Kissing Students – My Fulbright Experience

It has now been a week since I arrived in the beautiful country of Estonia, or mighty Estonia as my professor back home would say. I had a really great time in Tartu and I just arrived in Viljandi last night. Before I share my experiences in Tartu there has been something I have been thinking about. I have been trying not to use names in this blog because I don’t want anyone to read it and be upset that I talked about them. However, I think this makes my stories a bit confusing sometimes and what is a blog about my experiences if I don’t talk about the people I have met. So I think I am just going to start using names. This may not be the best way of handling the situation, but if anyone has a problem with it I can change their name or not talk about them.

Now that that’s been said, let’s talk about Tartu. The reason I was there was for the international student orientation at the University of Tartu. I was the only person there who would actually be living in Viljandi, not Tartu. There is one other international student, that I know of, that will be studying in Viljandi, but she was unable to make it to the orientation. Hopefully I will meet her this week.

Everyone has been super nice here. I have yet to meet the quiet, introverted Estonian I have heard so much about. My first day of orientation I was sitting in a large lecture hall listening to someone talk about life in Estonia when the girl next to me nudged my arm and passed me a little piece of paper. I looked down and saw my name written on it which puzzled me quite a bit. How could someone be sending me a note, when I was sitting in a room full of people I had never met before. I unfolded the paper and it said “look to your left”. I did and I saw an Estonian girl on the other side of the room waiving to me. She was my “tutor” Kaisa, and I thought it was really cute. She must have recognized me from facebook. I think I already mentioned how later that day she showed us around Tartu and answered a lot of our questions.

The orientation was very helpful, but I will skip all the details about residency permits, registering for classes, and student groups. The second day of orientation I met a group of American students. When the last session was over I didn’t know what to do and I wanted to meet people, so I awkwardly hung out outside the room and then eventually invited myself into their conversation. I showed them a place to have lunch, that Tuula (the girl I was staying with) showed me earlier. It was great to get to know them and hear about how they were adjusting to Estonia too. I will definitely try to meet up with them when I visit Tartu in the future. One of them, Molly, happened to be the Gilman Scholar that the embassy had emailed all the Estonia Fulbrighters about. I told her we would invite her if we did any Fulbright gatherings or trips.

The next day I got a text from my Estonian language teacher, Lili. She said she was in Tartu for the day and that we could meet up again if I wanted. So after having a few more questions answered the orientation ended and Lili and I went to a little place where I had a kartulipirukas (a potato quiche-type thing). We spoke in Estonian for a while until we needed to use more complex language, and we switched back to English. After lunch we walked to her friend’s studio where she works on illustrations for children’s books. It was nice to just hangout and relax. When we got hungry again I went with Lili to the grocery story and we cooked some food together. Then I went back to Tuula’s apartment for a little while.

I tried to take a nap, but I had too much on my mind to sleep. Instead, I went to get an ESN (Erasmus Student Network) card that I need if I want to go on trips with other international students and that will also give me discounts in some places. By the time I had finished with that and got back to Tuula’s it was time for the “Pub Crawl” which all the international student were invited to. This is not normally my type of thing, but I am trying to put myself out there and be more social. I was glad that Tuula decided to crash the party and come with me. We were divided into groups and then ventured off to our first pub/bar.

We had this list of titles that we were supposed to take group pictures to fit. I never saw the list but we used my camera for a couple of them. I think one was “Batman” and one was “Something Innocent”. The batman one turned out to be really funny. We were playing a name game were everyone had to pick a hand sign to do and Tuula did that thing were you flip your hands upside down like classes. She called it the Harry Potter thing, but most people recognized it as the Batman thing. Then, there happened to be an Estonian guy at the next table wearing a Batman T-Shirt, so it was really quite perfect.

Batman!

“Bad Boys”

Tuula and I stuck with the group for a little while, met then she met up with two over her colleagues. She introduced me to them and I ended up talking mostly with them. Lili and her friend found us right as we were about to leave to go the print-making museum (Trükimuuseum). They were having a party and some sort of performance. The performance was very…different. I won’t go into detail, but it involved a sitar, rocks, a ping-pong ball, and people lying on the floor. We hung out there for a while and then head back downtown where we meet up with Lili again. Before calling it a night she gave me a big hug and I thanked her for being so awesome and helping me out with everything.

While trying to find the bathroom at Trükimuuseum I found this and took it as a sign that I am in the right place!

All in all, it was a pretty eventful trip to Tartu, but now I am in Viljandi and anxious to start exploring the town where I will be spending most of my time this year!