The
course in which I am enrolled is actually comprised of two courses, the first
for level 0-A1 and the second A1-A2. This was the last week of the first
course. I am the only person who is enrolled in both courses. This week we had
a new teacher, Heli, the idea being to give us exposure to a different teaching
style and accent. Trying to learn this language from scratch has been a pretty
intense experience thus far. I’m now fairly okay with basic statements and
questions like how are you, I would like, my name is etc. and the number system is fortunately quite
straightforward. I can’t say that I’ve completely got my head around the use of
the different cases (there’s 14 of them) and I still find composing sentences
quite tricky. There’s quite a bit of rote learning involved. As many people
have said, it’s a matter of practice and trying to use the language whenever
possible. I think that this course will be a really good foundation to build
off with future study and we’ll see what the next two weeks bring.
It’s
been good to be part of a smaller group, as we were able to get to know each
other quite well. Each day some of our group went out for lunch at different
cafés around the town, which was a good chance to practice our Estonian. On
Tuesday afternoon when nothing was planned we spent the afternoon playing
snooker at a local hall.
This
week there were two planned after-class activities. The first was the film ‘Viimne
reliikvia’ or ‘The last relic’, an Estonian film from 1969. This film is
apparently an Estonian classic, you’d be hard pressed to find an Estonian who
hasn’t seen it. At release it sold ~800,000 tickets in Estonia, out of the
total population of 1.3 million. Parts of the film were shot at Taevaskoja.
It’s kind of like a western, but between pagans and the church, or something
like that. It was quite entertaining, with all the special effects of that
time. A more detailed description of the plot is here.
The
second activity was a visit to the Tartu City Museum. This is quite a small
museum which fairly briefly outlines the history of Tartu and Estonia, and also
has some interesting historical pieces. There was also an exhibition entitled
‘Suur Peeter ja Väike Peeter’ or ‘Big Peter and Little Peter’, containing
various illustrations of various Estonian folk tales.
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| Main room in Tartu City Museum |
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| Exhibition |
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| Myself and Igor with Suur and Väike Peeter |
Come
Friday, we had our final day of the first course. We initially revised some of
what we had learnt and then it was time for the test! The test itself was
purely for self-evaluation and did not contribute to a grade. I thought this
was a very useful exercise as there was no pressure and it quite clearly showed
the areas I need to work on. After the test there was a certificate
presentation with coffee and cakes and some group photos were taken. After
this, a member of our group, Roy, and his wife, kindly invited us all back to
their parents’ house for a barbecue. The house and garden were lovely and we
had a most enjoyable afternoon chatting and unwinding. An ideal way to end two
weeks together.
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| Receiving Certificate |
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| Group in front of University of Tartu |
Living
in a hostel for an extended period is a pretty interesting experience, with a
high turnover of people from around the world staying each week. Most of them
are really interesting and lovely people but there has so far been a few
interesting characters… Now, I think Americans are great people, but there does
seem to be a certain genre of American which doesn’t gel too well with me. A
family of them, mother, father and two young teenage children, stayed the night
at the beginning of the week. It was quite amazing how the noise floor within
the hostel raised during their stay. Fortunately they only stayed one night but
they somehow managed to eat all my butter in one sitting! Like ¾ of a tub!! Bah
humbug.
I’m
staying in a four-bedroom mixed-dorm and on Thursday I was sharing with two
German girls. The fourth guest was rather odd. We were chatting in the lounge area and this
very drunk/high Russian bloke strolls in and sits down in the corner of the
room not saying anything. One of the girls decided to try and engage him in
conversation and things got rather interesting from there. When asked what he
was up to in Tartu, he replied in rather fractured English, ‘fun things’ then
disappeared for a while and came back reeking of aftershave... He then carried
on asking questions in English, German and Russian. He was in and out of the
room all night and the girls didn’t sleep too well that night. Fortunately he
was only staying for the one night!!
However,
as I’ve said, the majority of people have been really nice and interesting. For
example I struck up conversation with a Finn from Helsinki who has offered to
show me around when I visit. He was continuing on to Russia the next day and we
had a very interesting chat about the current political situation there. He was
quite envious of the fact that Australia gets to have a whole island to itself,
with Russian warships only visiting when the G20’s on. I promised that I would
raise the alarm if he was captured by the FSB and hadn’t made it back to
Finland by the time I contacted him.
