My Body Was Not Ready

Monday

Today I spent a bit more time in the cafe so I could have my precious internet time. Put away all my clothes and other items so that I could move my suitcase out of the way. It was nice to feel a bit more organized. I kinda wish that I could make my room a bit more...homey but I don't have the money for knick-knacks and whatnot, so I'll have to deal. Got a message from ATT today: I've exceeded $250 in international roaming charges, oh joy. It's a huge expense that I'd been hoping to avoid but I needed to talk to people and I have no internet, so I'll pay it somehow.

Went back to the dorm, did a whole lot of nothing for an hour or so. I then decided to venture back out into the icy wilderness and buy some more food. Went back to the same grocery store as before, since its location was so convenient. I spent a lot of time staring at different food containers trying to figure out what it was, how to prepare it, and if I wanted to take the chance of purchasing it. Ended up getting some pasta, rice, vegetables, ham, mayo and chips. I longingly gazed at some pizza for a while, but I had no oven to prepare it in. After carrying my purchases back across the tundra and up the stairs I made myself a sandwich and called some people. At this point I'm probably going to read for a bit, then go back to the cafe to check my email for internet.

Checked at 5:30, no such luck yet. :( I asked my mother to watch my email for me, so that I didn't have to make so many trips to the cafe. At this point I'm inclined to believe that I won't get internet until some point within the next couple of days.

By happy circumstance (or perhaps it was planned, I'll never know) my roommate is also from CofC! We'd met briefly before at the study abroad orientation. It's somewhat comforting to have someone familiar sharing a room with me. So far we're getting along pretty well, she's very nice, talkative and outgoing so it'll be helpful to have someone to drag me out of my shell.

Tuesday

I have plans this morning to meet up with some other people around 11 and go shopping for stuff like towels in one of the bigger shopping areas.

...

Phew, I am super exhausted. I met up with 3 other girls today and we all walked around Tartu and did a bit of shopping. I took tons of pictures. It was cold today, (obviously) but luckily not snowing. The ground was reduced to a gross muddy snow-mush. It was nice to talk to and hang out with other people, I had been severely lacking in the social interaction department here.

After introductions and whatnot we set off towards the shopping areas. Crossing the bridge over the frozen river was interesting, as I'd never seen such a large body of water frozen. There were a lot more people out and about than I expected. We walked up the road towards the Kissing-Students statue.

After taking a few pictures in that area we headed off towards the Kaubamaja Mall. It's 4 floors, the bottom floor has a grocery store and all the other stores are misc shopping. There was a book store on the top floor that we stopped at for quite a while. It was amusing to see familiar titles such as Harry Potter in other languages like Russian and Estonian. We spent a lot of time in the dictionary section, considering purchasing an Estonian-English language guide, but in the end decided not to buy anything yet. There were many shoe stores and trendy clothing stores spread throughout the mall. But all the prices were surprisingly reasonable.

After departing the store we headed back towards the cafe near the dorm to regroup and check our emails. I was frequently (and frantically) checking to see if I had gotten the information to use the internet at my dorm. Still nothing at this point, but someone had informed me that it goes into gmail's spam folder. So I checked my spam folder annnnd lo and behold, there it was. Delivered the previous afternoon. I was a mixture of disappointed and angry, I missed out on a lot of internet and communication time! Regardless, I now have internet, so that's a huge relief.

We relaxed for a while in the cafe until one of the girls came back in and told us that one of the water pipes on the 4th floor of the dorm had burst and was leaking into the other floors. It was sort of unbelievable at first, I couldn't believe something like this was happening so soon. Of course I went back to the dorm to make sure my room (computer) was okay, but everything was fine. Luckily I'm on the far left side of the dorm and the leak was on the far right. However I was impacted in some way: they have the water shut off in order to facilitate the repairs. Not sure when it'll be turned back on, hopefully soon.

For our next excursion we planned a little more. One of the girls got a better map and we actually had a destination in mind. Off we went! We walked a little out of the way in order to stop in front of the schools main building, where we'll be meeting tomorrow for an orientation tour. It's actually quite nice looking, as is the surrounding area. After sight-seeing for a bit we headed towards Swedbank. Once we arrived me and another girl began the process of opening our bank accounts. The lady helping us didn't speak much English but she was very helpful, if a bit stern looking. We filled out some paperwork and were told to come back in 4-5 days after receiving an email notification. So! It was nice to have that started and out of the way for the time being.

The last stop of the day was another shopping mall, a bit farther away. By this point I was basically walking on autopilot. Walking in snow is a lot harder than it seems, or maybe I'm just a wimp. Either way my legs hurt a lot. The mall we (eventually) arrived at was pretty well sized, but smaller than Kaubamaja. Here we purchased towels and sheets. I got a hairdryer and another girl got a straightener. In the shop where we purchased our hair things none of the clerks spoke English, so it was an interesting attempt to not completely garble up the little Estonian we did know. All and all it was a profitable outing.

Walking back was much faster as we went directly towards the dorm instead of a roundabout route. After returning I went back up to my room so that I could bask in the glory that was the internet once more.

Tomorrow I've got another busy day. Orientation begins, so I start with a main building tour, break for lunch and then have a town tour. I'll be sure to report on how it went!

Side-ish note. There were a ton of statues and a lot of park-like areas that looked quite nice with the trees and the snow.