Well, THE big event this past week was NCAA Regionals.  Any runner at Rhodes wants to compete at NCAA Regionals.  But only the top 7 on the team are allowed to compete, so it’s pretty tough and it takes time and/or talent to get there.  And I was finally able to claim a spot on the Regionals team this year.

My freshman year, I received a stress fracture in my left hip after only 6 days with the team.  I wasn’t able to run, much less walk, for 4 months.  Then sophomore year, I strained every tendon in my right ankle and I missed the first month of the season.  And I didn’t even make the top 12 to compete at the SCAC Conference meet.  Finally junior year I had a healthy year, ran at SCAC, but a poor race resulted in me being #8 on the team – barely missing NCAA.  So finally, I got to race at NCAA this year.  I was elated.

Unfortunately, my race at NCAA was abysmal.  I was very disappointed (still am at this point), but I know that my training this semester has been unparalleled in its speed, mileage, and awesomeness.  So I’m going to be prepared for a great Track season, and the steeplechase is going to find a far better competitor in me than its seen in years.

But in HAPPY news, the women’s cross country team won the NCAA Region for the first time in school history.  They placed 35 points, and 2nd place onply posted 100 points.  Utter domination.  It was the easily among the top 3 races I’ve ever seen, and I was so happy to see my fellow senior and team captain, Cybil, come across first for the women and 2nd overall in the race.  Amazing senior year for her, along with the other senior, Melissa, who has had an UNBELIEVABLE season.  Such good news for the girls.

AND we had our top runner, Chris, qualify for Nationals individually.  So next weekend, I’ll be leading a convoy of approximately 20 teammates to Nationals in Cleveland, Ohio.  It’s going to be wonderful.  I am already trying to plan my body paint, as I have a reputation to maintain in that department.

So now I get a couple of weeks of reduced training, but I will continue running and I will continue competing.  It’s been a part of my life for over 10 years now.  While I ran my last cross country race ever, I still have a track season to compete in.  And I have a team to lead.  And I couldn’t be more proud.

In order to establish a brief “catch-up” here’s how the semester started and has evolved up until this point.  I’ve been very slow in reaching the present, and it’s about time.

The first thing I started doing upon starting classes was moving towards applying for the Marshall and Rhodes Scholarships to receive a fully-paid Master’s at Oxford University to receive a degree in Development Studies.  It was an exhausting process of collecting 6 letters of recommendation and re-writing my letter of purpose about 9 times.  Dr Haas, the director of the application processes, was amazing and helped me along the entire process with great dedication and patience.  Unfortunately, since then, I have learned that I am not to be interviewed for the Marshall.  I am not crushed, as these are nationally-competitive scholarships.  But my only worry with the Rhodes Scholarship is that if selected to be interviewed, it could possibly conflict if I am able to run at NCAA Nationals for Cross Country.  That kind of conflict hopefully won’t occur, but if it did, I’d almost certainly run my spot at Nationals.  It’s hard to describe why an athlete must compete, but it drives everything else so I can’t resist it.

After returning from Russia and Estonia, I decided to change my life plan of only pursuing a Master’s to pursuing a PhD and work towards a career of academia and teaching.  I’m rather excited about the prospects, and I have been e-mailing professors at numerous programs in order to see if the fit seems good.  The list is large: 9 schools (UWashington, UMinnesota, UIndiana, UWisconsin, UTexas, Ohio State, Brown, Emory, UPittsburgh) and it’s all towards a PhD in Political Science, focusing in Comparative Politics in order to focus on Russian social policy (immigration, health, education, etc).  But I’m just now starting the application process, but I’ve received a lot of enthusiasm from professors about my study proposal, and I’m confident with the prospects.  But I’m paying for grad school by myself, so my GRE score is a HUGE gateway to getting a fully-funded PhD, especially considering the competitive nature of the schools I’m applying to.  Weee….   NOT.

Classes are good, but I’m only taking 3 this semester.  I’m going to graduate with a huge surplus of credit hours, so that’s not a problem, but it’s definitely different.  I only have class on Tuesday/Thursday, so it’s fun but odd calendar.  I’m taking Acting I (for my Fine Art credit), Masterpieces of Russian Literature (for my minor), and Introduction to International Relations Theory.  I love my classes, they’re a perfect balance in terms of interest and engagement.  The work has been stressful between learning new scenes and trying to improve my acting, reading international relations philosophy, and then the ever-present reading of Russian novels.  hahaha.  But the writing hasn’t been too intense, but it’s going to REALLY pick up towards the end, so we’ll see how it progresses… but 3 classes is the maximum I could manage this semester due to grad school / fellowship applications.  Ugh.  Senior year stresses.

Cross Country has been an uphill struggle.  My training in Estonia and Russia left my endurance intact, but my speed was severely underdeveloped, along with my ability to hold fast speeds for any amount of time.  So my initial races and workouts were abysmal and rather disappointing.  But the team has been amazing.  The freshmen have been amazing and have been mixing it up with the upperclassmen at every race, and so the dynamic is wonderful.  And I’ve certainly enjoyed the last month of training, as I’ve been able to get back into my prime.  It’s been a whirlwind, and I’ve been putting on my “Johnson Juggernaut” – a running process where I suddenly start dropping minutes off my times and rapidly explode onto the scene.  It’s frustrating for myself and the coaches, because we don’t have a very stable picture as to where I am in my training, but it’s exciting because the possibilities look so amazing.  Last week in a workout, I comfortably ran mile and two mile times in my workout that were seconds and minutes below my high school PRs, respectively.  I’m in a kind of shape I can hardly believe, but I know I’m here and I’m not wasting it.  hahaha.  Next weekend we have our SCAC Conference Championships in Atlanta, so the top 12 will compete.  The results from that race will create the list for the Top 7, who will compete at NCAA Regionals in North Carolina, and possibly Nationals in Ohio.  WOOOOO!!!!   Running is woot woot.

So I stand on the other side of the half of the semester.  I can’t believe where I am, but I’ve got a long way to go.  The time to buckle down is here, and I’m strapped in and ready for forces of  in excess of 9 Gs.  Weee!!!  (Note: I know that’s physically impossible, but I’m an invulnerable 21-year old, I don’t care).

The Lost Estonian Post:

I went to “make sauna” on Saturday with the Estonian runners, and as usual it was ridiculously hot. But I met, Aloh, their best middle distance runner, who is fresh from his months in the Estonian army (its a requirement for every male to serve 8-11 months). Mario, Rainier, and Ander was there as well. It was a good evening, much talk, and I was better hydrated, so I was able to stand 4 trips into the sauna this time. But yes, I still sweat TONS in the 170 degrees Fahrenheit. But it was good.

Then I caught up briefly with Genevieve, Peter, and Kelsey who were having dinner with Indrek and Christina – new Estonian friends. It was a pleasant conversation, but I had to go to bed earlier than normal, because I was exhausted – a theme of late for some reason.

Sunday

I got a call… early… 7AM. My good friend, Alison, was in Estonia!! Alison and I went on the Rhodes Maymester to St Petersburg, Russia last year. We also have worked Orientation for Rhodes together and had a few classes. Needless to say, I love spending time with Alison. But she’s been spending this semester in Yaroslavl’, Russia on an EXTREMELY intensive Russian language program. This week is her spring break, so she and her friend, Katie, decided that it was time to leave Russia (considering they got their re-entry visas finally). So they took a train to Tallinn, and then they bused down to Tartu…

…Except at 7AM they missed their bus. Daylight savings occurred in Europe on midnight on Sunday, and nobody told them (I totally forgot, as always with daylight savings). So they got on a bus an hour later and headed to Tartu. 730AM I get another call, this time from Kelsey. She and Peter remembered that it was daylight savings, and knew that I had forgotten and went to the train station to pick up the “Ruskies”. But the “Ruskies” had missed the bus, although the gesture was not lost on me. I have such good friends here!

But Alison and Katie arrived just fine, and we went to Werner (my new favorite place) for some much-needed coffee and breakfast. We traded stories about study abroad, crazy host families, cultural differences, thoughts on home, everything. Then Peter, Kelsey, and Genevieve came to do their Sunday homework, so we chatted with them for a while. Then I took the Ruskies to the art museum (so worth a second trip) and a souvenir shop. Then we walked around town – Toome Hill, Town Hall Square, Main University Building, Great Cathedral “ruins”, St John’s, etc. Then we ducked into an Italian place for some much needed “heavily-flavored food”. They loved it.

Luckily, Sunday night was also the night of a free choir concert at the University Main Building, featuring the University of Tartu Female and Mixed Choirs. SOOOOO good. It was a wonderful cultural experience for me and the Ruskies, and it was just wonderful. Singing is HUGE in Estonia, so of course, these choirs were amazing.  They were perfectly balanced, but they were amazingly exact and clear in their faster pieces.  It reminded me of my three semesters in the Rhodes Singers, and I was beyond impressed.  Estonia rocks for choirs.  But afterwards, we sprinted to the bus station and they headed back to Tallinn.

It was a packed, yet seemingly short, day. But Alison and Katie LOVED Estonia, and they loved Tallinn (luckily they had 2 days in Tallinn once they returned). So I was happy to hear such adoration – made me feel like I was living in the coolest place on earth. And I think I am. I mean, by the end of the semester, I will have travelled to every major city in Estonia and seen most of the country. I will have a great sense of this country, and I am happy about that. I do wish I was in Russia, totally immersed in the language. But hearing their difficulties with their host families and communicating, made me think twice about that and has restarted the nervousness about the Novgorod Internship. Eh, whatever.

Monday

Well, today I woke up and had breakfast (duh). Then I had a 4-hour lecture in my Soviet Experience course… WOW. Most of the class apparently forgot, so there were only 12 of us in the lecture… WOW. The first 2 hours were great, and we had a pretty good discussion concerning the Brezhnev era. I actually was quite entertained. But then we started talking about Gorbachev era… and that DRAGGED for 2 hours. Quite frustrating. But it was good class overall. I am excited that we’re finally at this point, because now we get to discuss the Transformation of Russia!!! This class is taught my a history professor, so it’s MUCH more historical than I would like, but now we’ll be getting into more of the stuff that I drool over… hopefully.

The professor invited us to Maime ( pronounced *mime*) for drinks after the lecture, but I had to go run. I would have very much liked to have gone… and Sascha (USA) went and told me that it was a lot of fun, even though there was just the prof and 2 students. I felt bad and sad…

But today on my run, I decided that I had enough of the ice trail. While I enjoy the trail very much, the slippery ice and terrible running conditions have started getting to me. I need a change. So I’m going to run on the sidewalks around town. I have avoided this, because my shins are susceptible to stress fractures due to my nearly flat footedness. But running on ice isn’t much better for them, and I know I’ve lost some endurance-based speed on the ice, and I need to get it back. So I’m just increasing the anti-stress fracture routines, and I’m running on sidewalks.

Today I ran on the eastern half of the city that’s north of the river (east of my dorm). I ran along a major road, so the exhaust wasn’t pleasant… and some of the houses were burning something, so there was increased smoke from the nothingness along the river, but it was nice. I basically ran along the vast majority of the Soviet-era apartment complexes where most of Tartu’s citizens live. I had seen them at night, but seeing them in person in the daytime was interesting. Most of them were similar to the complexes I lived in when I was in St Petersburg last year, although the buildings were much smaller. Obviously Tartu wasn’t high on the construction list, unlike St Petersburg, but I at least had some experience to compare to.

Overall the run went well, but I am lacking overall “endurance speed”, but I’ll get it back after several days of sidewalk running. Wednesday I think I might run to the HUGE greenhouses east of the city. They give off an eerie orange glow at night, and in some spots in town make it look like the sun is perpetually setting. It’d be interesting to see these things… hahaha. We’ll see. I get my Russian exam back tomorrow *EEEEK* (no response from my professor about my email), and I have a 3-hour lecture in EU/Russian relations. Let’s see how this goes………

But I wanted to show you a few paintings within the art museum.  Their exhibit focuses on the paintings produced from 1958-1968, as this era had a lot of art labled as “Soviet futurism”.  It was a movement that was particularly fascinated by the idea of having a modern, industrialized society.  It focused on trains, boats, factories, airplanes – the creations of modern industry.  So the art shows the positive energy and hope that the Soviet Union brought to some.  So I was fascinated by this exhibit, to say the least.  You should be able to click on the image to get a larger picture (much larger), but if not, let me know, and I’ll try to fix it.

Alison, Me, and Katie in front of the choir concert (University Main Building)

One of my favorites

Painting Entitled - Cannons of Peace

Painting - Building the New City

Painting - The New Apartment

Then I went to London, hoping to participate in the World Naked Bike Ride there. But it didn’t happen, and it’s still a bitter point, so we will move on at this point. I stayed the night at a farmhouse in Essex county and had dinner in a pub that’d been in service since the 1600s. So not bad. Haha. It was actually really nice, and I enjoyed the time in the country much more than London. Are you sensing a theme with big cities and me? Haha.

But then I met up with my mother and my sister in Stockholm, where my mother was attending a conference. Stockholm is awesome and was the perfect place to start my summer training. I LOVE Stockholm. I got to see the Vasa shipwreck, a childhood dream. Yes, I was a nerd and wanted to see the Vasa. Whatever, I saw it, and it was AWESOME.

Then we went to Copenhagen, which might be my favorite city I’ve visited (although Tartu, honestly, might be where I want to live for the rest of my life). But Copenhagen was just wonderful, and we stayed in an apartment in the residential area, so it was really close to a huge park, and the running was even better there. But Copenhagen suits me very very well, if only it wasn’t so expensive… but honestly, if I could, I’d totally live there too.

Then we went to Italy to Lake Como. It’s been a dream of my mother’s and she finally got to fulfill it. And needless to say, we all enjoyed it. It was amazing. The running was awful however, and the mountains actually strained BOTH of my hamstrings. So I had to take off running for a few days to recover. But Lake Como and the area around is just GORGEOUS. We had planned to go to Milan, but we just never got the energy to leave the gorgeous simplicity of the mountains. And I don’t know how we could have done anything else. Hahaha.

But then it was time for me to get back to Estonia to take a bus into Russia. AirBaltic tried to prevent this… in Milan, our wheel broke as we were taxiing from the gate… interesting… 1 hour delay. Then I got into Riga, Lativa… They put the wrong plane’s luggage in our hold, so we had to wait as they checked every bag to ensure it was on the right plane… 1.5 hour delay. I arrived in Tallinn, get a taxi, sprint to the Radisson SAS that was holding my bags (best hotel I’ve ever worked with, period). I re-packed my bags to make them slightly lighter and more manageable, then I took a taxi to the bus station and waited. And then it arrived, but Russia is a whole different story altogether…

So when I left you, I had just gotten through the week of awfulness. Yes, it was bad. I missed out on Student Days because of an infected abscess in my lower right wisdom tooth. I also missed out on a 10km race that was pretty baller – largest in Estonia. I mean, whatever, I’m not bitter still *grumbles*.

Unfortunately, the rest of my time in Estonia was not very exciting, as it quickly revolved around Russian language exams and writing my final papers for courses. The work load was ridiculous, but my motivation to do a lot constantly, certainly left me. Quickly. But I eventually got it all done. Weee!!! However, I do have some stories for sure!!

This summer (actually, as you’re reading this) I am going to be working in an internship in Russia, but I want to travel between my semester and the internship. Yet in order to travel to Russia, you must have a visa, and I am going to be invited by my internship group, so it can’t just be a tourist visa. And after quite some work (and $80 in fees), I got my invitation and traveled to Tallinn to go to the Russian embassy to apply for my visa.

Imagine walking into a place where time stops and unhappiness seeps from the wall like sap from a tree. This would be the Russian consulate. HUGE lines in a tiny place – I was sweating like crazy. I mean, I figured there’d be some Russians who’d need to extend visas, but I thought I’d be in a different line and get out just fine. Ugh. So after 2.5 hours of waiting, I was told to come back after the lunch break in order to meet with the consulate official to see if I could get an expedited process (5 days). That would be perfect timing, so of course I agree.

I wait in line for another hour, then find out that the consular official didn’t come into work today (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!). So the fastest I can get my visa is 10 days… This kind of ruins things. I had already bought some trains and stuff to travel to Vilnius, Lithuania; Krakow, Poland; Budapest, Hungary; and London…Now it was all worthless. Poopies. But getting this visa is priority number one. I MUST GO TO RUSSIA. So I give the worker my passport, and I will return in 10 days.

Well, my travel partner (Kelsey) was quite pissed with this result, as I can understand. But we decided to make the best of it as we could. So we decided to plan a biking trip through southern Estonia. Our original plan was a little ambitious – nearly 500 kilometers in 3 days… and needless to say, we didn’t complete it. Hahaha. So after starting out in the rain and apparently following the rain clouds south, we arrived in Jogeva. Then we took a bus to Voru, had lunch, then biked to our farm house just between Voru and Rouge. Holy crap, the place was GORGEOUS – totally worth all the awful rain and everything. The man who owns it, just purchased 27 hectares after the collapse, and cut down the forest to make this beautiful little pasture and built 7 buildings to be used as a hotel/retreat. It’s amazing – pictures are below.

We then just biked around Rouge – supposedly the most scenic village in Estonia – and Voru. Vorumaa county is the basically the “hill country” of Estonia and has the highest point in the Baltics. Gorgeous. Seriously, I’m so glad I didn’t go to Krakow or Budapest. It would have been awesome, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it nearly as much as the relaxing scenic forests of southern Estonia. So amazing.

After the trip, I packed up my life, and we went to Tallinn to pick up my visa. ALSO, I found out just days before leaving that there are Rhodes alumni in Tallinn!! The Geers have been living in Tallinn for nearly 2 years now, essentially working through the State Department with Estonia on a NATO project. So awesome. So I got to meet Mrs Geers and their children over a wonderful lunch. Fortunately, they were both I.S. majors and both speak Russian – so it was crazy how much in common we had. And it was also awesome timing, because they were planning a trip to southern Estonia, we were able to give them a pamphlet for the farm house we stayed in Rouge. Small world all over!

But I have left Estonia. So what do I think about it after the fact? Honestly, I think it might be the coolest place I’ve ever been in my life. It’s actually exactly how I want the world to be. Not overly populated, forests and greenery everywhere, and just pleasantness all around. Relaxed people, reserved, but endlessly warm and welcoming. So amazing. I would recommend traveling to Estonia in a heartbeat to experience a very relaxing vacation. It’s not a country where you just go to see big fountains and churches (these do exist, however). It’s a place where you go to just experience a different culture and simply relax.

And having traveled around Europe for a month, I can say this – Estonia is THE BEST country in the world for WiFi. There’s free public WiFi in every village over 2,000 people. As you’re driving, there’s signs that tell you there’s a WiFi spot in 200m. hahaha. It’s awesome. And in every major town/city/village there’s a tourist information center where the person working speaks at least English and Estonian, usually Russian and German as well. It’s AMAZING. I highly recommend Estonia to anyone. It’s awesome.

That being said, I miss Estonia, but here are some pictures from my final days. But as you’re looking at them, I have posted a YouTube video as well. In Europe, they have a contest, Eurovision, which is basically American Idol, but every country nominates one song and artist to compete. And so I’ve posted Estonia’s contestant – Urban Symphony – performing “Randajad”. It’s beautiful music, and the Estonian is incredibly clear, so you can really hear how the language is so rhythmic and amazing!

So we left for Norway on Wednesday (April 22).  We arrived in Riga via a bus, and we just headed straight to the airport to be certain we would be fine with our flights.  The sucking of this week started on Wednesday, April 22.

We were getting close to boarding time, and we were excited!!  Norway!!  We were going to canoe and hike in the fjords of NORWAY!!!  We were gonna get our nature on - “Ladies and gentlemen, our flight from Riga to Bremen, Germany has been delayed.  We will now be departing at 3:50PM.  Thank you.”  This is our reaction: “(*#$^%@#!!  #$*!@%!(@*)#*!!! Really?!?!”  This new departure time is the departure time from our flight in Bremen, Germany to Haugesund, Norway.  We have missed our flight to Norway.

We fly to Bremen, and we interrogate the workers to see if there’s other flights we can make.  This is not true.  Our flight was the only flight that week.  We have paid for bus tickets and a night in a VERY EXPENSIVE hotel for nothing.  Chuck $70 in the wind for each of us.  UGH.

So we headed to the Bremen train station, and without a group decision, we bought tickets to Berlin.  I’ll write a separate blog, one that is happier, about Berlin.  It was DEATH getting there.  My Hungarian roommate had only let me get 3 hours of sleep the night before with conversation, and then suddenly I was on trains until 2 in the morning the next day.  I wanted to die.  But Berlin was amazing, and I’m sooo happy we went there.  I LOVE that city.

We returned from Berlin.  A wonderful trip.  And this week (the current week that is now ending at the time of this post) is Student Week in Tartu, when the students are given the keys to the city and rule for a week.  It’s a LONG tradition, and I’ve been looking forward to it for months.

On Monday, however, my back right wisdom tooth is a little sensitive.  This happens to me after long trips and lack of sleep, so I didn’t think about it.  Then TUESDAY happened.  My face is swollen.  My right cheek is easily twice as thick, there’s a sensitive bump on the jaw bone on the right side, and I’m having difficulty opening my mouth.  Hmm…  Time for a dentist, I think.

I schedule an appointment on Tuesday for Wednesday night, after my Law class.  According to my schedule, I missed a Russian test on my trip to Berlin, so I needed to study to make up for it.  I go to class… no test.  Instead, our test is moved to Thursday and is considerably larger in the materials it covers.  Um…  In the middle of Student Week?!  Really?!?!  UGH!!!

Then I go to the dentist after my Law course.  This week REALLY REALLY sucks at this point.  NO ONE in the office spoke English, and after 4 office shuffles and really poor Russian on my part, I finally got to the dentist’s office.  I sit down in the chair, and luckily my dentist knows English.  So I explain my symptoms, she says, “Yes.”  Then she leans me back, and says, “We’re making injection.”

I’ve never had a painful visit to a dentist’s office.  I’ve never had a cavity, root canal, or anything other than some picking with an iron hook.  But when I saw that crooked needle, I kind of screamed on the inside.  And she added the anesthesia, and it was painful, but it was immediate pain, so it wasn’t that bad.  And she and her colleague just spoke in Estonian as the drugs numbed my right gum.  Then she started picking at the area to test the numbing.  Suddenly a pair of scissors is in my mouth, and I can “hear” it make an incision.

My heart is sooo fast at this point.  After the scissors, the assistant pulls out this glass jar and pulls out what appears to be green shoelace.  They cut a small piece and they place it in the incision they’ve made (honestly, for 1 second, I swore they were gonna pull a leech out of the jar, don’t ask me why).  Then they put a cotton square, say, “Bite down,” and then gave me a prescription.  I go down, fill it, and after a horrible process understand the directions.

I was given antibiotics, not painkillers.  I have an infection in my face, I understand this.  But I had to go online to look up the antibiotics to read the warnings.  I can’t drink alcohol, as it causes a RAPID change in blood chemistry and can be fatal.  Awesome.  I can’t drink during Student Week, THE celebration of the year.  Then…  the pain set in.

Holy crap, when the anesthesia wore off, HOLY CRAP.  Pain.  And not immediate, sharp pain.  But constant, high level pain.  Granted, there’s several layers higher in the pain tree, I’m surely aware.  But it was kind of ridiculous.  WAAAAY more painful than before.  Luckily, I packed Extra Strength Tylenol – WOOT.  Saved my day.  That and Kelsey volunteered to cook me some soup.  Kelsey = my hero.  hahaha.

So I wake up on Thursday.  The pain is largely gone.  Woot woot.  But I have go to to the dentist office at 9AM for a check-up.  I go, the process is MUCH easier this time around.  I get seen by another dentist, and I go to find out what’s up with my face now.  I get more anesthesia.  WAY MORE.  My entire right face is numb.  Then he pulls out a scalpel, and I FLIP on the inside.  And he cuts out the shoestring.  He said it was a “medicated cord” and that he would take it out.  He failed to mention that he was going to put more medicated cord in… or that he was going to use the scalpel to enlarge the hole in my face.  So suddenly, I have a huge hole in my mouth, filled by more shoestring.

But I ask more questions this time around, and I’m free to eat anything I want, but yes, I should avoid alcohol (avoid seemed a pretty light use of the word considering what I had read, but not everything on the Internet is true… regardless, I have not been drinking while on the antibiotics).  I ask for painkiller prescription, because it hurt really bad last time.  He agrees, I am happy.

I go back to my room to eat breakfast and have one of my antibiotic pills for the day.  And the painkillers they prescribed, FAIL.  Pain is kind of ridiculous.  So I go against my usual judgement of taking pills, and I take Tylenol again.  Relief.  Love Extra Strength.  hahaha.  But I’m tired, so I lay down for a small nap.

Then I get up and start studying for my rather large Russian language exam.  It was rather large, indeed.  I had a lot more to study for than I thought.  But I think it went well, although it was so hard not to smile and swallow.  hahaha.  I missed swallowing a lot at this point.

And so this continued.  Thursday night was a cool night for Student Days, I’ll post about that happiness later…  But Friday (yesterday) was my 12km race in Viljandi, a running tradition in Estonia that’s 80 years long.  AND I CAN’T RUN IT.  Considering my complete lack of significant food consumption starting on Wednesday, there’s nothing for me to run on.  I don’t have the food for the energy, and my workout on Monday showed that my strength was low anyway.  So I didn’t run.

I just went to Viljandi and watched the race.  It might have been the most beautiful day in Estonia and the hills in Viljandi are GORGEOUS.  And the race had 3,340 runners…  I wanted to RUN SO BADLY.  But it would have just turned into a pitiful jog and nothing race-worthy.  So I watched a race most bitterly.  I felt like freshman year with my hip fractured all over again.  I HATE watching races and being unable to compete.  Ugh.

And there is nothing worse than cheering at the finish line amongst an Estonian crowd.  It is the QUIETEST CROWD on the face of the planet.  Now, I hope I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that Estonians are naturally/culturally geared towards silence in life.  But even at this sporting event, there was nothing more than hand-clapping.  Now all that have ever had me cheer for them at a running event, know that I like to CHEER.  I like to get all up in your ears and make you hear my encouragement.  Well… not at this race.  It would have been MAJOR social embarrassment.  Ugh.  I couldn’t even cheer.  It was the worst crowd ever.  Had I been racing, I would have hated finishing with that crowd cheering me on.  Probably would have made me feel like finishing, considering I had just raced 12 kilometers to hardly get anything more than a clap.  hahaha.

I suppose an interesting/agonizing highlight of this trip was learning a special thing about my coach.  Coach Lemberg is somewhat of a legend in Estonia.  I think it’s mostly because he’s Estonia’s Olympic trainer, but I think it also has to do with the fact that he was a pretty good runner at one point.  But everyone was asking to take pictures with him in Viljandi, it was interesting.  The agonizing part?  Coach LOVES the band “Smokie“.  We listened to Smokie’s Greatest Hits over and over on our way to and from Viljandi.  To give you an idea of the crappiest lyrics of my life, here is my favorite line:

“If love is what you want,
Love is what you’ve got.
Love like a rocket,
A rocket to your heart.”

Another favorite:
“Open my heart,
Take a look at my soul.”

HOLY CRAP, I wanted to build a shotgun and blow my brains out.  Worst soundtrack for roadtripping ever.  But I love Coach Lemberg, so I don’t hold it against him… too badly.

This week sucks.

There were good things, though, and I’ll post on those later.  Just needed to send out the bitter pill, so that I can be upbeat afterwards.  haha.

All I can recall on the weekend of the 4th was my decision to go “black [as in a RADAR screen being off]”. Meaning, I decided that it was time to put socializing aside and get down to some of my basic goals while I was here in Estonia: study Russian like crazy, prepare for the GRE, get graduate school application essays written, write my papers for my classes here, and begin my research for the papers my fellowships require for life at Rhodes. This idea has worked somewhat well… hahaha.

So I’ve been spending a LOT of time at Café Werner, a WONDERFUL café off town square with inexpensive coffee and GREAT quiches. It’s basically my form of Middle Ground (the 24 hour place in the library at Rhodes), although it does close rather early (11AM) on weekdays. But it’s a good place for me to go and focus.

Monday 6th

For my Soviet Experience class, we started finally reading about the transformation/transition. Up to this point, we’ve been reading history of Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, etc. UGH. But this new article was FASCINATING. My mind was literally exploding with new-found academic energy. I was finally reading something that challenged my concept of things, it was wonderful. The text didn’t significantly alter any train of though, but it discussed the linguistic structure of the Soviet government and how this affected the psychological perception of the citizens. FASCINATING. SO freaking good.

Sadly, in class, the presenters didn’t focus on this, and instead we had a big class discussion on Soviet nostalgia – a very boring topic for me, personally. But I understood, as the presenters were both from Georgia, and the linguistic/philosophical discussion in the book would be close to impossible for non-native speakers to easily interpret and present back to a class. So I emailed the professor to ask if I could present next week, and try to unearth these forgotten ideas in the text. He said yes, and I joined a group of two Georgians, Eka and Ani, for a presentation next Monday. Woot! I was excited.

Tuesday

Got to class in the morn’. And we had a class presentation/discussion on Russia/EU perceptions of “neighborhood policies”. Not overly exciting as I can remember… But after this presentation, Dr Molis told us that everyone had presented. Therefore, we shall stay in our previous groups and repeat the order of groups presenting. So my group of Lukas (Lithuania) and Salome (Georgia) were to present next week on the possibility of Russia and the EU ever cooperating on issues of external security. Hmm… 2 presentations…

Wednesday

Went to Law, and it was a fairly interesting class. Our readings were over human rights issues in the case of Chechnya, but our class for some reason revolved around Russia’s admittance into the Council of Europe. But there was a healthy class debate about it, so I found it at least interesting. I do enjoy this class. But then the professor asked for volunteers to present on the ICJ case between Georgia and Russia. And I was REALLY INTERESTED in this topic. So I volunteered to “represent” Russia. It was only after class that I realized that within 3 days, I had been assigned 3 presentations (one a day), and I was going to Tallinn for the next 4 days… Ooops…

Thursday

I did not go to Russian today… Instead I got on a bus at 11AM with “the Americans” and we went to Tallinn!!! None of us had really spent a good amount of time in Tallinn, mostly just passing through for flights from US and boats to Helsinki. Hahaha. So we figured it was time to give the capital of Estonia its fair time. Tallinn’s famous for its Old Town, as its one of the best preserved medieval sections of any city in Europe. All of the Baltics have Old Towns, and many cities across Europe do as well. But Tallinn’s is pretty bad ass.

We checked into our hostel, which wasn’t too impressive, but it had beds and showers, and that’s what we needed. So we walked around Tallinn, but Peter’s girlfriend, Brittany, was in Estonia for a few days (she’s studying abroad in Malta). So we had to do the stops at the biggest places first. So of course (you’ll find out why), we went to St Olaf’s first. Between the years of 1549 and 1625, St Olaf’s was the tallest building in the world, and before the construction of the Eiffel, it was the tallest building in Europe. It currently is now the third tallest church in Europe, after some in Germany and France, I think… But it’s a tall church. The majority of its height comes in the steeple (been struck by lightening 8 times, and has caused the church to burn down 3 times), but it’s tall. So we climbed up the RIDICULOUS staircase to the observation deck.

Let it be known, that this was not a deck. It was a steel cage that was two feet wide. And I have a very big fear of people dropping things from heights. I don’t necessarily have a fear of falling or heights, but when people hold cameras, hats, or something over the railing of a tall place, I imagine them dropping it and it causes me GREAT anxiety. But it was a very very windy day up to top the tower, and I hadn’t been in an exposed, “high” altitude setting in a long time. SO I think my anxiety of dropping things did have a fear of falling combined. I was paralyzed. It took me some time and a walk around the church (the windy side was awful), but then I pulled it together to get some pictures, they’re below.

We also walked to Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (Orthodox Russian, and there’s hundreds of Nevsky cathedrals in Russian Orthodox, so don’t get too confused) and this Nevsky Cathedral is honestly my favorite Orthodox church I have seen yet. Its very construction, the colors, the everything, is simply BEYOND gorgeous to me. It might be my favorite church in the whole world. I love that thing. Pictures below.

Then we walked around some more, but then said bye to Brittany, and then we cooked frozen pizzas in the oven in the hostel. Mmm… food. And we played cards, and tried to go to bed, until a seemingly homeless man somehow gained access past two locked doors (someone let him in, grrrr). So there was an awkward stand-off to keep him from getting on the actual floors where beds are located. The kitchen is on the 3rd floor, and our beds were on the 4th. So we were locked in the 3rd floor until he left the stairwell… We got to bed at 3 AM. UGH.

Friday

We decided that was museum day. So we tried to go to the Old Town Wall, because there’s a section that you can climb up and walk along the battlements and everything… CLOSED. It was Easter weekend, and we knew there’d be some problems, but Estonians are very unreligious, so we didn’t expect too many obstacles. FALSE.

We were rejected at every museum we stopped by. It was a day of rejection. It was so sad. But Kelsey’s flatmate, Aurora (France), came and stayed with us for the weekend, so that added some wonderful international flavor to the constant rejection. But Peter had to leave early to go back to Tartu to write a paper. We went to bed early, due to our exhaustion.

Saturday

We (Genevieve, Kelsey, Aurora, and I) rented bikes to go to the eastern coast of the capital. Mind you, we couldn’t do this with Peter, because he doesn’t know how to ride a bike. It boggles all of us A LOT that he >doesn’t know how and has no interest to learn. But regardless, this biking idea was the best time in Tallinn.

Got to bike to a park along the coast, and it was gorgeous. It wasn’t fully green, but it was so pleasant. And on the playgrounds, they also have workout equipment so mothers/fathers can get a workout in while their child plays. Such a good idea!! It was a wonderfully huge and gorgeous park.

Then we headed to the >Marjaamae Palace, which houses the Estonian National History Museum. AMAZING MUSUEM. It was one of the best I’ve been in my entire life. I’m sure if I spoke Estonian it would have been even more amazing, but even as an English speaker, they had enough translated, and it was beautifully designed and executed. Wonderful. We all left wishing we were Estonian. It’s such a beautiful country, with so many cool things in it. *sigh*

Then I got us lost on our way back to the city, but we made it. And then our second museum was CLOSED EARLY but they had no sign on it yesterday to indicate a late closing when we were rejected yesterday. So the Occupation Museum has made me an enemy…

Sunday

Really, we continued a major theme of this weekend in Tallinn and ate a LOT of food at a lot of different places. Aurora and Geneveive left early to make it to a concert in Tartu of Handel’s Messiah. Kelsey and I hung around Tallinn, then took a train (first class!!!) back to Tartu. It was only 20 kroons more than the bus ($1.80), but I got free tea, and a table to work/sleep on. So this is the way I will travel to and from Tallinn for my Russian embassy visits without a doubt. It was sooo lovely. Beyond lovely. I love that train. Hahaha. When we arrived back in Tartu, it was like seeing a totally different world. There was NO SNOW/ICE and NO standing puddles of water. SPRING IS HERE!!!! It’s not quite here yet, but when it happens, oh the camera will fly out and record every minute of it. But then I met with Eka and Ani, and we arranged our presentation… kind of… Whatever.

But while in Tallinn and after the history museum, I decided I wanted to see more of Estonia. Tallinn’s GORGEOUS, but its Old Town is just too touristy for me. I wanted to see “real” Estonia after my weekend in Tallinn. So I started looking at weekend trips to Narva, Parnu Saaremaa island, and Viljandi Potsaama Jogeva. We’ll see if these actually pan out…

Monday

We present. Ugh. Ani talked FOREVER on slides that weren’t really all that important. Eka’s section dealt a lot with foreign culture, and she did a great job (her English is superb), but it took still a LOT of time. Then I spoke about the linguistic aspect, etc, and it did take a while. All said and done, it was a 1.5 hour presentation. gunblast* It was awful. I wanted to cry. I hate lengthy presentations. I mean, the information was good, but it was just too long. Way too long. So I don’t think we’re going to get a good grade. Whatevs. We’ll see. Then I met with Lukas and Salome for our presentation on Tuesday.

Tuesday

I found out that I’m the top student in my EU/RUSS relations course, so that put pep in my step for my presentation. We decided that I would speak for the group in order to save time and allow for the best communication (we all receive the same grade in this class’s structure anyway). It was a great class, a lot of controversy, and a lot of disagreement. Basically, Dr Molis gave both groups an equally difficult, uphill battle to present on… and so we got a little slaughtered by the Q&A. I mean, I felt like I wasn’t being skewered, but I felt like I sounded too much like a broken record. And I hate that!

Russian went really well today. Just a pleasant class in which I actually knew a little Russian. It was lovely. But then I had to prepare for my presentation in Law over the current ICJ case between Russia and Georgia. I know nothing about this. So I must do research…

So I stayed up uber late downstairs in the dorm. And I got slapped in the face by life/fate, whatever. Hahaha. I was working, and I was LOVING the topic, Russia’s legal mind is brilliant, and having a ball. Then there was knocking on the window. I look up, and there were 3 gorgeous Estonian girls asking me to go out with them. I opened the door, and they said that I looked so sad doing work, and that I should go out (they had been drinking a little, hence their forwardness). So I had to reject their invitation to get sleep and do well on my presentation. Stupid academic career. Hahaha.

Wednesday

Got up and presented. It actually went really well. In the actual case (still on-going), Georgia won the motion to have ICJ intervention by a vote of 8 to 7. Russia’s viewpoint and argumentation is SOLID, and managed to convince 7 of the 15 judges to its view. The opposing opinion judges wrote an amazing brief, and it was just mouth-watering for me. After two days of “defending” Russia, this time I felt I could almost actually do it.

So I represented Russia in the class and played “pro-Russia” during the discussion, as I had done my research to allow me to be biased. And it was at this point that I found out that my new flatmate, Tony (Georgia), it actually from South Ossetia… you know, where the war was. So when I commented that the presentation in class focused too much on the war, and it hurt Georgia’s overall case to bring up such a conflict in a straightforward legal battle… it kind of touched an emotional nerve. Wooopss…. I only found out his living scenario after I said these things. Luckily, we talked, and he knew I was playing pro-Russia and he agreed with my statements. But it was still slightly awkward… eeek.

But I had finished all three presentations successfully, and I could focus on my workout at 6PM, which I had moved from Tuesday so I could focus on my law presentation. It was my first workout on an outdoor stadium track since I arrived in Estonia. It felt sooo good to be back outside. Coach met up with me, and then said he had to go. Haha. So I ran the workout alone. No one on the track but me. And I NAILED that workout. I slaughtered it. It felt so good. Now granted, this VO2 workout wasn’t too fast, and I wasn’t working at times that were faster than last season’s. But I could feel my legs getting into speed and getting into work. And I liked it. A lot. It felt amazing.

Thursday

My Russian language class was cancelled for the Russian festival in Tartu. So I kind of did nothing for the majority of the day, and then I went to the festival with Genevieve, Kelsey, and Peter. FALSE. We were “casually” late by 40 minutes… and the location seemed to have ZERO evidence that there was ever a festival of any sort. It was kind of ridiculous. And it took over half an hour to walk to the place. Ugh. But we found a really beautiful hotel/café to stop in… it was too expensive. But I had borsch (amazing Russian soup), and then we went to a Chinese food place, and I got chicken that was waaay too sweet.

But that catches you up, mostly. I got my insurance purchased, so by May I will be an official resident in Estonia…. For my remaining 5 weeks. Kind of ridiculous in my opinion. Ugh. Oh well.

And as for planning my “Estonian countryside” trips… they probably won’t happen, which makes me sad. But I can’t rent a car, and I need one, because the bus times are so awful, it’s ridiculous. And I’m not up for 4 hour bus rides to stay in a town for 5 hours, only to 4 hour bus ride back. Ew. Gross.

And I’ve decided to enter Russia earlier than my program start, and I’m going to travel a little. I think my best friend, Sasha (lives in Russia), and I will travel to a city for a few days, so I can get adjusted to Russia with a friend, and not necessarily have to brave my internship and home family and adjustment all at once. I was thinking about going to Voronezh and Kursk, since I have friends here in Tartu that live in Voronezh. BUT – Voronezh is kind of an unpleasant city (from what I hear/Google Earth) and there’s a lot of crime against foreigners. So I think I’m going to go to Nizhny Novgorod instead, as there’s an overnight train, and its very “tourist” friendly. It’s basically the merchant town of Russia, so it’s GORGEOUS with lots of churches, and it’d be a much more pleasant place to be. But it’s not all set in stone yet. But I’m really excited by the idea of Nizhny. And I’m just so excited about everything. June will be a month of travel with friends and family, and July/August are Russia. WEEE!!

So obviously, my refocusing on goals has occurred, just not intensely as I originally planned. Eh. It’ll all happen in time…  Pictures are below, and again, click on them to see the GORGEOUSNESS up close.

Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Church, with Parlaiment (pink building) in the background.

 

I took a lot of pictures of Nevsky... over 50. So here's one over pretty houses.

St Olaf's is the big, tall tower in the center. hahaha. The "observation deck" is just the strip of black rectangle at the base of the ridiculously huge spire.

Looking down at the Old Wall and Old Town from St Olaf

From the top of St Olaf's - this is the "acropolis" - the hill in Tallinn.The castle turret is part of their Parlaiment, and the building on the far right on the hill will be part of my ever-growing global real estate empire, by the way.

I got up at 9AM, but I didn’t get a lot of sleep because I was sending out some much needed correspondence via my helpful electron friends. I went to the bakery, got my breakfast, and sat down outside my classroom and just enjoyed some food. Dr. Molis came in, I sat down, and kept eating my breakfast.

Then the two groups presented… They were somewhat good. But they started great discussions, so they win in my book. hahaha. Today was actually a good day of trading ideas, and almost a debate… sort of. It was at least engaging. And the professor’s lecture afterwards (it was an extended class period) was really direct, which I find to be a lacking quality with my professors here. So I really enjoyed the simplicity and directness of his lecture. Props in the air to him.

Then I went back to my place and NAPPED!! I haven’t napped much in Estonia, which my former roommates at Rhodes (Dan and Smith) would never believe. Back at Rhodes, if I have a break between classes, I nap. I’ll lay down, even if it’s a 25 minute break. Just get me horizontal. I can’t explain it. But I really haven’t napped much here, and it felt AMAZING. So wonderful.

Then I woke up and headed to my Russian class… to meet the impending doom of my exam. And I was late getting out of my apartment, so I power-walked it and walked past my professor in the hallway. I said, “????????????.” (*zdrastvoostye* [a polite hello]), she responded in turn. So I thought, well, that’s it, no mercy. Yay. FALSE.

After I sat in class alone, the rest of the students trickled in, and she came in with our exams in hand. I breathed in and out. She informed me that I hadn’t finished the first exercise, and I should do so immediately. So I said, “??!” (*da* [yes]), and started answering the questions in Russian. She had graded everything else on the exam, so I just had to do these correctly… Oh crap, what’s the genitive of that? Ooo, that’s accusative… Oh, what’s my faculty called here? But I finished it, and gave it to her…

If possible, always write meaningful, poorly written apologetic notes in Russian to your professors. It’s apparently really cute. Because when she handed back her test, I noticed that she changed the point totals on a couple of my sections by a few points to give me exactly a 90. I got an A!! See kids. If you show up early, if you’re in every class, if you participate, if you write cute emails earnestly, they do notice. Yay!! Made my day. I owe her big time.

Then I went to my workout with Coach Lemberg. He was beaming because one of his professional runners was back from South Africa and six weeks of training there. Bahaha. I walked from across town. I mean, it’s the same thing to him, I’m sure. My workout was a speed workout, plain and simple. I haven’t done a pure speed workout in about 3 months… and I didn’t do one today either. UGH. Ate me up and spit me out. I was mangled by the end of it. We even had to cut it short. So my anaerobic capabilities are WAY beneath where they should be, but I have retained my ability to roll within my aerobic range. This means I might be good to race a 10k… but not a 1500m. And unfortunately, best as I can tell, the games in Latvia have only a 1500m race…

But I’m going to talk with coach about it. If they only have the 1500m, I’m not going to race. The competition is in 6 weeks, and I doubt I can shoot up and be in peak 1500m speed in that time. When there’s still ice on the ground, I doubt it. And I’d be representing the University of Tartu and the country of Estonia when I raced. I don’t want to go out there and just blow up in the 1500 and not do anything productive at all. But we’ll see… I just really don’t want to be that American that kind of spit on Estonia’s desire to be a serious competitor. Just my thoughts. Obviously.

But overall today was grand! Weee!

Wednesday, April 1st

Got up at 9 o’clock and had some breakfast. Mmm, it was good. Then I went walking around town trying to shop for my Estonia team gear. I wanted to get some facepaint, and I found some that might have worked at this store. When I bodypainted at Rhodes, I used water-based acrylic paint, which may not be the best, but it stands up to the sweat and weather pretty well. And I found some acryllic paint in this store, but the labeling was in Estonian. It has a word “Vesi……” and vesi is water, but that could have meant waterproof or water-based. I just didn’t try. So no face paint.

But I did end up caving in, and I bought an Estonian national team jersey at a store. It’ll go wonderfully with my St Petersburg Zenit jersey I got last year in Russia. That and I matched Auke and Maarten, the two Dutch boys in charge of putting it all together. We met at the bus station and got on the noon express bus. Now, I haven’t been on the express bus before. Damn. Alison and Katie used it when they came to Tartu and they said was like an airplane… and it was. The driver talked to us about the ride and how long it would take (although it was in Estonian). There were TVs on the ceiling displaying scenes of nature and wildlife, and there was WiFi internet access, apparently. Crazy bus. I tried to sleep on the ride, so I wasn’t very exciting…

Got to Tallinn and started walking from the bus station to Old Town in order to drop of Maarten, Auke, and Maaike’s (all Dutch) bags at the boys’ hostel (Maaike was staying with a friend). But at this point, we decided that Kelsey and I were honorary Dutch for the day, so we defected for one day to the Netherlands. Why not?

Had lunch at a nice pancake place, and ran into Asia (Poland) as she was shopping for her sister’s wedding in two weeks. Asia is in my Russian language class and was the one that informed me of my error on the last exam. So we’re not close, but we’re good friends.

But Old Town is UNBELIEVABLE. It’s wonderful. I’m going there for Easter weekend for several nights, and I can’t wait. It’s GORGEOUS. Fell in love immediately. So beautiful!! So pics of that will come eventually…

Then we headed to the game!!! Armenia vs Estonia for the World Cup Qualifying Match. This was the only World Cup match Estonia would play until August. And in August they’re going to play Brazil, so this was probably the only chance to see Estonia win. They actually played in Armenia last week, and tied 2-2. So it at least seemed to promise an entertaining game.

The stadium was small – seats about 8,000 – and it’s called A. LeCoq Stadium, sponsored by Estonia’s largest beer company. BUT they do NOT serve alcoholic beverages in the stadium. Oxymoron?! We weren’t aware of this until we purchased “beer” at the concession stand. What a jip. Total crap.

But we had FRONT ROW seats. I was on the front row at a World Cup match!! It was sooo awesome. Luckily, for the first half we had Estonia’s goal in front of us (amazing saves by the goalie), and then for the second half we were in front of Armenia’s goal.

The game was amazing play… Estonia wasn’t spreading out at all, and wasn’t really passing. It was a lot of balls in the air and “approximating” where a teammate could theoretically. Armenia I think played a cleaner game. But Estonia shot more on the goal, and they didn’t fake any injuries (#9 on Armenia sucks about that).

But Estonia WON!!!! 1-0. And the goal happened in the 2nd half, so we were RIGHT THERE!!!! It was sooo coooool!!!! The play happened maybe 50 feet from my face!!!  Yaaaay!!!

I ended buying an Estonian scarf as well, so now I have Estonian and Russian jerseys and scarfs. Woot!!! Then we headed to a bar for a little bit, and Kelsey and I left for the 11PM bus back to Tartu. We arrived in Tartu starving, so we actually went into the McDonald’s and ordered food. I know, shame on me. But I was SOOO hungry. Needless to say, I was not hungry afterwards for some time.

Thursday, April 2nd

Somewhat of a blah day. Worked a little bit, studied some Russian, and eventually went to Russian at 6PM. Ugh. Got to class… POP QUIZ. 48 Russian product words… I did not know all of them. I mean, goose berries. Really? I didn’t know carrots, and that is sad. But goose berries?! Oh well. We also had a quiz over our oral re-telling skills, and I aced it. So take that! The class was very small, but it was nice overall.

BUT afterwards, we had an International Food Festival on our floor in Raatuse. It was AMAZING. I honestly didn’t think a lot of food would be cooked… FALSE. People cooked in their flats all day, and so doors were open and every other flat had some country’s food in it. My favorites: Czech (potato dumplings were amazing), Georgian (eggplant dish – orgasmic), Turkish (due to ingredients, tasted a little like Tex-Mex), Russian (sweet pancakes with strawberry sauce… *drools*). Us Americans baked chocolate chip cookies and rice-crispy treats. And they were popular, let it be known. We made 4 batches of cookies, and not one plate lasted longer than 6 minutes.

But it was a great evening of food and mingling. Yay!!

Friday, April 3rd

While the day’s not over (approx. 8pm), it is. Nothing more is going down today. hahaha. But the WEATHER!!!

It was HEAVENLY today. The sun was so warm, I could have sun-bathed… It was HIGH 40s and maybe even 50!!!! Sooo warm. My run was sooo pleasant today because of it. And I just started running in a direction, and ended up with some really nice views of Tartu and the countryside. It was actually quite nice. But without a doubt, the nicest day in Tartu yet. People were sitting on their balconies reading papers, the cafes had all their outside furniture set up. It was wonderful. May Spring’s reign continue for many days.

Note! Men, the ground is slippery. Hold onto women's purses for balance.

Maaike, Maarten, David, David, Me, Kelsey, Auke, and Mathias

So every day this week, I will post a new smattering of events in March, events taken from my personal journal entries.  Now you may ask, “Colin, why haven’t you been doing this anyway?”  Well, I figured that you may be too busy to really want to hear about my day-to-day.  But if you like the following posts and want more of them, just comment and let me know.  In the mean time, here’s the days of March 9 through 14.

Monday, March 9

I emailed the conference, they are not mailing me an invitation. So I have to get an invitation through a travel agency. HAHAHAHAHA. No way. I have gone to 3 of 4 travel agencies and thusfar the cheapest price has been $230 for an invitation and visa. Laughable. I love St Petersburg, and the conference would be great, but I’m not going to spend $300 for 3 days in St Petersburg at a conference that may or may not adequately provide lectures in English.

So this means that I do have to present in my Law class now. I watched a presentation today. And I kicked myself in the face again, because if I hadn’t missed my original presentation, I would have knocked it out of the park. I would have made the professor gleam with joy. But no. Instead, I was bored to tears and cursed myself.

In my Post Soviet class on Monday, we had ANOTHER argument from the Ukrainian girl in the class. 3rd argument in 3 classes. This last one was half an hour. Now, the reason is understandable. In the 1930s, Stalin implemented a policy to export grain and not allow the public to be able to purchase any of the grain they produced. So roughly 7 million people starved to death across the USSR. Roughly half of these deaths were in Ukraine with a great number more in Kazakhstan. Currently in Ukraine it is illegal to deny that this was genocide. My professor doesn’t acknowledge this event at genocide from the legal definition of genocide. From a cultural standpoint, it is understandable why the Ukrainian girl finds this very troubling.

BUT LET IT GO. If you have argued with the professor TWICE in class with no results, why bring it up a 3rd time?! Ugh. I mean, controversy is interesting, but it also just annoying after a certain point. Oh well.

Tuesday, March 10

Not a lot happened that I recall… Woot. hahaha. I felt sick on Tuesday night, so I didn’t do my workout with Coach Lemberg. I knew it’d be pointless to ruin a workout. So not running was unfortunately the event of the day.  Although, I did go with a group of internationals to this local couple’s house to eat some Turkish and Greek food, prepared by Birol (Turkey) and Alexandros (Greece).  OH MY GOODNESS!!  The food was AMAZING, and I want more.  So this was a wonderful event, although it wasn’t running… : (

Wednesday, March 11

I sprinted to Law, because I was afraid I’d be late again. Then I went to a workout with Coach Lemberg. It went well, and I can start to feel myself getting into better shape. My workouts next week will be much more intense… So this was my last ‘easy’ week. But I will get to race the 10k here in Tartu, and there’s a good chance I’ll get to represent Estonia in a multinational competition in Latvia!! So I’d have like two weeks of racing in May, but it’d be awesome. I hope that pans out.

But even more incredible was the introduction after the workout. A runner came up to me while I was stretching and wanted to know who I was. I told him, and he knew me from Coach Lemberg’s conversations about me. But one way or another, he’s really talkative!! And we’re going to go on a run together!! Yay!! I will get to run alongside someone for an hour!! And he invited me to a runner gathering at the sauna on Saturday. Score!! I get to meet all the runners!!!

And I’ve figured out the “details” on my time in Russia. I will not be taking language classes. In order to “save” $2000, I’m going to strictly work in the orphanage in the mornings/early afternoons. I’ll still live with the host family, and it will be less stressful, I think. Not having to keep grades up or have TONS of Russian shoved down my throat, my brain will just collapse under the cultural pressure of Russian immersion. hahaha. But I’m starting to make sense of all the paperwork, and it is certainly seeming less daunting now. Yay!!!! Weee!!!

Thursday, March 12

I don’t have class until 6 pm. This is somewhat nice, but I really just spend the whole day waiting for class to happen. So it’s kind of anti-climactic and what not.

But I got up, ran, and then met up with Genevieve and Peter for lunch at a place that supposedly was very cheap for students. We hunted in the “other” mall in town, Tasku, to try and find this place. Apparently, after looking at a map, you have to go through one of the stores to get to it, so it’s very much hidden. But it’s really awesomely decorated, and it was relatively cheap for students, so I may return here.

Then Genevieve made us boys help her pick out a new coat, and we actually rocked at it. I mean, I can’t shop for me all too well, but telling her that coats looked ugly was easy. And we were successful. She purchased a coat that she looks wonderful in, and she looks much more European and well-dressed. Success fo‘ sho‘.

Russian was VERY small, maybe 9 of us in class. I felt like I was back at Rhodes, and it made me quite happy, really. And it was a very pleasant class overall. Then I was walking back to Raatuse… and it finally hit me that I was home. I really do think of Tartu as home. I love it. Not just enjoy it or realize that I was in Tartu, but if you ever took me back to Tartu, I would feel like home. It’s such a wonderful feeling, but I’m really excited about it. Yay!

I then went back to my old flat to have dinner with Timofey and Ada. I do love them very much, and I love talking with them. It was a wonderful dinner of soup and bread. And really good conversation about education and military service. A lot of information swapped, and it was very “cultural” in general.

Today was also Ibiza Night at Club Illusion. Ibiza is an island off the southern coast of Spain, and it is known as the party island for all of Europe. But they had free entrance for international students and a free drink if you showed up in shorts. So I of course went in my shorts (it wasn’t too cold). The DJ was pretty good, but I danced with Timofey and Ada a lot and the Dutch – Niels, Auke, and Marten. It was a good night of dancing, and I actually stayed until it closed at 3 AM. This is a first, because I thought it closed so much later. I might stay til close every night now.

Friday, March 13

Slept in really late. Then I ran, and ate a pizza at Taverna. Then I did nothing except watch some clips on YouTube of people dancing. I wasted sooo much time with it. Kind of ridiculous… several hours… Wow, my life is worth emulating, yes? Ugh. But anyway.

Then we went to a bar where Jack, the Brit, was invited to DJ as a test run to see if it will become a weekly thing. I played a game of billiards… and lost twice. Ugh. Peppe (Italy) and I did the best we could, but obviously it wasn’t enough. Then we danced with Jack’s music, but the pub was really not well circulated with air, so I just stood outside a couple of times to keep from sweating all over the floor. A good night with good music.

Saturday, March 14

Got up late (2pm) and went for a long run. It was good, as the temperatures have really warmed up, so I wore my thinnest running pants and just my long-sleeve top. It was perfect. Absolutely wonderful. But apparently it has been snowing at night, as the trails away from town had fresh snow on them, but Tartu itself hasn’t frozen over again. This is very good.

I then fashioned a lunch in my room and received a call from Rainis!! Rainis is the Estonian who introduced himself to me earlier in the week, and he was confirming my interest in going to the sauna. I said, hell yes, and left to go. Then I met up with Mario and Marte, both of whom I had met earlier in February, but hadn’t seen since. We then walked to the sauna, which was deceivingly far away… like other side of Tartu I hadn’t even been yet. But the Technology Institute of Tartu (as they told me 12 times) has a small sauna in the basement, but Rainis and another runner Rahna are molecular biology students (Rainis undergrad, Rahna PhD), so we get into the building without a problem.

I was honestly very nervous about the sauna prior to it, because I didn’t know how many runners would be there, and I didn’t know anything about them. Running communities are very close, and it can be difficult for a newbie to establish any sort of a place to sleep. So I was nervous about sitting naked in a room full of guys I didn’t know, sweating like crazy, and trying to be the American they want to know. hahaha.

Now, they teased me that I wouldn’t be able to stand the heat. And in my head, I was saying, “Get out of my house. I’m from Texas. I’ve roofed, run, and existed in Texas in the afternoon on summer days. I may hate the heat, but I can take it.”

FALSE.

When we first got in the sauna, it wasn’t a problem. Yeah, it was hot, but I could take the heat, whatever. HOLY SWEET MOTHER. Once they started getting it going… 75 degrees Celsius. That’s almost 170 degrees Fahrenheit.  I was sweating like CRAZY. As was everyone else, and I almost made it the longest… but Mario apparently LOVES the heat, and I was not in a mood to compete as to who could survive heat strokes.

So we just sat outside on the floor and talked international politics and culture. It was kind of amazing for me. Talking with Estonians about being Estonian, how they see Russia, how they see themselves, how they perceive the economic crisis. Crazy awesome. But the floor was literally covered in the sweat off our bodies… Then we got into the sauna again. And it was starting at 70 degrees, so you start sweating at 158 F pretty quick. I lasted a few minutes, then got the crap out of there.

We showered and then headed for Zavood, because the international students were going to DJ there tonight. After the long walk we arrived, and there was no one there. Then more and more international students trickled in, and they actually met a huge number of my friends. It was really nice. I got to show of my Estonian friends. hahaha. I felt sooo cool. haha.

And I LOVE these guys. They laugh really easily and they’re very outgoing. It’s a dream for me. And I’m not too much slower than them, except for the fact that they are all marathoners. Sweet mother, I would never run a marathon, but they love it. They say it’s the most fun race ever. FALSE. haha.

First of all, I’m living in a new room.  Toomas (my roommate) and I moved to the 4th floor, where more international students live.  We thought it would take a few days for the Student Housing to find us a room and authorize us to move.  But in a stunning flash of zero-bureaucratic speed, we were told we had one hour to move when we went into the office on Wednesday.  I honestly was a little sad, because I had been invited out by the “professor couple” (our old flatmates) and I had a delightful time.  But luckily we agreed to do it every Tuesday, so I’ll see them again.

But now I live on the 4th floor, and I like it a lot.  You see people you know all the time, because 90% of the international students live on this hall.  My bathroom is smaller and the shower isn’t as good, but I really can’t complain whatsoever.  My new flatmates are Davide (Germany) and Gerugh (Hungary).  I met Davide earlier and he’s very nice, but I honestly talked to Gerugh for a while on my first day in the room… not since then.  Kind of odd.  But he was nice.

Unfortunately, due to some strange delays, three of my four classes were postponed until this upcoming week.  So I had a week without classes.  It was certainly not what I wanted, but I guess it gave me more time to adjust, but I just simply had too much spare time on my hands.  I wanted something to do, something to work on, but oh well.  It was nice to relax.

I have started training, and it feels so good to be back in that grind of things.  I had an introductory workout with Coach Lemberg, and it went really well.  The workout was far from difficult (5×1000), but considering I hadn’t run in a week due to traveling and me not knowing where to run (ice is everywhere!!), my legs got nice and sore (first time in a long time).  But the indoor facilities are amazing.  They have a rabbit system (I had never heard of/experienced it before) where along the inside line of Lane 1, there are lights every 5 meters.  You program the system as to how far you’re running and at what pace.  The lights then turn on and set your pace for you.  So it’s an excellent training tool.  I still look at my watch, but I have an update any time I want to look at the lights.  It was sooo coool!  But I do my non-workout runs through this 5k trail along the river.  I love it!  It’s really narrow and secluded.  You run through town in order to get to it, but then you start running into nowhere.  Estonia is 1.4 million, remember, so when I say nowhere, I mean NOWHERE.  You can look out and just see a field covered in snow and not a house for miles.  I love it!!!  And I love running in the snow, especially while it’s snowing.  So fun!  That may seem unexciting to you Northerners, but as a Texan, snow is a delight. hahaha.

Wednesday everyone went to Club Illusion, which is the best club in Tartu for international students (we get a discount, heck yes!).  But it’s an old Soviet theatre that they converted into a dance hall.  So there’s already a coat room and lobby for security/check-in, and then you’re just in the theatre.  The audience seats and stage are the dance floor.  They still have the balcony seating, it’s awesome.  That night I felt like I was in the US.  They played remixes of Annie Lennox’s – “Walking on Broken Glass”; Jet’s – “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”; and Joan Jett and the Heartbreakers’ – “I Love Rock’n Roll”.  Everyone was singing the lyrics (even the Estonians in the club) and it was a lot of fun.

And across the week we sampled a lot of restaurants many good, some not (Balkan place was high prices and little food without high quality, sad day).  But I have found my routine, of sorts.  hahaha.  There’s a bakery on the town square were you can get morning pastries for a LOW price of 7 kroons (approx $.70), so that’s my breakfast, and it’s right along my way to class.  Love that place!  Then there’s a pub/restaurant in the basement of our dorm for dinner, and they have really good pizza for 57 kroons (approx $5.70, I think you get the conversion).  And then there’s several restaurants for lunch.  Crepps, soogood and priced well; Kissing Students (in name of the fountain seen below) where international students have a discount for the month of February; Catwalk, good pastas; and Italiano Restarante, with good Italian for not much.  So good.  hahaha.  I was cooking on my own for a while, but I really wasn’t getting very much in the way of a diverse palette or too much nutrition.  So this is how I rationalize eating out for cheap.  hahah.

But my favorite day of the time so far was definitely yesterday.  I went on a long run in the morning (got lost so I ended up going for 12 miles), but it was wonderful running through the HUGE snowflakes.  Then Niels (Netherlands) put together a huge group to go sledding at the coolest place ever!  Tucked away in the “hills” behind the town square and near the Language Center (my Russian classes) is this huge crater (or bowl, perhaps) that is 200-300 feet deep and several thousand wide.  And the entire thing is ice with a wonderful layer of snow on top.  AKA: Sledding paradise.  There were two main chutes: a short, bumpy one or a long fast one.  We picked the latter.  A video and pictures are below.  Then we made a Valentine’s Dinner: potato wedges, chocolate truffles, and some other “feel good food”.  Then we went to a jazz concert and just jumped from place to place until way early into the morning.  It was a wonderful day, I got to meet new people (two guys from the Netherlands studying at the Aviation Institute), and I sled my butt off.

BUT!!!!!!!!!  The week was made even better just a few days ago.  I found out that I have been accepted into the Mertie W Buckman International Internship Program!!!!!!!!!!!  What is that?  It’s a program only for international studies majors that provides complete funding for several students to participate in an internship overseas!!  So I will officially be going to Russia this summer!!!!!!!  I’ve applied to an internship in Novgorod, Russia in order to work in an orphanage.  It will be some time before I hear from that process, but I am officially going to hop across the border and enjoy some time in Russia!!!  I’m soooo incredibly excited.  Yay!!!

But I will have to do laundry for the first time this week, so I hope that won’t be followed by a post describing how destroyed my clothes are… I’m worried about Estonian laundry soap, considering it’s all in Estonian without listed ingredients… but we’ll see!

The weather has been in the teens and 20s, so not that cold really.  I love cold weather, so this is a delight for me.  The sun sets somewhat early, but the days will get longer as the year goes on, so that’s good.  But over 50% of Estonia is forest, and I love forest, and it’s snow.  So snow-filled forests make me sooo happy!!  And Tartu is AMAZING.

I live with a guy from New York, a visiting professor from Russia and his girlfriend.  It is awesome.  The “professor couple” is really sweet, and they made me soup for my first two meals in Estonia.  Really really nice people.  But my roommate from New York is Estonian and can speak fluently thanks to his parents’ insistence.  So he’s a helpful one to have around.  : )

But this town rocks.  It’s more pleasant than I expected honestly.  And it just makes sense to me here.  Except that Estonians prefer silence… all the time.  So this is an issue in the day, but at night, everyone in the clubs talks, so it’s okay.  But there’s Nepalese, Turkish, Balkan, Italian, Russian, French, Greek, and Estonian restaurants to name a few.  It’s beyond awesome and affordable here, so I’m beyond excited.

But my kitchen doesn’t have much to cook with, so I’m eating out all the time now.  Which is sad.  But I think I’ll get sandwich stuff and have lunch at my apartment, but I don’t know.  I have ZERO routine or schedule right now, so it’s all up in the air.

I haven’t gotten in touch with my Estonian coach yet, but I learned that there’s over 2500 athletes here, so that’s interesting.  hahahaha.  I am having difficulties with setting up a bank account and establishing my residency, but I got a cell phone that can call and friends’ numbers in that phone.  So as long as I have my already dear friend Ania from Poland or Lucas from Lithuania, I’m fine.

I haven’t taken my camera anywhere yet, because I haven’t found much to be exciting, and I didn’t expect much to happen at Orientation.  hahaha.  But as this week goes on and I walk to class, I’ll take some photography and try to post it.  Deal?  Deal.  But now I must write some emails to people I need to contact in Tartu!

And this upcoming weekend is SCAC Championships in Memphis, so the team’s got a big race coming up.  I’m incredibly excited, but I think it could be an extremely good race for us.  I’m extremely hopeful.  It’ll be on our home course, so that’ll be great as well.  Woo, woo!

But this semester has me thinking big for sure:
Our whole team is pushing for XC NCAA Nationals.
Writing an article for publication with one of my professors.
One of the female runners in my grade, Cybil, is studying abroad in Kenya.  So we’re planning to climb Mt.
Kilimanjaro before our respective semesters abroad begin.
Studying abroad in Estonia, while training with members of the Estonian National team and hopefully doing research for professors.
I found an internship program in Novgorod, Russia.  Even if I don’t get the International Internship Scholarship, I’m going.  I have to.  5 weeks in beautiful Novgorod?  Can’t beat it.
Then starting my senior year.  Who knows what awesomeness will occur.
Then moving to Russia for a year or two and teaching English as a second language.
Then grad school for a PhD.  Weee!!

But we’ll see.  I just want to climb a mountain.  It’s a shame it’s incredibly expensive.  But at least, I’m thinking big.

The XC team travelled to Oshkosh, Wisconsin this weekend to compete against some nationally ranked teams and kind of “get away from it all”.  And it went RIDICULOUSLY well.  The men and women did very well, and I know that 10 of the men had personal bests of at least 20 seconds.  I was ecstatic, as I was able to cut off another 59 seconds, finishing in 26:54.  Averaging 5:25 miles for 5 miles was definitely hard, but I think with some more focus, I could get to 5:20s for the SCAC Championships (in 11 days), while we’ll host here in Memphis.

And when your race goes well, everything else seems to fall into place as well.  I decided to stay on campus for Fall Break, so that I could make some significant headway on the research I need to do for my THREE research papers.  And I made huge gains on my Russian immigration law paper, but nowhere else.  Oh well.  But I got a lot of rest, and enjoyed a lot of restaurants around Memphis.  Woot!

And I’m very excited for this week.  I interviewed last week for the Buckman Fellowship, which can provide up to $12,500 a semester for study abroad programs that are not Rhodes sponsored.  And I find out if I am to be chosen as a fellow and how much of my semester in Estonia will be paid for.  To be named a Fellow is a huge honor and I really hope I’m selected.  But I also just sent out my application to Estonia today, so now I also have to wait for acceptance into their program as well.  *sigh*  Waiting isn’t as fun as it could be.  I’ll work on making that exciting this week as well.