A fun week

it has been indeed. I wonder where to start... I guess I'll begin with the least fun part of it - two weeks ago my phone crashed and I couldn't switch it back on. I got that phone on New Year's Eve, so I got it fixed for free. After living with a crappy old phone I got in 2008 for a week, I finally got it back. I'm still so glad I removed the SD card before giving it away, because they erased everything and updated my version of Android. Would've been awful to lose all my precious music and pictures to that. I'm still not done setting it up again, but I'm actually happy with the outcome.

Also, the first 7 week period at school is coming to an end, with just one week left. I still like my class and I don't have anything against going to school. Many fun things have happened in the meanwhile, and at least I know all their names by now. I've also made some really good friends already, and I can feel I'm finally accepted the way I am. Some weeks ago school photos were taken, and we received them a week ago.

Me and Kristiina, one of my best friends.

So much has been happening and will happen at school that it's actually very hard to remember it all. We had freshmen's days during the last week, though me and my friends hardly got to be a part of it, since the people who were supposed to take care of us didn't really do anything, so the best we could do was to watch and laugh at others crossdressing or just wearing funny clothes, being taped together and painted on, and having to taste some quite disgusting foods. In my opinion no lines of decency were crossed at any point, but I heard of someone complaining, which is why on the third day nothing really happened. I did get to wear a gas mask and a potato sack on the first day though, and I found nothing wrong in doing that. Here's some pictures.

Pretty ladies

Me in my finest clothes.

On the following Friday, or well, yesterday, me and my friend and classmate Liisi were taken to an event hosted by a high school in Elva - Aleksis Kivi day. It's celebrated annually by all Finnish teaching high schools in Estonia. It was a very fun day. We met up in the center of Tallinn at 7.15 in the morning and a bus was there to take us to Elva. We arrived before 11 o'clock. Then we were led to the school hall where we could have a little snack and sit down to listen to a concert. The school choir performed some Finnish songs, which sounded really great. My favourite was a song from Kalevala, but I couldn't find it, so here's another song they also sang. 

They also sang a song that was originally written in Estonian and is quite well known, but has also been translated to Finnish, which was new to me. They sang it in both Finnish and Estonian. 

Finnish version, sung by Georg Ots

Estonian version, also sung by Georg Ots.

Then we  heard speeches from some people, including Toomas Järveoja, the mayor of Elva, Matti Kangor, the principal of the school, and Pertti Pyhtilä, an Estophile. Then we were given a lecture about Swedish loanwords in Finnish by Eino Koponen from Tallinn University. After that, a band named Night Felony (I couldn't help it; I heard Nightwish the first time they announced the band) performed some songs from Dingo.

Then we were separated to different groups randomly, and each group was led to a workshop. I wished for something like language workshop, or even folk song workshop would've been just fine, but instead I was led to the songs and games workshop.. The ok part was listening to more songs, and to see four boys who were late doing this in front of the class as punishment, was actually hilarious.

But then we sang and danced the Finnish version of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes about 15 times in a row. I can remember doing that at some party when I was 5, and it was one of my first contacts with the Finnish language, also the first time when I noticed similarities. The first five times felt so awkward, it truly redefined embarrassing for me. Later on I managed to overcome it, and then it was really fun. It was actually quite an exercise. I'm really glad Liisi was also in the same group with me, because otherwise I probably wouldn't have had any fun at all. After that we went back to the school hall and we had to show the other people what we did. I'm so glad our group leader made the rest of the people get up and dance along, otherwise it would've felt really odd. After that experience I felt like I had been through a therapy, and it totally made up for the stuff that didn't happen to us during freshmen's days. I hope I won't have any problems with singing along in the future after that.

After that we got back on the bus and started heading home. It was a very fun day and I actually felt really happy afterwards. 

And now a few words about something I most looked forward to - Samuli. He spent the last weekend with me, and it was a lot of fun. I'm really happy with the weekend, since I got to show him the most important sights of Tallinn and we got plenty of time for each other too. He gave me the originals of these drawings.  

 

He's pretty good, isn't he. :)

I'm hoping to frame them one day soon and hang them on a wall. He also gave me a Finnish-Estonian-Finnish dictionary. It feels so much more special to be looking up words from that one dictionary with an inscription in it than from any other dictionary from the store, that's for sure. Even more happy memories for me now, yay!

Briefly, I'm very happy to be surrounded by people who accept me and like me the way I am. Thanks for being there, all of you. :)