10pm came quickly enough as somehow I managed to write my paper and finish packing just in time. My roommates wished me a good time, and an even better birthday, it was really sweet. We left slightly later than planned, so that meant no Finland for us. Things needed to work out too perfectly for that to happen, so it was decided to just spend our free time in Tallinn and enjoy it. Finland shall be another weekend trip later on perhaps.
We had a 9ish hour bus ride to look forward to, arriving in Tallinn around 8am. Too excited to go to sleep, Gabby, Martha, James and I started playing Kims. It’s the game where I win, every time, all the time :). No, but seriously, you play with partners and you have to get four of a kind and get your partner to say “Kims” before the other two players say “Stop!” It was very exciting playing on my puter that’s resting on top of the seats while on a moving bus, but we made it work. It was a lot of fun.
Sept 24
And finally, with my little 30-second mental countdown in place, it was finally my birthday :) I am now no longer a teenager; I am a double decade, 1/5 of a century, twice as old as a 10 year old; I have lived 7,305 days... Or in less fancy words: I am 20 :). Gabby whipped out a small gift bag for me including bubbles, chocolate and a card. Then Emas got on the bus microphone and lead the bus full of sleepy study abroads in singing Happy Birthday to me, and then gave me a bouquet of daisies. It was wonderful :)
Succumbing to sleep sounded easier than it turned out to be. I curled up with my Spongebob fleece blanket on my two seats and managed to find a comfy position to fall asleep. I usually don’t sleep on moving vehicles, and Dad you can vouch for me on this one, so I guess I had trained myself too well because I ended up waking up every hour, weirdly some time in the 30s: I went to sleep around 1:30 but woke up at 2:34, 3:33, 5:39, and finally at 7:35 (I didn’t check my watch during the other two times, but I know I woke up around those times). We stopped by a hotel for breakfast, and I got to eat French toast!! It was pretty good.
We stopped by the hostel to drop off our things, and then headed out to explore the city. We thought about taking some bikes out and ride around for a bit, but it was a bit pricey and we figured we would have more fun just walking around. There was this 7-seater bike that we might have been able to get, but it was ridiculous. It was pretty much a circle of seats, and one person steers and the others help pedal. It looked absolutely amazing! I must find another place that has a bike like this and try it out. We went to this church with a tower of 278 stairs, and a few of us had the bright idea to walk up to the top. Mike, I know that you like spiral staircases, but this would have killed that love of yours. It was a ridiculous spiral staircase, but it felt very accomplishing once we all got to the top. And the view was gorgeous, so it was totally worth it. The group headed back to the hostel to rest and take naps, but I was still somehow full of energy and wanted to go out and shop some more and just simply explore.
I talked Gabby into joining me, so we went back out to the market and I got a beautiful teal scarf for myself for my birthday :). We meandered around the other stores in the area and finally gave into our craving of getting coffee and something sweet to eat. Finding a coffee shop was a whole lot harder than we ever could have imagined. We kept seeing signs for them but every time we walked over, it was a regular restaurant. But we finally found one, and chatted for 3 hours before heading over to the restaurant for dinner. Dinner was awesome. There was so much food, and Master of the Table James made sure that everyone was well fed with refills of all the foods. Note to self: As much fun as it was, stop playing with the candle wax.
After dinner, the group didn’t want to stay in at the hostel, so once again we went out to further explore the city. We walked down this one road, and heard all these motorcycles revving in the middle of the street, but couldn’t figure out why. Walking through the park, there was this stage set up for some band that was going to perform. Though we couldn’t understand the Estonian rappers, the music wasn’t too bad. But the beat boxing performance after that was so cool; there’s a video on Facebook for your enjoyment. It was a long day today, very enjoyable and awesome, but tiring. We got back to the hostel, played a few more rounds of Kims, and then waited out the last few minutes of my 20th birthday. It was such a great day, thank you so much to everyone who helped make it as special as it was. And thank you for the wall posts, I saw all the e-mail notifications earlier :) it made me really happy.
Happy 20th Birthday self and Squini!!! Double decade! Woohoo :)
Sept 25
So, I’m sitting here at 1am at the table in the lounge starting to type up my study guide for World Lit, and these two British dudes come walking up the stairs and try to get into their room. They’re holding McDonald’s and they are calling to some other guy in their room to come open the door. They are talking to him (in their awesome British accents) as though he is sleeping and/or ignoring their calls to open the door. They keep saying things like, “I know you can smell your Big Mac through the door…. Don’t make us eat your milkshake! Open the door!” Mike and I are cracking up as we are sitting right next to the guys as they are trying to get in their room. So the guy finally comes and opens the doors, in his boxers and cries out, “Oh crap, there’s a girl in the room!” And hastily hides behind the door as Mike and I laugh harder and I quickly turn away and look back at my puter. But I’m beyond done with writing this study guide for World Lit, so I’m off to bed. Gotta get up semi-early to get breakfast and go explore more of the city. Good night :).
Got up, got packed, and got breakfast; pretty effective morning. Went out shopping once again with Gabby to get this awesome fuzzy hat (the one that I wanted to get from Russia.. but heard they were really expensive, and this one was good enough) that I had seen the other day. As we were walking through the park, we ran into Calvin, Heather, Steph Mings, Mike, Lauren and Nastia around these round, tilted circles that you’re supposed to run on yet somehow not impale yourself into the ground. I guess Calvin didn’t get that memo. But we walked around, and people kept bringing up getting tattoos and piercings. I totally wanted to get one, but I knew I was going to be too lazy to want to take care of it while I'm here, and if anything happened to go wrong, it was going to be quite a pain to have to go to the doctor's or hospital for anything.
Finished exploring the city, stopped by Rimi (supermarket) to stock up on some food, and got on the bus for the 5ish hour bus ride to get to Riga. Right now as I’m writing this, side note to Chels, Sam and Squini: the bus just passed another truck while going around a curve. It wasn’t as bad as our trip because it’s not raining and we weren’t going up a hill, but I must say I stopped typing this to completely pay attention for any cars to suddenly appear around the corner. Stupid white car… scarred me for life. Anyway, I managed to sleep for about an hour on the bus, and now I’m convinced that I am incapable of sleeping for more than an hour on a moving vehicle. But we got to the hostel, dropped our stuff off and headed off to the restaurant for some dinner. Got some lasagna :) sooo delicious, but I only wish the serving portions were slightly bigger. One of the things that I miss most about home is the amount of food served at restaurants.
After some hardcore decision making, we wandered around the city at night. It was gorgeous. We stopped by some outdoor restaurant place where there was some music playing and sat and enjoyed that for a short while. Then off to some hotel with a skyline bar to see the whole city lit up. It was a relaxing way to finish off our first day in Riga. Then we headed back to the hostel, got ready for bed and played a card game called Durak. Durak is an awesome Russian game that Nastia taught us. It’s about “attacking” one person with a card, which they then have to beat with a card of the same suit, or of a “trump” suit (higher than the other 3). If they can, then the cards get cleared, and the next person goes. If not, then the person has to pick up all the cards laid on the table. The game ends when there are no cards left in the pile, and the player is able to play all their cards. I’ll have to teach you sometime how to play, it’s super addicting!
Happy 21st Birthday Chelsea!!!!
Sept 26
We had about 4 hours to explore the city this morning. It was more than enough time since we had seen most of everything last night. But we moseyed around, taking our time and enjoying all the sights. While we were walking, we decided to run up this hill and walk on the train tracks. Unfortunately, before we got the chance to take some cliché pictures, an alarm sounded and yelled at us in Latvian to get off the tracks as the train was coming up behind us. Haha oops :)
It was getting close to 2, so we started heading back to the meeting spot at the square. We stopped by a church nearby, and right outside was this wooden horse. So of course we climbed up and took some awesome pictures. There was this lady with a bull stuffed animal, similar to my bear Amore that I’m traveling around with. Unfortunately, Amore could not make it to this trip in fear that he would be too squished in with everything else and might get lost. It would have been really cool to have him with me now though to take a picture with the lady and her bull. Sorry guys :(
OMG!!! Durak is soo much fun! and yes addicting too when you can figure out how to play lol
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