Saturday, May 10, 2014

Friends and Family

Right now I am watching the Eurovision finale on TV with Karel. I also watched the two semi finales earlier this week. They were amazing, although my three favorite songs did not make it to the finale. Next year I will have to watch Eurovision online.

The results of the second semi finale were delayed because there was a petition with 15,000 signatures from Russia to remove Austria from the list because the singer was a transvestite.

Anyway, Eurovision is so much fun to watch. I voted in the first semi finale for Moldova.

Now back to older news. Two weeks after St. Petersburg was the District Conference for 1420 on Soumenlinna, an island just of the coast of Finland near Helsinki. We, the Estonian exchangers, traveled to Helsinki with Anett, the single Estonia Rotex, instead of with Raivo.

It was very cold out on the island, but that didn't make it any less fun to be there. We attended the conference and spoke in our respective languages to the attending mass of old people. We also got to meet the Outbounds and impart our collective wisdom to them.

Since then I have been attending school, exploring town, and hanging out with friends. Brittney showed me a restaurant bar place that had been built in an old gun powder storage. Clara showed us the pictures her fellow YFU exchangers had made that were displayed in part of the University.

Last Monday was orienteering day at MHG. Everyone went out to Ihaste at their classes' time and followed a map to teachers with stamps in the woods around town. The goal was to see how many you could get in an hour out of the sixteen. I was partnered with Rauno and we got nine of them.

With my host family I have gone to several events. We went to have dinner with a neighbor last week and they made very good Asian food complete with delicious spring rolls. I spent most of the visit playing with Karel and the neighbor's daughter.

Yesterday we went next door to celebrate someone's birthday. Thankfully there were lots of kids so I could stay and talk with the adults. The men had a lot of interesting things to talk about so it was very fun.

Today is Mothers' Day, which is why I forced myself to type these up, so I went with Valter and Karel to his grandmother's house in the countryside. I met his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin. The three of us ran around outside in the rain for a while, then came in to eat lunch. His grandmother is really a very sweet old lady.

We came back around five and then waited for Eurovision to come on.

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