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.