Baltic Tour Highlight #2: Actually Being in Estonia

Me, hanging out in Tallinn's medieval wall.

I have been studying Estonian for about 18 months now, and I started doing so for reasons too complicated to get into at this moment. However, one of those reasons was NOT that I had been to Estonia.

Needless to say, I was very excited to actually visit the country, after I had heard so much about it and spoke its relatively obscure language in class everyday for the last five quarters. I saw many things I had only read about, heard about, or seen hand-drawn pictures of. I spoke the language. I had whole interactions without English, even though almost everybody speaks English. I understood signs, and announcements, and random drunk people on the street. I bought Harry Potter in Estonian (For those interested, the Estonian title is "Harry Potter ja Tarkade Kivi" or "Harry Potter and the Smart Stone").

All of this was enormously satisfying. Me and my Estonian-class buddy began speaking to each other in Estonian almost as soon as we landed in the country--granted, he spoke much more than me. Mostly our conversations consisted of him saying something to me about where we were going, or describing something, and me replying with "Ja, on küll" (Yes, of course), or "Oh, Jah?" (Oh, yeah?). We even had an entire conversation in Estonian with Veljo Tormis, even though he wasn't that interested in talking to us. (This is a big deal. Ask any choral musician.) I was pretty anxious about my approximate-Estonian-age of about 4 1/2 years-old, but I managed to pull it off.

Me and my Estonian-class buddy, happy to be in Estonia, speaking Estonian (sort of).