‘this pen is blue’ (see pastakas on sinine) to friends at school and they just laugh at me because I’m pretty sure they can see the pen is blue, but I’m making progress. It’s hard because I’ll learn some words and then try using them in sentences but get it wrong because the case changes. The Estonian language has 14 cases so I’ll need to work hard to get those right.

The film lessons are going really good. Although it does get a little frustrating because I don’t understand what the teacher is saying and I really want to learn and take part in the discussions. But I have a class mate who takes notes during the lesson and at the end of each one she sits and translates for me as best she can. When I come home in the afternoons I sit and go through the stuff and try research it in more detail. We also have to write reviews of all the movies we watch in class and any that we have to watch for homework so we each have a movie blog where we can post our reviews as well as pictures and clips from the movie.   

The orienteering map

On Wednesday we had our school sports day. We met at Hiiu Stadium which is basically just an athletics track tucked away in the forest. We didn’t do any athletics though, we did orienteering. We each got a map and then were off through the forest to find the points. It was good to get out and do some exercise and after our run we were given some tea and a bread roll thing and then I hoped on the bus and went home.

 The weather hasn’t been that great, the past few days the sky has been a covered in milky clouds and we have sudden bursts of rain. I have been a bit sick but so has everyone else at school so there must be a bug going around. I sat today with my head under a blanket breathing in boiling water with some oil stuff in it, it burnt my eyes at first but after 5 minutes I was used to it. I wondered how hot it would be if I stuck my hand in the bowl but common sense told me it was a bad idea to try considering the water had just come from the kettle.

Epp and I had a game of chess today, she taught me how to play and taught me the names of all the things in Estonian and English. I have to say I’ve never really given chess much thought but I actually enjoy it and it was quite easy to learn how to play. 

Some Pictures:

Sonja

 Juss

These concrete slabs hanging on the wall were originally the flooring of one of the old Churches

A street in Vanalinn

This is a door to one of the Churches in Vanalinn