In Love With Estonia.

Alexander Nevsky. One of my most favourite cathedrals in all of Europe.

Pink Parliament.

Peach, Brie & Cream Cheese Pancakes.

The Baltic Sea.

Winding Streets.

View atop St. Olav's.

Elk Soup!

They were lovely :) 

Madi, Me, McCall, Rebecca, Katie, Annie & Saffron.

Town Square.

Beautiful paintings near the Cathedral.

All smiles on St. Olav's.

We had a bus to catch at 10:30PM on Friday. Sleeping on the bus is never desirable, but I thought I'd be alright this time because I had my ZzzzQuil. Took two of those babies and knocked right out. I had 2 seats to myself, luckily. I think I slept almost the whole 9 hours there. Maybe I was awake for 1 hour max. It was beautiful. I'm telling you, this never happens to me. So it felt like a small triumph to have achieved that much sleep. We arrived at 7AM to a not so rainy Tallinn (Which was disappointing because I packed for a rainy weekend, due to the weather saying so.) Looks like my rain boots would be staying in the bottom of my backpack, then. We had to walk a little bit to the hostel. Nothing was open at this time, so after we dropped our bags in the luggage room, we had a little trouble finding somewhere to eat for breakfast. We found a Reval Cafe but it wasn't to open for 30 minutes. We decided to wait outside because we were sure any other cafe wouldn't be open yet either. It wasn't as lovely as I remembered it was, but the food was good. I got a Chai Latte and a Ham & Cheese omelette. It literally did nothing for the starvation I was feeling so I ate half of Annie's (poor girl hates eggs but the only other option on the menu was porridge, and we get enough of that on the week days.) I still felt a bottomless pit in my stomach, but figured we would eat again soon. We didn't have anything planned. Tallinn doesn't have big, popular attractions like other European cities. It's just a quaint little place with winding, cobbled roads and beautiful buildings. We spent the day mostly seeking out good food and hanging by the sea. Our group split up and Annie, Madi, McCall & I took off in search of a nice place to view the Baltic Sea. We camped on a wall next to the harbour and honestly, we sat there for maybe 45 minutes, hardly exchanging any words. Just enjoying the sound of waves, the wind and the serenity of life at that very moment. I couldn't help but wish that Tim could have been there with me. As I looked across the sea and knew that in the far distance, Finland was ahead. Even though he isn't there now, it was a funny feeling to think that his homeland was just across the sea. I can't wait to see what the future has in store for our traveling endeavors together! 

We met up with the other girls for lunch at the Kompressor. It is a famous and cheap pancake house in the heart of Old Town Tallinn. Huge, stuffed pancakes for under 5 Euros. I also got some fried garlic bread to go with it and it was all so excruciatingly good. If I had it my way, I would have suggested we eat there for the next 4 meals, but you know....not everyone likes pancakes as much as me. We continued to explore a bit and of course, became hungry again not long after. The thing I love about my group is that they all love food as much as I do! This definitely helps, because when I want to stop for snacks and treats, they are right along with me :) I love it! We sort of made a mistake and ate at a burger restaurant right in Town Hall Square so....yes I may have paid 13 Euros for a basic hamburger (that I only ate half of due to not feeling well) and a baby cappuccino. That didn't feel so good, but we were a little bit smarter with our food after that. 

Annie discovered that Saturday night, there was to be an Ancient Bonfire lighting festival at the harbour. We made our way to Seaplane Harbour and waited for the lighting. According to the tale, years and years ago, when the Sea Men would come home from their long journeys at sea at the end of August, the towns people would light these huge bonfires at the harbours to guide the men back to shore. So it is a tradition all along the Baltic Sea to light these bonfires on the last weekend in August. Unfortunately, the fire was very small (I guess I was expecting a massive massive fire) but it was still nice to look down the coast and see the few little fires that were lit. 

We headed back to the hostel and oh my goodness! When we walked in the door it was like a huge wave of sweat and heat. Our room was literally right next to the common room, so it was so loud in there! I was hoping to come back to the common room and maybe meet some people and play pool or something. But it was so crowded, I couldn't even move around in there. I discovered that we arrived back at the hostel during the pub crawl, so that massive load of people would be gone soon to their next pub. After they left it was 20x better. We met a nice guy named Arthur who ended up being from Vilnius as well and we met a French dude named Simon who was studying in Tallinn. Annie & I spent the evening talking with them, and it was really nice to make some acquaintances. The best part of staying in hostels is always meeting people. 

Like I mentioned earlier, it was supposed to rain all weekend in Tallinn, so I brought warm clothes and rain boots. I only brought one light T-shirt, so I ended up wearing that both days because it was so humid. Like 90% humidity! It was awful. But then a wind would come in and it would be frigid! I think I removed my coat and put it back on 50 times during the day. It was a little bit colder on Sunday, so I was actually able to keep my coat on most of the day and not sweat to death, so that was a positive. We found a nice flower market and Annie bought Madi a giant Sun flower. It was darling :) We had breakfast at a little cafe, but it didn't really tickle my fancy. It was sort of ghetto inside and the food was meh. Oh well. We climbed up the narrow tower to St. Olav's cathedral to the 360 degree platform. The view stole my heart last time and it did not fail, once again. Tallinn is just magical from up high. We met a sweet kiwi couple from New Zealand who were travelling through all of Europe in their van for a whole year! How wonderful is that? We talked to them for a good half hour probably, and it was just the sweetest thing. My heart is always filled with satisfaction during moments like that. Meeting beautiful people in beautiful places. 

We sat down for lunch at III Drakkon, which is a medieval themed shop that specializes in Elk Soup and Ox Meat Pies. I've heard so much about it so I had to try the soup, and I dubbed it the best soup I've ever had. The flavor was insanely good, and I had a spinach pie and then an apple pie to accompany it. All of that for maybe 5 Euros total? And I paid 13 Euros for a hamburger and a coffee the day before? Yeesh! 

We walked around the cathedral again and then found a nice look out view where we stopped for a bit. We went for dinner at a mexican place called Ancho and it was completely empty. Our waitress was so nice, and she even split our checks at the end (which never happens here.) I got a pork burrito with really good chipotle sauce. Delicious. 

We had to catch our bus at 10:30 that evening, so we went back to the hostel to hang around for a while. Simon appeared again so Annie & I chatted with him for a little while. We said our goodbyes to our new friends and to our new love named Tallinn and headed back to Vilnius. Unfortunately we got stuck with a very loud and annoying Finnish man on our way home who didn't understand that literally everyone on the bus except him was trying to actually sleep. Every time Saffron would close her eyes to fall asleep, he would shake her awake. How rude!!! Eventually he shut up, and we all got some sleep. 

It was quite an extraordinary weekend. Cheers to Tallinn!

One Of My Favourite Families

I have MISSED my host family so much. Tonight, Jolita invited me over for dinner and I have been looking forward to it all week. Living in a host family was one of the best experiences of my entire life so far, and I am quite sad that I don't have the opportunity to do it again this time around. But I am comfortable in the apartment and I'm surrounded by lovely ladies, so it's okay with me :) 

Dinner took longer to cook than they expected, so we chatted for about an hour. They remodeled their home quite a lot! It looks so different than before. They just finished hosting a married couple this summer, so they wanted to take a break from hosting (unfortunately for me. I would be ecstatic to stay with them again.) Since dinner did take longer than expected, we started with dessert. Fine by me :) Jolita purchased a cake from the store and we had coffee to pair with it. The cake was like a cream cake with curd (cottage cheese.) It was good enough to have 3 slices, haha! For dinner she made the yummiest meatballs, cauliflower mash and salad. She had a pitcher of water on the table, but I thought it was strange because there were rocks in the bottom of the pitcher. She told me it was Amber, and she puts it in there to soften the water, because Lithuanian water doesn't taste very good? Haha. It didn't make a difference to me :p Thought it was interesting though. 

It was so lovely sitting around a table with them again and chatting about everything. They asked about my family, my job, teaching, Tim, the traveling I want to do, my future plans. I love talking with Jolita and Arturis because they are so interested in every detail. My heart just felt so full, like it could burst with happiness at any moment. I just felt a very genuine love and friendship that I have been longing to feel since I have been here. I seriously just keep smiling while writing this because I feel so good inside right now. 

After dinner, we went on a walk to a really nice lake. They showed me a good beach area to swim. I can't wait to take my teachers there before the hot days are over! 

I live for evenings like this. Before I left, Tim's family had invited me over for dinner a few different times, and I loved being a part of it. His mother is very sweet and family-oriented. We would all just talk and talk and eat good food and enjoy each other's company. It always brought me so much happiness. I love being able to connect with people. 

Let's just say, I'll probably be going over to Jolita's quite often from here on out :) 

Trakai.

I absolutely loved this day. We met up with the girls from the Kaunas school and with Dima and his family. Dima helped us buy bus tickets to Trakai, which were maybe 1,80 Euros one way. And the ride was about 30 minutes long. Can't beat that :)

We arrived around 1:00 and I felt a little overwhelmed. Us 7 plus the 4 Kaunas girls plus Dima's family of 4. I just didn't know how to manage everyone. So I thought it best if we just split up and met up at a certain point at a certain time. I felt bad because I wanted to get to know the Kaunas girls, but we all sort of separated and they stayed with their group and I stayed with mine. I also wanted to spend the day with Dima's family as well, but he also sort of went off and did his own thing with his family. He tried to get a boat for us, but not all of us could fit so I wasn't sure what to do. I felt bad because Dima wanted us to all go on this outing together so we can get to know each other, but it just didn't happen that way unfortunately. The Kaunas girls seemed really nice though!

Annie, Madison, McCall & I went to a pizzeria and had yummy pizza. I ordered a huge thing of still water but it actually ended up being sparkling water. I tried it anyway and it wasn't too bad. But it wasn't refreshing like I wanted. And quite bitter. so I only had about one glass and was finished.
After lunch, we decided we wanted to find a boat. We thought about renting a row boat, but as we walked outside, a cute little sailor gentleman asked if we would like to sail. It was 30 Euros for 40 minutes. So we put some money together and took the offer! It was very very relaxing and lovely! Our captain was half Polish/half Lithuanian. He didn't talk much, but he did tell us that the castle was 1,407 years old! Wow!

We sailed around the castle in pure bliss and then we said farewell to our friend and went on a hunt for ice cream. We found a stand and I had some cookie ice cream. It was then about time to meet back up with the group, so we went to the meeting place and waited. It was a very easy, relaxing day. On our way home, we were all exhausted. We had planned to go to the festival in Old Town Vilnius that evening, but it was sort of unanimous that we just all wanted to stay home and rest. I watched 'The Proposal' and 'Dinner for Schmucks' and laughed my head off.

This morning, I met up with Saffron to go to the Akropolis mall again. She needed to buy some necessities at the Hyper Maxima (the Wal-mart, basically.) I went with her, while the other girls went to church! I love hanging out with Saffron because we are very similar. She is such a sweetheart. We got what we needed, and I also purchased a large purse. I didn't bring one due to space issues in my suitcase. We went to Coffee Inn (FAVOURITE) and I got a peppermint mocha and we just sipped and talked :) It was very nice.

Tonight I am going over to Jolita's (previous host family's) house for dinner! I am so excited to see them!

It's been a nice weekend :)

First Week Happenings.

Heyo.
We are now going on our fourth day of school. My teachers are doing excellent! I think they are starting to get the hang of lesson planning. I sometimes feel inferior because I don't know how much I am really helping them. All I want to do is help them be the best they can be, but unfortunately, I sometimes feel like I didn't receive the training that I need to do so. We have sort of all been learning together what works and what doesn't. They have all been very patient with me as I try to figure things out. They are just wonderful! I have been working with Dima to try and figure out solutions as well, and he is just an angel. Dima is our savior here. Not only is he our translator, but he also runs the school, helps when we have problems, makes sure we are comfortable, and buys pizza for us to celebrate! After our first day of teaching, he bought pizza at Pizza Express and brought it back to the apartment and we all chowed down. He bought a carbonated drink that was Terragon flavored and had me try some. It tasted like black licorice :( He said he would drink it in his childhood when we grew up in Russia. We had pizza the next night as well for Katie's birthday. We walked down to Charlie Pizza to celebrate. We all ordered 30 centimeter pizzas (we were Hungry) and for some unknown reason, we all ended up getting 20 centimeter pizzas, except for Madison! Hers seemed to be the only one that was correct, but even still, on the bill they charged her for a 20 centimeter pizza. It was just all so strange. We were very clear that we wanted 30! Good thing we had some cake after, which filled me up :) Annie and Madison bought the cake at Maxima, and we weren't sure what it was made of. It was light brown so we figured it was probably caramel, and then there were round things on top. A couple guesses were cocoa puffs or malted milk balls. Well, they ended up being candy coated hazelnuts. They are AH-mazing! The cake was super rich so I couldn't finish my piece. Saffron ended up taking the remaining cake home. She took a photo of the description with her google translate app and it literally translated to "Caramel Cake with Hazelnuts in public." Hahahah! At first I was so confused why it would say that! But then it does make sense, really. The hazelnuts are on the outside of the cake, so it's like they are in "public?" Gave me a laugh :)

Yesterday we went to the Hyper Maxima in the Akropolis mall. It is just like a Wal-Mart. You can find all the necessities here. I purchased some dish and hand soap, and an iron. All of our clothes are dried by hanging racks here. And I despise wrinkles. It was a very inexpensive iron (11 euros) so hopefully it does a decent job. Annie bought some hand towels for the kitchen because all of the hand towels here are just wretched. At some point, I'd like to also buy some new dishes for the apartment. And definitely a warm soft blanket.

We had our first Russian lesson today. We were taught by a woman named Julia and she is a legitimate teacher. It was a different experience than Dima teaching us. She taught us a lot of words and pronunciation, but not the alphabet yet. Hopefully we can learn the alphabet next time. I know it mostly, but I would like a review.

We also purchased our tickets and hostel for Tallinn, Estonia next weekend :) I'm so excited to go back there! Tallinn was one of my favourite travel spots.

Tomorrow we are meeting with Greta and Edgar for Sushi (hmmmm...maybe I'll eat beforehand.) and then Saturday we are going to Trakai (The castle with the lake) for the Medieval festival, and then Saturday night in Vilnius is the Nike women's 5k and some kind of festival. So it should be an awesome weekend :)

Relaxing at the lake. 

My new hat from H&M!!! 

Me, Annie, Saffron, McCall, Madi (back), Katie & Rebecca

Katie's birthday dinner at Charlie Pizza.

Saturday & Sunday.

Katie, Saffron & McCall

Madi, Annie & Rebecca

Pilies Gatve (Castle Street)

Cathedral Square

Saturday was stressful...until the evening when we went in to Old Town and played. Saturday morning, we moved from our temporary apartment into the permanent one across from the school. It's...not so nice. It is so so dirty and I don't even want to go into the kitchen ever because it is just yucky. I bought some paper towels because all I have been using to dry my hands so far have been my clothes (God knows I won't be touching those hand towels. They smell!) I have been needing to do some laundry but we can't do it until after 8pm and I forgot to do some last night after we got home. 

After we moved into the apartment and unpacked, we went over to the school and unpacked all of our supplies. My girls are exceptional when it comes to supplies! They are so awesome! They brought LOADS of stuff. Like, so much stuff we were hardly able to fit it all. Everything is over flowing! I love it. After that we headed back home to work on lesson plans. I took each girl aside and helped them plan out some lessons. I attempted to teach them the previous day, but I realized that none of them knew how to. This concerned me! They all told me that in training, they still never even really understood how to actually make the lesson plans. I couldn't do it on the spot, because I felt like I forgot everything! So I went home that night and stayed up until 4am and made out 3 separate lesson plans. After I wrote the first one, it was super easy! It all came back to me! Hopefully they'll be able to pick it up easily, and after the first week, it'll be a breeze! :) They're doing great. We haven't actually started teaching yet, but we do tomorrow and I am slightly nervous. But hey, it's the first day and all. Nothing will go as planned. Hahaha.

After we spent a couple of hours on lesson plans, we headed into Old Town. By this point I just felt done and wanted to get out! We just wandered all around and got some dinner at Wok to Walk. It's like a Thai fast food chain here in the Baltics. It was absolutely delicious! I got egg noodles, Beef, and Peanut Butter Coconut sauce! So so good. We went to Cathedral square, Pilies Gatve and then to the Central Park. There was a lovely little fountain show and the weather was just perfect. So nice and cool. I love Vilnius.

This morning, I woke up fairly earlier than I would have liked, and cleaned up my room a bit. I showered (much needed) actually did my make-up for once in 5 days, and walked down to Maxima to get breakfast. I had grapes, fresh bread, yogurt & apple juice. Excellent. And purchased some actual shampoo, conditioner and soap. Now I have more than just the travel sizes I brought :p
I sat on this little bench and had my breakfast in the breeze, and soaked in the morning. It was nice to go on a little solo walk for a bit. Now I'm just in my room getting very tired again. I am going to ride with the girls to church at 2 so I can pick up my towel that I left at the other apartment, since it's over that way. Then while they're at church I'll probably just come home and nap!

First day of school is tomorrow. Yikes!