A letter home from study abroad
Well, I'm back from my trip to the baltics...got back yesterday morning in
fact.....as expected, I slacked off and didn't write a single journal
entry while i was there....so here's a quick summary of the highlights.
18 October 1996
After dropping my computer at ACTR's office for safekeeping (in a
safe, no less!) I ran around to pick up a loaf of bread and several
cup-a-noodles' At about 3:30 i headed off to the train station to meet
the rest of my group and the group from international. It turned out that
I ended up in a train car with most of the crowd from international while
most of linugistics was in another....which suited me...Linguistics'
collective plan seemed to be to get as plastered as possible for the
entirety of the train ride.
Well, once we got on the train, everybody started to pull out the
food they brought...we must have had 3 jars of nutella, 4 loaves of bread,
3 hunks of cheese and 2 bunches of banannas...and emily's host-mom baked
her a pie for the train.......
Sometime later that evening, a guy from down the train askes if we
wouldn't mind talking to a young girl (16) from his coupe, as she wants to
practise her english...no problem we say...after about an hour, he returns
to give us some candy....kevin and i are each handed a single piece of
candy, while each of the four women in the coupe has a handful dropped in
her lap....then the guy sits down and starts to chat with us...he askes us
about our blood types...then goes on to explain that he's got normal
blood....and makes a joke about royal blue-blood which he turns into a
joke about gays (using the slang word goluboi) and tries to get into a
discussion about homosexuality (and how wrong and disgusting and
sub-human it is) with us...At this point, kevin basically told him that we
weren't interested in talking about such things and that he better leave
right then.
Our first stop was tallinn...which felt really cool and really
western....we spent about four days there exploring the nooks and crannies
of the old town. In tallinn, I found my favorite type of bubbles in the
whole world...a german brand called "Pustefix." Tallinn felt like a very
western city...there were lots of reasonalbly priced restaurants...people
were friendly...they smiled at you on the street....The other thing I
bought in tallinn was a CD by The Lemonheads....who broke up 2-3 years
ago...but they've got a new CD out...I won't ask questions...i'll just
listen to my new CD.
On our last full day in tallinn, I found net access at the local
EUnet franchisee...apparently they only sell access to dialup or leased
line customers, but took pity on me after I explained my plight and they
told me that there were no cyber-cafes in tallinn. So, at about 8 bucks
an hour, I was able to check my mail and chat with my friend rachel. I
also can now add estonia to the list of countries I've logged in from.