I STAY

"Patriotism is the secret resource of a successful society. " - Michael Ignatieff

Am I going to stay? Yes, I'm going to travel but in the end, I will end up living in Estonia I'm certain. "Mina jään" ("I stay") was the main quote for the song and dance festival I took part in last week. The week I spent in Tallinn at the 2017 Youth Song and Dance Celebration was LIT. Firstly, I didn't wanna go because I thought it was gonna be exhausting and boring. For sure it was exhausting but it was an experience of a lifetime. I was so wrong at first and I'm glad that some individuals convinced me to come. The days were tough, we had to fight with both sunny and rainy weather, we woke up early and went to bed late. We had 3 performances but one was cancelled due to bad weather but thanks to that the most memorable thing happened. Young participants, like me, organized an event a Freedom Square and noone expected that there would be so many people in there. The feeling was amazing, it felt special because it wasn't fully planned, it made me feel like we proved our worthy of our country's freedom again. Many cried because of happiness and if you were there, you would understand. Most of the pictures aren't taken by me and I have no idea who made them so if one claims his or her work, I may take them down.

I stay 

No weather could've stopped us 

Battleground 

 @ Freedom Square

It's fantastic to write about these moments I had because I get to relive everything

Anyway it was splendid to dance with my dance partner Maarja and befriend many new people like Anett with who I and Maarja spent much time together. Also I "re-met" Karl who was in a volleyball training with me a few years ago. I hadn't seen him a long time and it was nice to have a nice singing circle with him playing ukulele while beatboxing and the others singing. I spent lots of time with my dance group too, for example with Sander and Helen. Went out to discover Tallinn's Old Town with Keili, Kunnar and their friends - amazing. Actually, the craziest night was the one we had with Kunnar. We went out to meet up with our choir buddies (we both sing too yes) and drank maybe too many beers in a bar, afterwards I talked with some random Germans, we met up with Kunnar's relative Mari-Liis and her friend Johanna and they somehow tried to introduce some shady locations in the Old Town.. Anyway, the night was crazy-fun.

Late sunset 

Collage

When we finished with our last performance, it was really emotional to see several people cry. Maarja was such a great partner and I hope we can dance together in future too (in university for example). I had a nice evening with Anett the last night we spent in Tallinn. It would've been even more cooler if we weren't forced to go back to our safehouse so early.. The song celebration wasn't as epic as the dance celebration but it was cool to see so many people listening. I never thought I would feel myself so patriotic as I do now.

Maarja, Anett, Sander, Helen & I 

Good luck, Sander 

Youth Song Celebration

When I came home, I had a 12-hour sleep which my organism really needed. My friend Härold got 18 and had a small BBQ with his friends. I couldn't hold up there too long because I had to work the following day and currently I love my job. More to come!

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WATCH THE DANCE CELEBRATION

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Best service

"Change your thoughts and you change your world." - Norman Vincent Peale

Not sure if any of you remember but a few weeks ago I carried out a 3-day workshop about programming with Sander for primary school students. The course was a total success and we even decided to participate in a contest which was meant to support the best student companies and projects. We presented our workshop and turned out the winners of a category called "Best service". Besides that we got sponsored by SEB (bank) and we felt damn good that our effort paid off.

Introducing our project

Stipend by SEB 

BEST SERVICE 

Possible collaboration with this young fella 

Co-participator about to serve the cake

About the fun part of my life, I attended my friend Triinu's birthday event. It was cool except that one guy in there constantly changed songs and some of us weren't so happy about it. Unfortunately, I had to get home early because the following day I had to dance the whole day. My motivation for dancing is on critical level but I pushed myself to perform at my county's dance celebration. It didn't go as well as it should've gone - the first dance went so bad that it was embarrassing, however the second and the third one came out fine. The day was exhausting because we had to train from morning till evening but I'm satisfied with myself because I managed to come out of my comfort zone. I would also like to thank Ako who took the pictures at the dance celebration.

With Triinu who can now enjoy all the perks that come with adulthood 

@Viljandi 

 About to jump into action

Parade

Love is the Way

"Life is the question and life is the answer and God is the reason and love is the way." - Johnny Cash

The holiday is about to end and my week has been quite diverse so far. I said in the last post that I'm going to visit a university in Tallinn to try out the life as a student, so I did visit the place and it was interesting - I went to 2 lectures, met new people and realized how huge the campus really is. One of the lectures was about databases and the other one teached the basics of organization management. My shadower warned me that the first lecture is going to be really boring and she was damn right, I couldn't understand almost anything. The second lecture was way more easier to listen and I liked it because I didn't feel lost or stupid in there. Anyway, the day was great and I'm really thankful for the opportunity to visit the university.
This week hasn't been ordinary also because of the Independence Day of my fatherland. On Thursday, I performed at the ceremony concert with my choir and dancing group. The day wasn't easy but it was worth the effort. I remember exactly how my legs ached at the end of the day but I still went to see a concert with two of my friends afterwards. The following day I watched the parade from the TV and in the evening went to see a movie with a couple of friends.

The three photos above were taken by Kris Süld

Yesterday, I went to celebrate my great friend and classmate's aging. Günther didn't invite anyone but still about 10 people managed come over and the party was awesome. Oh, and on Tuesday I had a barbeque night with Kristo, Lars and Kermo. The weather maybe wasn't the best for grilling outside but that wasn't an obstacle for us.

Workin' out with my classmates at Günther's

 Pae grill

Today, February 26th, one of my biggest idols would've got 85 years old. It's Johnny Cash's birthday and I'm going to celebrate it by listening to my favorite songs by him. I even drew a picture of him, it's not perfect but I'm proud of it.

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Johnny Cash - She Used To Love Me A Lot

Johnny Cash - Personal Jesus

Outlandish

"The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

It was hard to write a post on the right time if I didn't have my phone with me. We changed our phones with Merili for a couple of days and all of my pictures that I was supposed to post in here were stored in my iPhone so the post had to wait. Thankfully, she "allowed" me to use my phone so I got the photos I needed. School is also going pretty well. Just got my Russian test 5 and even though I thought my grades would've gone down by this time, I was wrong. 12th grade is way more easier than I expected.

Selfies

The previous weekend was surprisingly awesome (actually the weekend before the previous weekend - I wrote this text almost a week ago :D). I was planning to stay at home on Friday to rest and sleep because I knew I had to attend my friend Raiko and cousin Marek's birthdays. But well, somehow things didn't go as quiet as I had planned. My lad Kristo came over to play some video games together and drink whiskey - still seems like a quiet evening, right? But we just couldn't sit on our asses all night so we went out. We visited different bars and ended up in Viljandi's most hipster-friendly place Romaan. We met so many cool people there that night. We talked about life and discussed about many outlandish topics. We sat there and time went really fast, suddenly it was about 6 a.m or sth and the place was closing so we had to leave. For our luck, one guy invited us to his place and we drank some wine there. If I remember right then there were 8 of us and we all went there. The night only turned out better and better. I got along with everybody so well that I still keep in touch with one girl. Her native language is Russian but as she studies in Viljandi, she speaks Estonian fluently as well. It's fun to practise my poor Russian skills with her - she can have a good laugh every time thanks to that.

Rock 'n' rollin with Kristo

Birthday party at Raiko's turned out great but as I was tired of the previous night, I went to my safehouse quite early. I was so exhausted that when I arrived to the bedside, I crashed onto it and fell asleep instantly. But the weekend got even more pacey. On Sunday, I had to help Mariel with her physics and I hope she got the help she needed.

Helping the poor soul out

Wednesday was one of the most important days of this week. Our choir had to prove that we are worthy to sing on the 12th Estonian youth song and dance celebration. We succeeded and the song we sang, came out better than ever.

Photos taken by Marko Saarm

On Friday, our folk dancing group had a performance. At first, I was surprised that I wasn't nervous at all but that changed when we had a few minutes left till the act. But as it was our first performance, I'm glad that I didn't make any major mistakes.

@ Sakala Centre

The following day we decided to visit Tartu with Merili, Mark and Katharina. Merili and Kata wanted to go shopping and that's pretty much what we did that day. We were so bored with Mark at some point that we even discussed religion. Finally, we went to see a movie too and after that headed home.

Horizon

Making pretty faces is not really my thing

 Corsa

Which one is better?

I ended my week with a visit to granny's. She guided me how to make cinnamon rolls her way and you have no idea how delicious these were.

Nom-nom

FOCUS

"Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection." - Winston Churchill

It's Christmas and New Year's Eve that's on our minds right now. Christmas was joyful as always and besides spending quality time with mi familia, I shared Christmas happiness with my friend Merili too. My mom finally told my brother that Santa Claus doesn't exist but yea, he knew that already. Furthermore, I restarted my gym membership because you know after Christmas I have to lift those extra kilos down.
Before going to a 2-week holiday, I attended a school ball. The party was themed after cartoons and dresscode was also some cartoon character. I dressed myself up as Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. and when I arrived I saw something inevitable - most of the guests didn't follow the dresscode rules and came in suits and dresses. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one dressed up like a mascot of a football game. There were a few others. At the ball, we also won 3 Oscars with our film.

Tšoba, Erik and I - "Focus"

On stage

The ball or prom or sth

However, talking more about the 24th. After reading poems to Santa with my family, I met up with Merili and we went to my place. We had an awesome night with Merili. We stayed up till 7 a.m - the night mostly consisted of singing, dancing and talking. We had some weirds thoughts about going to swim because we thought it would've been memorable Christmas if we went swimming that day. Fortunately, we were smart enough to not get ourselves sick for the remaining holiday. It was one of the best Christmas I've ever had.

The pictures I gave to my friends and family for Christmas

FOCUS

Wooden leg

"I don't love studying. I hate studying. I like learning. Learning is beautiful." - Natalie Portman

It's been a while again. I haven't been able to make a post because I've been really busy studying and organizing an equestrian competition with two of my schoolmates. I'm going to write about the event in the next post because we haven't got photos of the contest from the photographer yet. Anyway, pretty much everything in school goes quite well right now, actually it went until now. My average grade right now is 5.0 - a mathematics test, a biology presentation and a laboratory work of chemistry, all went really fine. But today, just before I started making this post, I had to do an English test. Let's just say it went south. It was one of the hardest English tests I've ever had - the vocabulary and structures of the clauses there were horrifyingly difficult. Now I find my dream of studying abroad ridiculous.
Found the following poem when I was helping Merili with physics at her place. Not a fan of poetry but this one's golden.

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kui mõte on vaimutoit

siis tasub eelkõige

mõelda taimedest

kaladest ja lindudest

inimestest mõtlemine

on kannibalism

- Margo Vaino, 100%

I'm sure that my English isn't good enough to translate it as perfectly as it's written in Estonian

Talking about my dancing experience so far: folk dancing lessons have been hard for me because I've never danced folk before and Margaret is giving me a hard time due that, social dancing is thankfully something that I'm quite familiar with, also because Margaret couldn't come to dance with me in that class, I'm dancing with Liisa instead. But what can I do, they're both better dancers than I am. A characteristic word which Marga described my dancing skill with was "puujalg" (in En. "wooden leg") - that's how "great" I am. x)

Busy with dancing (Ingrid & Margaret on the pic), jogging till I'm breathless (like you can see on the picture) and spending time with my bro

I only have one thought that I want to share with you left. So far, I've been using this blog to impress my optimistic and positive side. I have a Twitter account in Estonian to show that my life isn't really that fun and great as it seems from the blog, I want people to understand it. I like to write about the good things happening in my life, it's like I re-experience them. That's all, have a good day! :)

A song which describes my current mood perfectly

The Black Keys - Lonely Boy