Elu on ilus - life is beautiful

Test BBTV

2012-01-22T17:17:00.002+02:00

brandonbaystv on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Stay Curious!

2012-01-12T09:17:00.001+02:00

The Future Belongs to the Curious from Skillshare on Vimeo.

Murmuration

2011-12-02T15:10:00.000+02:00

Wow, this video gives me goosebumps! Need on kuldnokad.

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Amazing - Live video stream to see baby leopards being born

2011-04-07T14:42:00.004+03:00

Soon, very soon it's possible to see again LIVE how baby Amur leopards are being born in Tallinn Zoo. Just follow THIS LINK for the infrared camera inside their nest!

People from the zoo are saying that they expect the birth to happen very soon! Keeping fingers crossed for Darla and her soon-to-be-born babies!!

You can read more about this species from this article in Wikipedia for example.
These cats are one of the most endangered big cats in the world.

Here is my blog post from last year when Darla had her pervious two babies.

PS. On that picture you can see babies from last year - Hasan and Hanka :)

Transformer Owl

2011-01-14T01:37:00.000+02:00

Well, this little guy is simply amazing! True Transformer Owl :D

2010 - OMG!

2010-12-28T21:46:00.013+02:00

2010 - what a year!!

It has been the year of biggest changes for me since a very long time. Basically all the main aspects of my life have changed! Plus I did stuff that I would not have believed I am capable of doing!

It would be easier to list the things that have NOT changed (no major changes in health for example) :D I will still try to write down the stuff that have changed in my life in 2010 and also simply cool things what I've done or what have happened...

- My relationship that lasted for 3,5 years ended in spring. I am sad that we couldn't make it to work but we both learnt a lot and managed to stay friends at least. Now I'm quite enjoying my life as a single girl and I'm not in a rush to start something new just yet. It's good to take time for me in between :)
- I've moved out from the place that was my home for 3 years and that I helped to renovate and decorate so it was emotionally a bit hard to close that chapter.
- I have lived with my brother and sister for a number of months this year. I just love how it has enabled us to connect with each other!
- I finally felt that I was financially free and even able to save enough to...
- ...buy my OWN flat! Now I'm a full time project manager to arrange all the renovation works there :P Hopefully can move in in January 2011

- I had a wonderful job this year that helped me to grow a lot and learn so much!
- Unfortunately I was made redundant in Oct because of huge restructuring happening in the company. It's an event that could have pushed me totally down but for some reason I feel totally ok with it. In fact I think it's exactly what I needed right now to find a new path for myself :)
- My son has lived mostly with his father for the past 4 months and I have not seen him as much as I would have liked to :( This is mostly because I don't have my own home right now so he has a much more stable life with his father. This will change back to normal as soon as I finish the renovation in my flat so I have to hurry with it :)
- I have reconnected with a number of old friends that I lost contact with. Totally amazing!
- So many new people came into my life and a number of them I can call friends! I have to make sure they stay my friend because it's so easy to lose that connection.
- I closed a few important chapters in my life that were sort of on hold for a while.
- I travelled alone to America! :P 3 weeks in total in Chicago, Toronto, Miami and GUATEMALA were simply amazing! Of course a bunch of other trips as well in 2010 :)
- I pushed myself physically! First I participated and COMPLETED a mini-triathlon! Then I kayaked to a small island called Kihnu and back (26 km in total - I've never been so tired...). And then I hiked in Norway in rain, snow, water, cold and on mountains... Ah, and I shouldn't forget the cycling event Roheliste Rattaretk that I participated in for the first time :P All of these things made me expand my physical but also mental limits and feel that anything is possible!! My new moto - IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING!

Kayaking to Kihnu - I've never been so tired... but it was worth it!

Hiking in Norway, the happiest moment after 12 hours of hiking, of which 8 in snow that was sometimes up to our waste

Temples of Tikal in Guatemala, showing their tops above the rainforest

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What does all this mean for my 2011?? Well, if 2010 was the year of changes then 2011 will be no different in that front, I'm sure :P Everything has to keep on changing, that's the only option! I feel as if I'm on this big CROSS-ROAD right now and there are a number of options in front of me that all look very interesting and appealing. I have still to decide which path to choose. A bunch of possibilites are still waiting to be revealed for me, I'm sure. All I have to do is to make sure I'm ready! And I think I am, so, BRING IT ON!! :D

The only thing that is certain is that everything will change!

lihtsalt tore

2010-08-29T08:01:00.002+03:00

Vahest võib mõni täiesti tavaline teisipäeva või laupäeva õhtu kujuneda lahedamaks, kui oleksid arvatagi osanud. Mulle meeldivad sellised mõnusad üllatused universumilt :D

Enjoying London with my sister :P

2010-08-02T16:05:00.004+03:00

I am just back from a lovely trip to London. It was actually a business trip (as I've had a bunch in the past year) but for the first time I decided to stay for the weekend and act as a tourist a bit. And this is only because my sister was in town at the same time! I must say that it's really easy to have good time when she's around!

So, we went out for 3 nights, visited some museums (V&A was our favorite!), saw some famous places and had fun with the camera! Plus I saw Rod Stewart again, this in fully booked O2 Arena! Was a wonderful feeling to be there...

Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in Iceland - amazing photos and a video

2010-04-19T16:06:00.004+03:00

One colleague from Iceland has sent me a few links to some amazing from the currently erupting volcano in Iceland - Eyafallajökull (check how to pronounce this word). Check HERE and HERE. There are for example some pretty crazy images of lightning inside the ash clouds.

Or check the video below that was filmed on April 18th when flying near the volcano by helicopter.

Anyways, I'm so happy that I don't have any travel plans for the coming weeks and that I'm not stuck somewhere like millions of people are at this moment. Although it might be quite an adventure trying to find other ways of transportation to come back home if people are not too far away :P

Baby leopards in the webcam from Tallinn Zoo

2010-04-05T12:59:00.007+03:00

A leopard called Darla in the Tallinn Zoo gave birth to two babies today. The cool thing is that it's possible to see the mom and the babies through a live video stream! It's a infrared camera from a dark room where they are at. Currently there's two babies but more can be born. In that case the birth would be viewable live. Even voice is transferred from the camera! Really amazing!

-----------------------------
UPDATE (12th May 2010) - I just found out that there is a Facebook page where they have posted a bunch of lovely video clips of the leopard family. Feel free to join ;)

I haven't heard about when the babies will be able to go outside but I assume it should be before July :)

------------------------------

UPDATE (2nd August 2010)

I went to the zoo a week ago with a hope to see the mother and the babies playing outside and I was not disappointed :) The babies were playing with their mother in the grass, sneaking on each other and jumping around. It was really wonderful to see the game. Some photos below as well. I made a few videos, will see if I can upload them or not.

...

2010-03-18T22:35:00.001+02:00

Mirjel katus läinud... juhtub aeg-ajalt, mis teha. Siis igal juhul nalja pole üldiselt...

What you think about me?

2010-03-18T10:18:00.001+02:00

Here is a chance to say what you really think about me, anonymously :) I'll be looking forward for some interesting reading :P

Your browser does not support iframes.

No comments... :D

2009-09-29T15:18:00.002+03:00

click on the picture to see it fully, it doesn't fit here for some reason...

Tantsupidu 2009 | Tuulevaiksel Ööl

2009-08-25T14:18:00.001+03:00

I can't even put my feelings into words when describing this act from the dance festival Tantsupidu 2009... It was so emotional for both the viewers and dancers. The way the women were running to the hands of their partners was so heart warming. The words of the song talk how the man is coming from the sea and the woman is waiting for him and how they both wait to make a storm in eachother's heart. The whole Tantsupidu was amazing but this specific and simple performance was the best, while being the simplest. Interesting, no?

otseelust.com

2009-08-06T10:38:00.003+03:00

Väike nali elust enesest igaks päevaks - otseelust.com :P

No more lectures!

2009-05-10T12:15:00.002+03:00

I'm sitting in the last lecture right now!! There's not going to be any more lectures until I graduate the university. Unbelievable! It's a great milestone, I should celebrate today :P Very proud of myself :D

Is the "What is life" question answered yet?

2009-04-20T14:46:00.004+03:00

I have been using a Mac laptop for a while now. I must say that it's not as good as I expected although there is some benefits compare to Windows. The best thing is that apparently Apple people are the smartest people in the world since they claim to know everything about everything! Check the below picture to understand what I mean. Those are two small boxes with small booklets inside and they come with your new Mac laptop. "Everything Mac" and "Everything else"... Respect! :D

Adorable video of a polar bear with twins

2009-03-20T13:45:00.004+02:00

I simply have to share this video. It's a clip from a zoo in Netherlands where a polar bear mother had two babies this winter. On the video you can see how all 3 are coming out of their winter quarters for the first time. Adorable...!

Win a trip to Estonia!

2009-03-18T15:34:00.005+02:00

Here is a great opportunity for you to win a trip to Estonia, including plane tickets, accommodation and tours! Just fill in a quiz here - http://quiz.mfa.ee/ and make sure that you answer all the questions correctly. If some seem too difficult, I can help ;) Also there's a page with links which can give some hints as well. The deadline is 31 May 2009 at 23:59 pm (GMT + 3.).

So, good luck!

Btw, this quiz is held by Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ;)

Vote Earth for Earth Hour 2009

2009-03-17T11:40:00.001+02:00

Remember that I posted a video last year to promote the Earth Hour. According to www.earthhour.org about 50 million people were participating in 2008.

Well, it's happening again and most probably even bigger this time.

It's simple - just switch off your lights for one hour on Saturday, March 28, 8:30-9:30pm to show that you care about the Earth!! Lets vote Earth!!!

November snow storm in Estonia (23.11.2008)

2009-01-01T13:58:00.001+02:00

This is history already, but just wanted to post this videos we made during one of the biggest snow storms I've ever seen. We actually went out just to see how it feels to be inside such a blizzard and I must say that it was fun :P Gladly we didn't have to stay out for too long ;)

Magic of Christmas... gained and lost

2009-01-01T01:59:00.004+02:00

A few years ago this was only a dream to have video calls with people around the world. This Christmas we had a difficult situation with my nephew Maru - he's in Malaysia with his mother and organizing a Santa Claus there was pretty much impossible. Since Santa has so far came every single year, then it seemed impossible for the 5-year old Maru that he would skip his house this time.

So, instead of going crazy in Malaysia, we gave him a virtual Santa Claus. The time difference between Estonia and Malaysia is 6 hours, so we asked our Santa to come at 4 PM which was just in time before going to bed in Malaysia. About the same time the elves had left Maru's gifts behind their door.

It was really funny to see Maru's reaction when we made the Skype call and put the video running! As soon as he saw Santa from the computer screen, he started screaming: "Thank Santa, thank you, thank you, thank you! I love you so much! Thank you, thank you!" And he wouldn't stop for several minutes thanking the Santa. Then he opened his presents one by one and told a poem or sang a song to Santa.

So, Maru got his Christmas magic even if it was a bit virtual this time!!

---------------

At the same time my own son discovered the magic of Christmas just a week or two before the Christmas Eve... :( One evening, when he was already in bed, he asked me: "Please tell me honestly, is it you who puts the candy to the slipper on the window or is it an elf?"

* Just to explain that in Estonia all the kids get candy to their slipper, if left to the window, from 1-24 of December. But only good kids get the candy, others get nothing ;)

So, what options did I have?! Either to lie to him and hope that he keeps on believing. This also would have meant that in case his doubts would have been too big already, then he would lose the belief in me if I lied to him.

The other option was to tell the truth and try to put the whole thing in a way which would make him trust me more. I choose the second option because I felt that he had really thought a lot about this which meant my new lies would have had to be very convincing in order to make him believe them. I didn't want to lie more and lose his trust in me.

So, I tried to put it as nicely as possible, but he was still quite disappointed. What seemed to be a bit helping was to ensure him that in Lapland there's still the real Santa and real elves living. He saw them last year so the belief that at least they are real made him feel better.

I also told him that he is much smarter than other kids now since he knows the biggest secret of all the children in the world. And he promised to keep that secret and still play along since it's so much fun to get candy every morning in December and to have Santa Claus coming.

A bit long story, but I want to remember when my son found out about the magic of Christmas and what was our conversation like :)

Pictures from my April trip to Italy

2008-05-13T21:47:00.010+03:00

Mirje the great ski jumper! You don't want to know what happened when I landed :D Btw, this was at 3000m since lower there was no snow at the beginning of April.

View to a valley from top of a hill near an ancient monastery. It was a cloudy and rainy day so there were low clouds around us up there.

Me and Davide in Susa, an ancient Roman town up in the pre Alps near the border with France. Wonderful place!

In Davide's grandmom's balcony. To me it's funny how all the houses look like gypsies live there because of all the different things hanging from everywhere. But actually they just try to protect themselves from the sun in summer and also hang their clothes to dry outside of the balcony, something which is never done in north Europe.

Me and Davide's mom Patrizia. She is truly wonderful!

Earth Hour 2008 - Act this Saturday, March 29th !

2008-03-27T23:17:00.001+02:00

This Saturday from 8-9 PM (I assume local that local time) everybody should switch off their lights. For just one hour. To show that you care about the global warming and feel that it's you who can also do something about it!

What else I'm up to these days

2008-02-27T00:29:00.002+02:00

Most importantly - I went back to school!! Very proud of that to be honest. For a while I thought already that it's impossible to combine work, school and family but I found a way - I'm attending the so called long distance courses of the same subject I was studying before in and it's even in the same university. It means that I have to visit the classes after every 3 weeks for three days - Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday morning and day. Not bad I would say. It means that I must do a lot at home, but that's no problem.

I feel it's a really good opportunity for me, exactly what I needed, now I'm sure I will finish the school. The plan is to get my diploma in December 2009. Lets see how it goes...

I was most afraid of math, thought I don't remember anything and it will be extremely hard. Instead I ended up being the smartest in the class :D This is due to the fact that everybody else have been away from school even longer than me, mostly they are older than me, trying to get their first or second degree. Was pretty surprising to be able to even correct the professor a couple of times :D

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From other fronts...

We are trying to finish the repair works of the new flat. I'm still calling it new, although we bought it over a year ago already. And after one year we are still not finished with the works. There was quite a lot to do when we moved here and we were so tired after all the mess we went through that we needed a break. Now we still need to fix the walls, one ceiling, put some more lights up and.... make a SAUNA! A dream come true there ;)

============
Olari is attending basketball training for a while already and he's really into that. The trainer has called him a super kid a couple of times for how fast he's learning :P Although maybe I act like a typical mother here :D

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In general - life is really good and I'm very happy with everything. Really, everything. Maybe I shouldn't say this but it's true and I'm sure it shows outside also :)

How Mirje got a nice sun tan

2008-02-26T22:48:00.017+02:00

Until a year ago I had never been to Italy. Now I've been there 4 times already! Crazy... Plus I have two more trips planned, even tickets bought already. It's possible to get the plane tickets for €100 two ways, sometimes even less, so why not.

My last trip was in Jan when we took Olari and my brother Karli to ski for the first time. We spent 3 days on the snow this time. 3 days because we stayed in the apartment of Davide's grandparents which is located very close to the slopes in Alps. The location was perfect - instead of driving for 2,5 hours (when there's no traffic jam) we only drove 15-20 min every morning! The only problem was that the flat has no heating system and no hot water... So, 3 days without shower was about the maximum I could personally tolerate :D

Anyhow, we had super great time! Olari and Karli learnt to ski so fast and in the end of the first day we were already coming down with a quite high speed. In total we skied at least 100 km according to our calculations. Up and down from different mountains, it was really cool!

The highest we went was around 2200m. Going to that highest place was an experience I will never forget because it was so hard. Usually there's seats which take you up, but in that place they had instead those weird things you put between your legs and let your skis just slide on the snow while you get pulled up. The problem was that Olari couldn't hang on hard enough and he fell off this thing. Plus Davide had really hard time with his snowboard since it's not really meant for snowboards. So, I had to take Olari in front of me but until we got up to that climb of almost 3 km me and Olari both were having our muscles in cramps from holding on to this thing. It was really unbelievably hard. Plus Davide actually had to walk half of the way since it was too difficult with the snowboard.
You can see it from our faces from the picture also how we felt when we finally got up there. But I must say, that the view was all worth it plus coming down was also really cool. I guess you will always remember the times when you had to give everything what you had in order to get to your destination!
Karli would have wanted to stay for the whole week, he liked skiing so much. Now he's actually planning to go to Finland to be able to do some more of this sport.

Some more highlights from this trip:
- most important - we all got a very nice sun tan which is first time for me in January :D
- The snow was at least 1m deep in the mountains, it was really crazy for me and I was thinking that I'm from North :D
- I tried a bit of snowboarding, but no luck there just yet, have to take a serious lesson from Davide next time. Although I must say that so far I seem to like skiing much more
- Karli visited the Juventus shop in Torino which had been his dream for a loooong time
- I visited one Estonian lady who lives in Torino with her husband and two kids. I met her on the airplane when coming back from Italy in summer
- I went out with Davide and his 15 friends. Was funny how all the people stayed in the distance of 10 cm from each other in front of a bar although the bar was located in the biggest square of Torino (I was told it's the biggest in Europe) and the rest of the square was all empty.
- We spent one night in Stansted airport again on the way back. It gets really cold there near the windows. Need to bring a blanket next time :P

Some more pictures:

Sunrise from Davide's mother's house window on the first morning. Magical beginning to a wonderful week...

After-ski (with my dear brother Karli)

Living in a little Italy

2007-12-30T01:14:00.000+02:00

So, now we have 4 Italians visiting, friends of Davide. Imagine what the house smells like after they all take a shower every day one after the other and put on their aftershaves and hair gels... "Too much testosterone!" I say on those moments :D

Plus the house is full of Italian food! Amazing! First came Davide's mom Patrizia and brought a whole suitcase full of stuff - 32 kg all together, imagine! Now the friends also brought some stuff, mostly sent by Patrizia. So, now we have homemade olive oil and olives, 100 different kinds of sausages, 2 kg of Parmesan cheese, different kind of alcohol from champaign to wine and of course candies and homemade cookies. Some of the cookies were sent from South Italy from the relatives while the parents actually live in Torino, in the North.

So, it almost feels like I'm in Italy right now with all this food and Italian guys around me... Quite funny :D

Ice skating in the bog

2007-12-30T00:43:00.000+02:00

In the middle of December I got a chance to do something pretty unusual - go to one bog in Estonia with so called rackets attached to my feet and then ice skate on the little lakes in the bog. Bog is actually this wet land where it's not so easy to go in normal conditions. When you step on the ground there, then usually there's some water coming out from the ground and sometimes it can be pretty dangerous if you don't know where to go. There's many places though where you can walk on built wooden walkways so you can go deeper to the bog than you normally could.

But this time we didn't use any wooden ways, but instead walked on the pure soil. To avoid falling too much into the ground we had rackets attached to the feet which made walking much easier. And cooler also since it was my first time to use these things.

After some walking in that really weird environment we finally reached the lakes deep inside the bog. The lakes were covered with thing layer of ice which was most of the time strong enough to carry us. Though we were told not to gather to one place with too many people at the same time. Just in case :D

It was truly magical to ice skate on those small lakes, connected with each other and filled with tiny islands. There was fog all around us so other side of the lake usually was not seen so well. The ice was sometimes making noises and cracking a bit below people who dared to go too far...

Btw, from here you can also find a video taken while I was skating ;) And some more photos from here.

Unbelievable experience! Would recommend to everybody!

Call Santa!

2007-12-11T11:07:00.000+02:00

What a cool idea for Christmas - let your child have a call or even a video call with Santa! One company has made this real, check here! The idea has been realized in a really nice way I think. Plus it works with Skype, cool!

What can be done with a good idea!

Patches the Coolest Horse

2007-12-04T13:00:00.001+02:00

I LOVE this horse :D
Enjoy!

You'll enjoy this, I'm sure :D

2007-12-04T12:59:00.001+02:00

Well, well, well...

"I thought Europe was a country..."

Personal DNA Report

2007-11-20T14:16:00.000+02:00

Check
my personal DNA Report

This is pretty interesting because the results are really close to reality I think.

Trip to find the roots

2007-10-12T13:04:00.000+03:00

My grandmom from my dad side is not estonian. She is from Ingria which used to be populated by different Ugro-Finnski (Finnic) nations. Her father migrated from Finland and mother was local Ingria lady. These nations lived in the areas around St Petersburg far before Slavic people started situating there also.

During the World War II both Germans and Soviets did their best to wipe those people away from the world map. My grandmom Eliina was only 11 when she was forced to leave their home, along with her mother, by Germans. After her mother died less than a year later she was left alone (Dad died a few years before and brother died in the war) and was moved from one camp to the other until she ended up in the Estonian areas near Tallinn, in Klooga where she was adopted by an Estonian couple. Btw, she found out later that the whole camp of children, about 200 souls, was put to a ship a few months after her adoption, to be taken to Germany but the ship was bombed and all these children died...

So, my grandmom had never been back to her birthplace for over 60 years and always dreamed about taking that trip some day. This year my dad finally decided that they will go and of course I couldn't miss a trip like that. Plus it turned out they really needed me as a map reader :P

Besides wasting a bunch of times on the border because of missing signs and paperwork to be done, the whole trip was really amazing. Actually one episode from the border was pretty memorable - we were on the Estonian side still, being checked by the border guards when we heard a really loud noise - BOOM!! Imagine, in front of you is a bridge connecting you with Russia and considering the constant problems between two countries the first thought in everybody's mind was of course that a bomb went off on the bridge... In the end it turned out that a tire of one huge truck had exploded instead :D What a relief that was!

So now, we bought a good local map from the first gas station and started looking for the village my grandmom had named. We imagined that it's probably in the middle of forest somewhere and who knows if even the road would still be there. For our huge surprise we found a village with a really similar name very close to St Petersburg. All the information seemed to match so we decided to visit that place on the same day because St Petersburg is only a bit over 100 km from the Estonian border.

What we found was a small village, with a few old houses left, but mostly new villas all around. A river which my grandmom remembered was very small now, but still there. Instead of their house there were little summer houses of Russians, so called 'datchas'. When talking to locals it turned out that even a few people with the same last name Sakarinen still lived in the village! For me and my dad this was amazing because we expected to find nothing. For my grandmom on the other hand it was a big disappointment because everything was totally changed, even the river and she couldn't recognize anything. She didn't even want to go back there some other day.

We still did though, on the last day because she had a memory of a lake where she used to walk by with her mom when coming from the market. We wanted to find this lake because on the map there seemed to be several possibilities for where it might be. And what a luck again - we found it!! This time my grandmom was happy because the lake was pretty much the same as when she was a little girl: small road going by the side of the lake, a little island in the middle etc. That place hadn't changed at all. In the end she was so happy that we made this trip she had be dreaming about for so long.

But what else did we do or see in St Petersburg?! A LOT! It's an amazing place! I would go there again if possible to be honest. On the second day we went to the Winter Palace and this place was truly amazing. We didn't see much more inside the city because my grandmom got tired but this gives me more reason to go back ;)

On the third day we went to Petergof (also known as Petrodvorets and Peterhof). It's a set of several amazing palaces near St Petersburg and also known for the countless number of cascades, built by Peter I. Amazing, wonderful! I really loved to be there for several reasons: firstly it was a beautiful autumn day with colorful trees, wonderful smell of leaves getting old, sun shining on the water... Secondly the park and the place was worth of spending there several days even. Thirdly, it turned out that my grandmom only lived about 6 km from this palace and the lake she was talking about was part of the lake system which was feeding the water to the cascades (btw, they don't have any motors, it's all brilliant engineering to make the water go so high). She lived so close to these amazing places, but had no idea and still now she couldn't believe it.

So, we left Russia on our third day and all were so happy that we made this trip! I'm especially happy for my grandmom of course. For more pictures go here.

Cool price to be won for non-estonians ;)

2007-10-05T09:34:00.000+03:00

All non-Estonians! This is your chance to win a trip to Estonia for 6 days with all included: flight (from an Estonian Air destination), accommodation, trips in different parts of Estonia, tours, museum passes etc. All you have to do is to fill out the quiz here - http://quiz.mfa.ee/

I tried it myself and must say that the questions are not so easy sometimes, but if you check out the Links page, then all the answers should be pretty easily findable.

If you answer all 12 questions right, then the main price can be won. If less correct answers, then a trip without flights can be won as I understood. More info from the Prices page. But remember that after you finish you will be shown how many questions you got right and you can start over if you want to change some answers ;)

Also Rules page can be useful.

So, enjoy and try your luck! But do it before Nov 30th 2007...

PS. Thank you Helle, for sending me the link :)

Good luck for the next 12 years needed...

2007-09-05T22:37:00.000+03:00

Yes, good luck is needed indeed for the next 12 years because my son Olari started his first grade at school in September. He is 7 years old now and all children his age are facing this life changing experience.

I was at least, if not more excited and worried about this than him. Still remembering how it felt when I went to school and knowing how tough it can be from time to time, I am still a bit scared about sending there every morning. In my mind school is not the friendlies place on Earth. Both children and teachers can be pretty mean sometimes. I guess I'm like any other mother feeling the need to protect my child from anything bad.

But I think I haven't raised Olari bad and I know he is ready to be more independent and stand up for himself if needed. Plus I can see how much he is enjoying this experience already.

On the 3rd week I believe he started going to school all alone because it's not far from our house. I can actually see almost the whole way from his own room window. The first time he went he was waving all the way so I was afraid he will be late, but now I send him already without big concerns as I can see how much he has already matured in these weeks.

After first day at school Olari said: "It's much more exciting at school than I thought! And so much better than kindergarten!" Juhhuu, I say to that! Knowing that he likes it there is exactly what I need to let my heart relax and be happy with him.

Wii............

2007-08-24T12:02:00.000+03:00

Imagine playing tennis, golf, bowling or even boxing in your living room ;) And I don't mean from a computer game but actually getting sweaty yourself. This is what I tried yesterday in our office - Wii is the magic word! I guess you can say that it was kind a like a computer game but the incredible part was that it was reacting to my own moves.

For example when playing tennis I actually had to move my hands in the correct way, just like playing real tennis. Or in boxing I had to really hit with my arms or protect myself and it was all reflected real time on the screen. Pretty weird at first but you get used to quite fast.

It was much cooler than I expected actually! For sure a next step in the technology. My conclusion is that this is much better way to do sports at home than some stepping or cycling machine as there's an interactive part included plus you can play with up to 4 people together.

More information from Wikipedia.

Minesweeper The Movie

2007-08-21T16:56:00.000+03:00

This one is really cool :D

"Why are you really here?"
"I wanna make this land safe."
"Why are you here, soldier?!"
"I'm here because I'm bored!"
"Don't you ever forget that!"

Italy - Croatia - Italy

2007-07-16T15:11:00.001+03:00

It's my first day back at work after taking a looong vacation to destination Italy-Croatia-Italy. I will write more about it soon, but for now it's possible to get a peek from my sister's blog.

---------
So, time to do some more writing finally. Firstly I feel really lucky because during our trip the weather in the area was absolutely perfect, always around 27-29 degrees. I feel especially lucky when I hear about the news of wide spread forest fires in Dubrovnik area. My Boss just came from there and had stories about the situation - around 40 degrees temperature, fires on the hills etc. Here is two webpages about this also: BBC news story and Euronews video.

But ok, enough about the fires. I will give a short overview about the trip and then bring out some highlights. So first me and Davide flew to Italy and then took a car down to south to attend to a wedding of Davide's cousin. After the wedding we took a boat from Bari to Dubrovnik and the next day met my sister Maia, her son Maru and my son Olari in the airport of Dubrovnik. We were using Davide' fathers car and drove all the way on the coast up to Italy, to Torino again. It took us 7 days driving and 3 days we spent in Torino afterwards.

<-- Above is also the map of Croatia to keep track of our road.

About the wedding first... That was an amazing event! Over 300 quests, imagine! And mostly southern Italians who are more like to the Italians seen in the movies than their northern relatives. The wedding lasted from early morning till the late night. Btw, we arrived to the hotel at 5AM after over 12 hours on the road because of the many traffic jams on the highways. But it didn't make the party any less enjoyable :D

First there was meeting at the husband's house, all relatives came there first and then went to the church together. The party after the church was in this amazing hotel, where we also stayed for two nights. The party was basically like this: a couple of food courses followed by a couple of dances and then food again and then dance... and like this all day long. I counted that there was 8 appetizers, 6 main courses and 5 desserts. What a day! But I really enjoyed and was dancing as often as possible. I was still not able to dance as much as some 70 years old men who felt them selves like 20 it seemed. Rock'n'roll was a piece of cake for these guys, unbelievable picture!

So, the next me and Davide sent his parents back to Torino and took an overnight boat from Bari to Dubrovnik. Spent a day on the beach and in the evening found a camping near Montenegro border under the olive trees...

Next morning, which would be July 3rd, we met Maia and the kids in the airport and our real journey could start! First we spent half a day on the beach in Dubrovnik. It was the funnies thing to see how the kids, especially Maru, was getting really frustrated about the salty water. The Baltic Sea can not even be compared to the Adriatic from this point of view. He was spitting like crazy that first day. But I must say that from the second day on he was like a fish in the water and would not want to come out of it anymore, salty or not.

Now, imagine being on the beach EVERY day at least 3 hours, driving to a new location (autocamp) every day, seeing a new location every day - this is what the rest of the trip was like. Dubrovnik - Split - Plitvice - Rijeka - Venice - Verona - Torino (Turin). Every evening the same routine in the camp site: Olari pumping the mattresses, me and Maia setting up the tent, Davide making the food... we all were very happy with this set up :D

The first evening we spent in the old town of Dubrovnik. It was truly amazing and I only wish we had more time there... The streets were glazing in the sun, narrow roads going up the hill so high that you can not see the end, see right next to the fort sparkling in the sun... I could go on and on... but the point is that for certain I will go back there!

In Split we managed to see the biggest tropical storm I've ever seen. Imagine that in 15 minutes the streets of Split old town turned into little rivers, where Olari and Maru had the best time. Partly the wind was so strong that we needed to get cover from some wall so that it wouldn't blow us all away, but the feeling was amazing with all the lightning in the dark sky and sparkling eyes of our kids...

In Plitvice we walked for about 5 hours, including the children and in the end when even I was so so exhausted from walking that I could just drop half-dead right in the spot, the kids were still going. That was because we gave them a story to follow. We were chasing the enemies, trying to reach the treasure and so on. They were so excited about the game that didn't even notice how tired they were :D

We also visited the island of Krk where I spent 2,5 months last year!!! I met my exboss from the hotel, which made me really happy. I met several of my friends from last year from both the hotel and Aiesec. Plus I could introduce to all of them my family.

When we finally reached Italy, we spent one night near Venice in a famous beach called Jesolo. It was so interesting to see the huge difference between beaches in Croatia and Italy. In croatia the keywords are: extremely clean, rocky, clean, small, a few people. In Italy: sandy, huge, many people, dirty, endless lines of chairs, bars etc. I must say that I liked Croatian beaches much more, especially as we could jump from 7 meters from the cliff to the sea there!

Venice was really interesting with it's buses (ticket 6 EUR...grrr) and taxes going on the water, beautiful gondels everywhere, doors opening straight to the water, hundreds of pigeons in the St. Marcus square etc. However, the overall feeling I got was a bit negative because the whole city seemed hostile to us. No benches to sit on, no (or expensive) public toilets, dirty water, not very beautiful houses, swarms of people, very expensive prices etc. I can say that I'm glad I saw it but I wouldn't go there again.

Verona on the other hand was a sweet little town with it's amphi-theater, only a bit smaller than in Rome. The only joke was the famous Romeo and Juliet balcony, which turned out to be a stupid random balcony behind an iron fence and tons of people trying to take a peek.

Finally it was good to be back in Torino and relax from the long driving. The children had been perfect on the whole trip only after the 6th day they got a bit moody. So it's good to know that about 6 days is enough for a child. My grandmom was so worried that we are going with kids, but it turned out to be a very enjoyable trip for all of us. I actually imagined to have much more problems than we did.

The overall cost of the trip was about 480 EUR for all of us, which makes about 160 EUR per adult. Not bad I would say :) This includes gas, camping, food, costs of trips. Plane tickets were less than 200 EUR if I remember correctly. Some days we could spend in Torino so didn't have to pay anything and the car was also for free from Davide's father.

In conclusion I can really recommend to travel to Croatia to anybody. And for myself - it's not impossible to travel with children :) I think it was a WOW trip for all of us!

Amazing video from the nature

2007-06-07T13:57:00.001+03:00

This video is amazing! A true battle of the nature.

parachuting

2007-05-22T00:23:00.000+03:00

What is the best way to get sunburn from your face?
Right answer - looking in the sky for all day under the sun in May :D

And what is there to look?
Right answer - 10 parachutes coming down from the sky after every half an hour...

My dear Davide decided to do the craziest thing in his life and join the group of colleagues who decided to try out parachuting. For me for example this is one of the things I can not even imagine doing (a bit less scared after that Saturday though). What kind of force would make you to jump out of the perfectly flying airplane?? Well, for many-many people that doesn't seem to be a problem.

It was quite shocking for me to see how popular this activity is. People came with children to spend the whole day in the airfield. Also lots of people who don't do this every weekend, for example there was one group of people who seemed to have given their friend a birthday present - tandem jump. Actually there was at least one tandem jump in every group which went up.

Eh, one pretty crazy thing also happened. After the next group of people had jumped out again, somebody pointed a weird thing in the sky, asking what is going on there. Apparently the main parachute of one tandem didn't open, so the reserve had to be used. The unopened main one landed in the nearby forest.

Btw, I was also participating in the training they had in the morning so now I know in which case you should get rid of the main parachute and use the reserve. Or when to start putting your legs nicely together to prepare for landing. Or what should be the position when jumping out from the plane and when to start being worried that the main one is not opening properly. Anyways, it's quite interesting stuff actually.

So, now to the point that the beginners, like Davide were not even able to jump that day as the wind was too strong and even professionals had small troubles landing properly. Instead we were spending the whole day in the airfield waiting for the wind to get smaller and looking to the sky most of the time checking out the parachutes. So, that evening I was like a red lobster. But actually this is nothing, some other people (that I can not name :D) had even worse problems...

For a little laugh...

2007-05-15T17:25:00.001+03:00

So, now I have also figured out how to post YouTube videos in my blog :P

This one is one of my favorites when in a need to laugh a little... :D

Btw, these guys are Italians, what a surprise :D And the song is Finnish

Cyber attacks on Estonia

2007-05-14T18:20:00.000+03:00

After the rioting in our streets are over, the attacks on Estonia are unfortunately possibly even increasing - this time over the net. Please read this article for more information.

Update: One more article regarding these cyber attacks

Mothersday

2007-05-14T16:48:00.000+03:00

Remember in Valentines day my mother sent me chocolate from internet while being in Finland herself. So, now I can say that I have finally properly shown my gratitude. For mothers day I decided to send her and also my grandmom a bouquet of flowers as I couldn't go and hug either of them this year. I guess I can not say that it was a cheap trick, but it was certainly worth it. They were both almost out of words on the phone that day and that was all I needed to give me the best mothersday gift from them.

For reference, this is the company I used as it seemed to be the cheapest around ;) - www.interflora.com

Of course I must also say that my men also made me a beautiful mothersday with flowers and lots of help all day long (Olari was helping me to mount the new kitchen furniture for example...). :P I'm one lucky girl I say to have so wonderful people all around me!

Italy - Romania in Feb - March 2007

2007-04-30T20:20:00.000+03:00

A few months ago, the end of Feb and beginning of March, I had a wonderful trip to Italy and Romania - first times for me to be in both of those countries. So, below some highlights...

We stayed in Torino at Davide's mother's house and I was able to meet everybody - parents, grandparents and most of the friends :P He has a great family and a big circle of friends so sometimes I think why he decided to move to Estonia instead...

I also got several tours in the city. When we arrived then for the first day or two it was pretty foggy and it was impossible to see the promised mountains from the window. On one morning Davide took me to the window and said that look at the mountains which he loves. To be honest then at first I was looking too low and only a bit later I would understand what an amazing view there actually was! Now I can understand his love for mountains :)

Imagine that I have never been skiing before! So I was a bit scared but mostly extremely excited as it had been a dream for a while to try it out. After an hour or a half of driving we reached one nice place and I practiced with kids for an hour or so before we went up to the mountains with a lift. Up there was several really easy slopes (marked with color blue) where I practiced for an hour or so.

And then we decided to go down again to have some lunch. There was one slope going down but that was colored red, which means medium hard, but after doubting a little we still decided to go down from there. The beginning was even not bad and I could practice my turning skills, but after a km or so there was a crossroad... Left hand side continued the red slope, but that ended in a different base than ours, several kilometers away. On the right hand side was a slope to our base, but that was marked as a BLACK slope with a sign "To Experts only". So, imagine being in this kind of situation on your first day of skiing, eh!

But who knows me will already know what was my decision ;) Of course I was afraid but I still decided to test myself and we went down from the black one. It was about 4 km long maybe, not exactly sure and full of sharp descents. I fell about 3-4 times I think, but in general I did pretty good I think. I learned more than I would of learned in several days probably. And I pretty proud of myself for doing that!

(pic taken when almost at the base again after seeing those signs of Danger for quite a few times already)

Oh, and I found out later that Davide actually knew that the only option was that black slope but he didn't tell me because then I would have certainly said no I guess :D When we went up the mountain with the lift then some Italians told him about it. The girl had said that she would never go down from there if it was her first day but the guy said that it's not such a big deal, so I guess Davide decided to believe the man. Now I have to figure out if he had great belief in me or he just wanted to test me out...

Later we went up to the mountain again with the lift but it got pretty stormy in the mean time which meant that almost nobody dared to ski down anymore as you had to stop from time to time to let the view clear from the snow again. However the lift stopped working also due to the wind. So there was a choice to either stay up there and wait until somebody comes to rescue you (children and older people of course did that) or go down despite the weather. Of course we went down the hill again, this time all the way from the red slope as we found out that there are buses between different bases.

In overall this experience was extremely amazing and I can't wait to go skiing again next year!!! Olari also can't wait btw as I promised to take him with me next time.

(pic taken at about 2370 m if I remember correctly)

One the way to Romania we spent one day in Rome. Davide insists that I call Torino the capital of Italy, but Rome was pretty cool also. Vatican is also seen now and Colosseum and other cool places in Rome.

(Colosseum on the background of course :)

From Rome we took a plane to Tirgu Mures in Romania in Transylvania area and from there a train to Brasov in the middle of Romania. The north part seemed pretty poor and left us quite weird impressions. Imagine seeing little gypsy children hiding in the train from the ticketman. Or seeing old farm houses from the train window. Brasov however was pretty nice.

We visited two castles. The first one was Bran which is often called as the vampire castle. Although it turns out that the whole vampire thing is pretty much made up and the person from whom the legend started from didn't even live in Transylvania. But who cares, the Bran castle was still really pretty.

The second castle was in Sinaia. Rada, a friend of mine who is from Romania said that this is the place we should certainly go to and she was so right. That place was truly AMAZING! It was built by the first king of Romania over 100 years ago. It has a central vacuuming system, amazing treasures from different places all over the world. Like for example imagine 5 m high mirrors from Venice (all in one piece). I can not imagine how these things were transported from Venice to the mountains of Romania. Or furniture from India or Middle East, gifts from some sultans. I would suggest everybody to go and see that place if they can!

On the way back we flew across Europe twice :D First with Wizzair from Bucharest to London. Spent a night at the Stansted airport. Then with Easyjet to Tallinn next morning. Actually we spent one night at the airport also in Rome. Not so bad I would say but wouldn't do it too often if possible :)

So, in general, the trip was amazing!

Next one is going to be to Italy (again...) and to CROATIA!!! Can't wait!

riots in Tallinn in April 2007

2007-04-30T17:29:00.001+03:00

It seems that most of the world has heard about the riots happening in Tallinn a few days ago. I quickly found one article in English about it also. Lots of videos have been put to YouTube.

I must say that it's a huge shock for me and for all Estonians to see something like this happening in our peaceful country. It's the first time people have gone so crazy and just going around the streets destroying everything. When driving in the center on Friday and Saturday and seeing all the damage made, I notice myself just looking around and holding my hand in front of my mouth. I guess these kind of riots are a bit more usual in other countries during football matches for example so you can see that many businesses cover their windows and doors with metal curtains every nights, but here only very few shops have decided that it's necessary.

Police has opened a website with pictures from looting and riots so that everybody could go and try to identify those people who are on the pictures. One example of the photos (from looting the R-Kiosk). Update: This photo got awarded as one of the best ones in 2007.

A few words about the background. The problem is about a statue which honors soldiers who died in soviet army when fighting against Germany. It was located in the center of Tallinn and every year supporters of communism used that location to celebrate some soviet anniversaries. For Estonians this meant celebrating taking away our freedom and causing us countless problems with a capital letter.

Now the statue has been moved to another location in the military cemetery in Tallinn.

These riots only affected the center of Tallinn and a few other towns in the East Estonia. In my area it was as peaceful as any other night.

On the Saturday evening we went out with Davide and his friends from Italy and it was quite weird to see the whole downtown full of police. No riots were happening at that day anymore but they kept the whole center covered just in case. We were asked for identifications many times but I asked the Italians to say that they are from Italy and police left us alone every time :) So we actually got a pretty good impression about Estonian police and the way they communicated with us and handled the situation. Especially considering that they had been thrown with rocks for two evenings in a row.

I really hope that the next days won't bring any new problems to our streets although as there's a big soviet celebration coming on May 9th, then who knows. Btw, there's a ban to sell alcohol in most parts of Estonia at the moment until may 3rd and from there it's only allowed from 8 AM to 2 PM plus around May 9th also no alcohol is allowed to be sold to people. It's a necessary measurement to keep people more calm as most of the youngsters who were taking part of these riots had been drinking quite a lot of alcohol before.

It was funny yesterday near the port of Tallinn where some Finnish tourists who always come to Estonia to buy cheap alcohol were looking at the boxes of beer and saying: "I'm sorry I can not take you with me today..." :D

--------------
There's also a joke going around which is inspired from the riots:

"What is the difference between a rich businessman and a rioting thief?
They both wear Hugo Boss suit but the thief has R-Kiosk plastic bag in his hand."

*** The explanation - one Hugo Boss shop was looted and also one little R-Kiosk looted and then put on fire

my hacked hotmail account

2007-04-16T15:08:00.000+03:00

Guess what! My hotmail account has been hacked!
Not just once, but 3 times in a row, LOL

Microsoft Support helped me to get the password back for 2 times and both times after a day or two the account was hacked again. Pretty crazy... Especially considering that I'm the person who knows a little about security and how to keep my password safe and secure. Every time I changed my security question also and put a new secure password, but not luck, now it's gone again :D

When I logged back in then the hacker had changed my security question, my location, my display name in MSN and the secondary email (it was changed into this one 'basketball.78@hotmail.com' both times). Btw, I suggest everybody who has some extra time to spam this hotmail account (evil grin)... not really actually, not worth it :D

Plus all my MSN contacts had been deleted and some emails read. Good that I only use hotmail.com for spam emails so no big loss there, only a bit sad to not being able to access my friends anymore, who I wasn't able to conver to Skype yet.

Btw, although the Microsoft Support was pretty professional, check what kind of questions they asked from me in order to verify my identity and then think again what kind of communication you would like to have through their channels:

1. Your Windows Live ID
2. Your first name and your last name
3. Your date of birth (month/date/year)
4. Your country
5. Your state (if applicable)
6. Your postal code
7. Your IP address
8. The answer to your secret question
9. The "alternate e-mail address" that is on file for the account
10. Your Internet service provider (home or work)
11. The last date and time that you successfully signed in
12. The names of any folders that you created in addition to the default folders
13. Names of contacts in your address book
14. Subjects of any old mail that is in your inbox or mail folders
15. Names of contacts on your contact list
16. Your Windows Live Messenger nickname (display name)

I don't think I would be going back to hotmail or msn after this experience, better to use systems which are more reliable... like Skype :P

Surprise

2007-02-19T14:08:00.000+02:00

Last Tuesday, Valentines day, I got a call in the evening around 7. A lady told me that she is from a currier company I have to go outside to pick a cake which has been sent to me. Maybe a call like that is usual for some people but I'm not one of them. So not being sure what to think about it, I went outside to get that cake.

What a surprise I had when I read the card which was attached to the package - it was my mother who sent me that cake and she made the order through an online shop!! Unbelievable! She can easily send an email and do other simple stuff, but I never imagined that she would be up to buy or order stuff from internet. I have bought a couple of things online but never used a service like that and my mother was able to do that before me...

When I called her later she sounded as if it was nothing extraordinary and was surprised that I was so shocked that she did this. My lesson - never underestimate anybody, especially my own mother :D She is amazing...

Online friends

2007-02-10T12:27:00.000+02:00

There's a few people in this world who I have never met face to face but who I still consider being my friends - my online friends. These are the people who I have chatted for at least one year, with some of them for years. In one period of my life I was curious about this side of the world. It was kind a like a hobby of mine to talk to a person from a different culture. I met all sorts of people, most of them I blocked from my contact list after a couple of sentences as there's really a lot of weird ones out there who it's better to stay away from. But some were really interesting to talk to and they have been a good support to me in some hard times.

As I am not the kind of person who would say hi too often, then most of the contacts have dropped by now, but only a few have remained friends after the years. Lately I spend possibly only about half an hour chatting every week just to keep the contact and soon I won't have any online friends left I guess. Sometimes I feel bad about it, but there is more important things in life than keeping the online contacts. The real life is the most important one for me - my boyfriend, my childhood friends, my family.

I have been wondering recently, how many of my friends have also online friends... How common is it? Or how common is it that people have bad experiences? I would really appreciate some comments, although my blog is probably not the best place to ask this question :)

I've had some bad experiences also in the past, but in my opinion it doesn't mean that all the people who are hanging around in internet from time to time would have bad intentions. I think that it's extremely important to be selective and careful when it comes to finding friends in internet but it's possible to find intelligent nice people who are not there to try to hurt or use you.

Tonsils - gone forever

2007-02-04T22:36:00.000+02:00

In summer 2006 when I was sick several times, my doctor started saying that maybe I should think about consulting a specialist to see if my tonsils should be taken out. When the tests showed at the end of last year that a bacteria called 'streptococcus' is living inside my tonsils, then the decision to go through that surgery was finalized. The problem with this streptococcus is that it can easily cause some other pretty bad sicknesses like serious heart and kidney problems or rheuma (I am really not sure how to spell that in English, sorry).

My mother was basically begging me not to take them out because in her opinion I would have constant pneumonia and other problems after doing that, but I made my own research and talked to quite many people who had them taken out before me. Basically everybody said that it was one of the good decisions in their life, so I decided not to notice my mother that time and do what I believed was good for me.

The doctor I had is one of the best ones in Estonia - dr. Solovjov. He booked me time for the operation two weeks after I called him and told my tests results. Normally the queue for the operation can be up to 1 or 1,5 years in Tallinn but I decided to do it faster in a private clinic. I had to pay a little bit (2750 EEK), but at least there was no waiting.

The operation was made on February 23rd 2007. I was sleeping during the procedure and after I woke up I was feeling even a bit better than I expected, but that was only my first impression... The first night was spent in the hospital and until I left it, the nurses were able to make 3 injections of painkiller to my backside which was painful for several days after that as they managed to somehow touch some important nerve there :D

Anyways, after the hospital's strong painkillers faded off at home I started feeling really quite bad. And this feeling lasted for about 9-10 days. I couldn't swallow almost at all, only when the painkiller I used at home was working at full time, then I could drink a little and eat some really liquid food. But the worst part was that I wasn't able to talk. Imagine that I was using a strong painkiller 3 times per day, but still couldn't speak. No talking for 10 days is a totally new experience for me and I must say that it made me crazy! So, I was using small pieces of paper to note down what I needed or what I wanted to say, but that certainly did not compensate for not being able to talk.

One of the worst times was Sunday evening (6th day). I was brushing my teeth when suddenly one of the wounds in the throat started bleeding. My doctor had warned me of the possibility of bleeding during 14 days after the operation and explained what to do, but still it was quite a big shock for me. Imagine having hot liquid blood coming from your throat for 5-10 or more minutes (I have no idea how long it lasted actually)... First it made me to almost throw up. Afterwards I almost fainted. Hehe, it's not easy to see blood but that was worse for sure. After this I didn't eat or brush my teeth or even open my mouth much for several days to be sure that it doesn't happen again :D

Well, finally on the 10th or 11th day I was able to speak a little bit. Actually I had a doctors appointment on 10th day and the doctor said that everything is healing normally, so I was also more brave to start doing the normal things again like talking :) Today is the 13th day and now I feel quite good again. I still eat cooled down food which is as soft as possible but today was the first day I didn't use any painkiller for the whole day. And I was still able to talk all day. My throat is a bit painful, but no big deal anymore. I still get tired quite easily and usually sleep one time during each day, but that will pass soon I hope.

My doctor warned me of 2 weeks of "cursing the doctor time" and I guess it was almost 2 weeks, but although I went through some pretty rough times, I don't regret getting rid of the tonsils. I have to say huge thanks to the people who supported me through this as without them it would of been 100 times harder. Especially to one person who's name shall not be revealed ;)

Ah, I forgot one thing, so I will add it now (one day later, hehe).
For 5 days now I've been having a serious problem with yawning... It means that in the morning, also in the evenings and especially when driving a car I am yawning after every 4-5 minutes. This means a lot of yawning. Otherwise I wouldn't care about it but this procedure is really painful due to the fact that I can not stretch my mouth properly as normally. It's so annoying that I sometimes feel like hitting the wall with my head when another yawn is coming again. I hope I either lose this habit soon or that the muscles inside the mouth get strong enough for the yawning to be less painful or I will go crazy :D

Life... is unexpected

2007-01-21T00:03:00.000+02:00

I don't even know where to start from to be honest, too many things have happened. Some people and some things are making my life extremely good and happy. Some other things and people on the other hand are doing the opposite, but I guess that's life and like they say: What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger! There's quite a few weird, crazy and not so nice things going in my life right now and they made me quite upset for a couple of days, but I have realized one important thing - the reaction you have to the bad things what are happening to you will show what kind of a person you really are! Reading my sisters blog has made this understanding even more clear. This is a copy from there:

Everything changes – change is the law of nature, so there’s no point to hate something as it changes, nor is there a point to crave for something as it changes too. Pain is temporary, joy is temporary – this is life. Nothing is worth to be stuck with it.

Everything that happens is totally neutral, you give the evaluation and react according to it. You can control your reactions, so you can control everything that happens to you in life.

Nobody can hurt you without you letting it to happen.

Your mind and body are strongly interconnected. Your thoughts become what you do and influence how you physically feel

So, I decided to appreciate more all the beautiful people around me and wonderful things happening to me every day as this will make going through the tough times much easier. Plus there's a countless number of ways to make yourself laugh and humor is one of the ways to keep us going, right!

Btw, I will have a tonsils operation on Tuesday, so wish me luck! I'm quite looking forward to not being able to speak much for a couple of days and as my doctor put it - curse him for two weeks... hehe

My fabulous trip to Scotland

2006-12-07T18:27:00.001+02:00

Some people have reminded me that there is still no word from my trip to Scotland, which took place from 8 to 12 November 2006. I had actually no plan to take any vacation at that point, until Davide invited me to join him as he had to take care of some business he had there. He used to live near Glasgow for over 1,5 years before coming to Estonia. After it turned out that it's possible to get plain tickets for 30 EUR from Riga, I had no doubts. Btw, can you imagine how it's possible that it costs basically the same money to go from Tallinn to Riga by bus as to fly from Riga to Glasgow!! I just love cheap flights :D

The whole trip was just perfect, including some incidents we had!

For example - in Pärnu (1,5 hours from Tallinn) we were almost left behind by the bus driver... He made a 5 min stop in Pärnu and we went to buy water and cakes from a little stand just behind the bus. I also asked the bus driver how long he is stopping exactly, so he knew that we were out there (plus just behind the bus in a viewable area). But he still started driving away while we were still outside without giving any notice that he is about to do that. So, Davide run and stopped the bus in time, but I just can not imagine how the bus driver could do that. Especially as there was only 8 people in the bus and he knew that we were still outside. Grr, really made me mad... But whatever, as long as we continued the trip.

Inside Riga we were stuck in the traffic jam for over 1 hour until we decided to continue our trip by foot to be able to make it in time for the flight as the bus didn't seem to get anywhere. One more girl joined us as she wanted to catch the same flight. So, after walking in the crazy traffic and even seeing our bus passing us, the girl decided to take a taxi to the airport. Unfortunately we didn't have any Latvian cash, but she was kind enough to not to charge us our share of the taxi, so it actually turned out quite good for us :)

These are the little stories from the road, everything else went really smoothly. One of Davide's friend was waiting for us in the airport. That was extremely kind of him considering that we got to our sleeping place after 1 AM and he had to work the next day. We stayed with some other friends of Davide, so didn't have to pay anything for the accommodation.

The next day it was really sunny and beautiful. Davide was taking care of his 'business' and was able to do it all with one day. This meant that the rest of the days were just for sight seeing and touring around :P Ajee...

So, the next day we visited Glasgow (raining almost all the day, hehe) and on Saturday took a trip to Edinburgh.

I must say that we only had one rainy day, which is apparently quite amazing for that time of the year. Edinburgh was amazing, I can recommend to go there for everybody.

And I had the best vacation in a long time, I really needed that I must say. I also have to thank my travel mate who was really the best, I don't have any complaints what-so-ever :D

Now I'm making plans for a new trip already for the next year. This time it will be to more south :P

Some Photos also ;)

He was collecting money for charity as I understood.

The famous UK telephone stands :P

Me and the Edinburgh castle

Davide at a lovely street in Edinburgh going up to the castle.

Davide on a street in Glasgow

My NEW JOB :P

2006-12-06T12:36:00.000+02:00

I have finally decided to show a little light to the new job I have at Skype ;)

About the background - I had worked at Skype for 1,5 years by August 2006 and after all that time I needed a new challenge. Customer Support gave me very good starters and background, but I felt that there's not enough for me to learn anymore. Also the whole team had changed when I got back from Croatia and most of my old collegues had been moving on by that time, so I felt it was time for me to do the same.

So, I started to look around to see if there's any opportunities for me. Finally a good friend of mine put my attention to a job in Skype Developer Support, which seemed like a perfect job for me after reading the job description.

So, I just went ahead and applied and talked to all the relevant people as much as possible, went through the interview and suffered for some days to hear the result of it :) Finally, I got the news - "You got the job! We won't even give you the test work as we believe you fit the best to the job anyways." I had hard time believing the news as I normally don't get my hopes up before I know for sure.

So, now I've been working in this new job for almost 3 months and I'm more than happy. The style of this job is much more suitable for me compared to the Customer Support experience because every case I get is always different and I can go deep into the subject, ask around and find a solution. It's also a huge learning opportunity for me, so far almost everything I've done has been containing something new.

What is my work like - I have to understand Skype API and help the outside developers to use it to be able to build applications to Skype. For example programs like Pamela are using the Skype API. Who wants, can ask me more ;)

Also the team I'm in is really cool - really hard working people who still know how to have fun and don't get too serious in the process!

Plus I get to go to London from time to time, which is not bad in my opinion ;)

I will see what the future brings, but for now I'm really happy where I am. I just have to work hard to make them keep me, hehe...

Oh those estonians... :D

2006-11-29T15:07:00.000+02:00

After having dug to a depth of 100 metres last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 1000 years ago.
Not to be outdone by the Scots, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug to a depth of 200 metres and shortly after headlines in the newspapers read; English archaeologists have found traces of 2000 year old fibre-optic cable and have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years earlier than the Scots.
One week later, Estonian newspapers reported the following:
After digging as deep as 500 Metres in Narva, Estonian scientists have found absolutely nothing. They, therefore, have concluded that 5000 years ago, Estonia’s inhabitants were already using wireless technology.

Nothing is impossible

2006-10-15T23:10:00.000+03:00

Imagine a situation -

Your destination is Skopje, Macedonia. Start from Tallinn through Prague. Everything seems perfect until you find out in Prague that it has slipped your mind, that Macedonia is not a member of EU. And this means, that you need a passport to get in there and the ID-card, which is accepted instead of passport in all EU is not going to work for Macedonia. So, no flight to Skopje before you get your passport.

What would you do, sitting in the Prague airport when being in this kind of situation??

When my sister called me from Prague and told me this story, I was shocked at first and it seemed quite impossible to get her to Skopje in time for her conference. Especially considering that the passport was not even in Tallinn, but in Tartu (2,5 hours away) plus it was Friday, which meant that the currier companies would have been able to deliver the passport by Monday, not before.

But, not me, nor my sister are quitters. So first I called the Estonian embassy in Prague, but they could have only given a passport subtitution paper to get back to estonia, but not to travel to other countries.

At the same time my sister was able to convince the Czeck Airlines to be nice enough to take her passport fom Tallinn with their next flight, so she could get it in Prague. They even agreed to change her ticket to the next day without the regular changing fee. So, my job was to get the passport to the airport in time for that flight.

First we arranged the passport to be put on a bus from Tartu. Margus gave it to one girl and she was supposed to give it to me when the bus stops at the airport. Then I had to get the passport from the bus and run to the Czeck Airlines representative and give it to them. The only problem was, that traffic was really bad when I was driving to the airport and I was late. So, I followed the bus to the bus station, which took forever because of the bad traffic -> then spent about 15 min to track down the girl with the passport -> hurried back to the airport -> run to find the Czeck Airlines people -> found the right person about 22 min before the flight to Prague -> hope that they run fast enough to get it to the plane in time.

Plus I had to run back to the car to be able to get my son from the kindergarden and get to the bus to go to an event, organised by my old collegues. In other words - my adrenaline was skyrocketing for 1,5 hours, BUT everything got done!! The passport got to Prague as intended and I reach the bus with Olari in time.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I was also a little sick during that day, but I think that amount of adrenaline was able to cure me quite good, hehe...

Moral of the day - NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE!

PS. Below are me and Maia, my dearest sister who also happens to be one of the smartest people I know (but we all have our bad days I guess, hehe)

First time in LONDON

2006-10-15T22:05:00.000+03:00

This week I had the first business trip in my life - to LONDON! Although it was my first time there, I wasn't so extremely excited about it. I guess mostly because I was concentrating on the business part and had very productive working days in London.

Sightseeing would of been extremely sweet also, but there was no time for it I'm afride. I was either at the office working or in both evenings had a dinner with collegues. So, Ants (a lovely collegue of mine) finally suggested that I take an hour during the lunch time on my last day and go walking in the center. Luckily Skype office is totally in the center of London near Oxford street, so I decided to do as he suggested.

There was only one problem - the minute I walked out of the office to have my one hour walk, it started raining. And not just little bit, but really raining with even some thunder. After 10 min streets were covered with water, but I didn't give up. It was fun actually as the weather wasn't cold and the wind wasn't too strong. Only my shoes got a big hit and my feet were soaked... But that was minor, this one hour was still quite enjoyable, I just wish I could have shared it with somebody. But it's not going to be my last time in London, so next time I will try to arrange a friend or two to share the experience with me and maybe to stay for a weekend or something to get the real feeling of London :)

To liven up this blog, I have also one picture from London, ajee, hehe -

Stuck behind my own door LOL

2006-10-08T16:48:00.000+03:00

Last night me and my sister Maia were going out to one Aiesec party and our brother Karli was babysitting for our sons for that time. Got back around 3:30, totally tired and exhausted and dreaming about a soft bed, BUT... The key didn't work because Karli had forgotten the key in from inside. So, no problem, we call to the home phone and also knock on the door and yell to wake him up... for 45 min... nothing. Karli must have the worlds strongest sleep or something!

So, finally it seems that we have a few options. The easiest seemed just to lay on the dirty corridor floor and try to sleep there as much as possible, but it didn't seem very tempting for some reason... The other option was to call to a very good friend of mine who lives nearby. The only problem was, that I knew that his flatmate, who is from Latvia, had 5 friends visiting. But, crazy as we are, we still made a call and I really must say, that there's probably not many people who are so nice and helpful than my friend Davide and his flatmate Yaroslav.

Now imagine a flat with 2 rooms and 3 beds and 9 people trying to sleep there :D Ajee...

Oh, and you can imagine how pissed we were at our brother LOL

SLOW DANCE

2006-08-08T13:47:00.000+03:00

Yesterday when I was doing my everyday job and answering emails from customers of Skype, then one person sent the following poem to our customer support. I just like that poem so much, that want everybody to read it.

*SLOW DANCE*

*Have you ever watched kids*
*On a merry-go-round?*
*Or listened to the rain*
*Slapping on the ground?*
*Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?*
*Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?*
*You better slow down.*
*Don't dance so fast.*
*Time is short.*
*The music won't last.*

*Do you run through each day*
*On the fly?*
*When you ask How are you?*
*Do you hear the reply?*
*When the day is done*
*Do you lie in your bed*
*With the next hundred chores*
*Running through your head?*
*You'd better slow down*
*Don't dance so fast. *
*Time is short.*
*The music won't last.*

*Ever told your child,*
*We'll do it tomorrow?*
*And in your haste, *
*Not see his sorrow?*

*Ever lost touch,*
*Let a good friendship die*
*Cause you never had time*
*To call and say,"Hi"*

*You'd better slow down.*
*Don't dance so fast.*
*Time is short.*
*The music won't last.*

*When you run so fast to get somewhere*
*You miss half the fun of getting there.*
*When you worry and hurry through your day,*
*It is like an unopened gift....*
*Thrown away.*

*Life is not a race.*
*Do take it slower*
*Hear the music*
* Before the song is over.*
* --------------------*

wow

2006-08-06T18:35:00.000+03:00

Estonia, Estonia, Estonia... I love you more than ever!

After seeing the most beautiful sunset, an amazing two-sides rainbow 100 m away, two the MOST beautiful sunrize.... I am totally amazed in what a wonderful country I live at!

Last weekend I had a friend from Denmark visiting. Peter is the one who thaught me the one word in Croatish what I knew before I went to Croatia - nema problema. Was showing him around in Saaremaa and had a very good time visiting some old and some new places.

This weekend was Skype summer party. And that was one party! hehe
I just got back from there actually. I think I got about 3 hours sleep since Friday morning and the whole time I felt just great, no tiredness, almost as somebody put some extacy or something in my drink (never tried it I want to clear up, but I imagine that it would make people feel how I felt there, hehe)

So, anyways, will go to sleep now so that I would be able to work tomorrow also.

And I am totally crazy, it was prooven again this weekend, but will not tell you about it, because if I don't go to sleep at this moment, then I will not be able to finish this post because I will be sleeping on the keyboard.

back home

2006-07-23T11:12:00.000+03:00

Before I went to Croatia, I had never experienced that a 7 hour drive to another city can be so different in two countries... It's quite hard to find similarities in a drive from Rijeka to Split and from Gothenburg to Stockholm. But that's what makes the world such an interesting place! I have noted down some things, which cought my eye when I compared Sweden (and could easily write here Estonia also) and Croatia.

¤ houses are made of wood or bricks and not rocks like in Croatia
¤ roads are wider
¤ the weather is colder and more rainy
¤ no more ancient buildings, instead simply old buildings
¤ landscape is maybe a little hilly, instead of seeing high mountains all over the place
¤ the colour of the sea is greyish instead of blue-green
¤ lots of big supermarkets and malls everywhere

Really, they are two different worlds, at least in my mind. Can't say that one is better than the other, but the difference makes them both special. I actually took some pictures from the road in Sweden because the difference with Croatia is soo big.

Anyways, it's great to be back home!! My son hugged me so strong when I got home and didn't want to let me go anymore. And every day he gives me at least 100 kisses and hugs and tells me that I'm the dearest person for him in the world (estonians don't say 'I love you' except to the husband or wife, but instead we say that somebody is dear to us). Also my sister's son was so happy to see me, but only until he was allowed to start digging in my suitcase, hehe. Of course the rest of the family are also very happy to have me back :) It's a very good feeling to relise that I'm so important to quite a few people and that I'm missed in this little place in the world.

The weather in Estonia wasn't much to be happy about though - 18 degrees on the first days. So, I got quite sick actually. Maybe from the sadness of being away from Croatia or from the change in the weather, don't know. I feel better now though, so will take a bus to Tallinn tonight and go to work tomorrow.

Btw, going back to my old job is pretty much like going to a new job. It's because most of my team has changed, my old team mates have become team leaders, the office is at a different location and even my boss has changed. My team leader even suggested me to take a new employee tour on Monday, hehe. Should be fun :D But I will take it easy at first to get adjusted again.

My last week in Croatia

2006-07-16T23:24:00.000+03:00

Soooooo... what can I say.... I'm not in Croatia anymore while I write this post :(

The last week and a half has been full of events and also full of goodbyes. I will get to this last thing soon, but first I will try to make a short overview about the event part.

My last working days were mostly spent in Damir's office because at least after every 10 minutes he had some questions about the laptop and how to do this and that. I really enjoyed teaching him though because he was such an excited student. Plust it felt a little like giving something back to him because he did so much for me (starting from arranging all those trips for me until telling me the history of Croatia). I also made a lot of comments for the guy who makes the website, but he hasn't done any more work with it so far. It seems that he will only do something if I actually go to his office or something. But I'm sure Damir will put some pressure on him if nothing will be done soon. I will give the address also again - Hoteli Omisalj website.

On Thursday I called my boufriend Ziad and was complaining that we will have so little time together once I get to Sweden, because I would need the remaining one week of my vacation between him and being on my homeisland with my son and family. So, later that day he called me back and was asking what would I think if he would fly to me later that week. That was honestly very shocking for me because by then I was used to the idea that he won't come to Croatia to visit me. So I told him not to joke with this kind of things :D He only said that he's looking into this, but when I called him later that night, he said he has a ticket in his hand :D

If I'm honest, then I coulnd't believe that until I actually saw him at the airport in Zadar. I will tell more about this whole trip later, but first I will cover Saturday - trip to little town called (will check this name a little later) and my goodbye party on Saturday ;)

On Saturday morning I did some shopping in Rijeka and met some people and at some point we took a taxi to a little sweet town, which name's I can't remember right (it's written down in my little notebook, but it's not here right now, so I will add this later, hehe). It was me, Maya, Alen and Michael. Alen was trying really hard to be the tourguide and had really hard time reading us all the signs we found on our way, hehe. The town its self was really sweet - small and clean, with old lovely buildings, ruins of a huge ancient church and little museum. Plus there was a stunning view to the Istria!

Me and Michael suggested to try to hich-hike back to Rijeka because we didn't know what time the bus would be coming plus it would of been cheaper. It was at least +35 when standing there at the sun and trying to stop the cars, but we really had so much fun!! Actually 3 cars stopped, but 2 of them were going to wrong destination and one of them only wanted to take me and Maya, lol. I think we did this for about 45 min or so and we were totally exhausted from the sun by that time, so we took a bus finally. It was a great experience actually and I really enjoyed the company :)

Alright, later that day, Saturday, was my good bye party at Neva's place. There was about 15 of us maybe, don't remember so good anymore, but I could check if from the pictures. All my best Croatian Aiesec friends were there (execpt some, like Matia, Antonia, Dunja, Sanja - I missed you)! Well, the party was great nethertheless ;) I think I was dancing for half of the time at least, just enjoying the music we had :P Girls joining me most of the time, but guys were mostly sitting and drinking or something, hehe. I was again acting like a total water-holic, but it didn't stop me from having fun with the others. All people wrote something to my little notebook and it was soooo sweet to read that later - thank you, everybody, it means a lot to me!!

What else was going on there ;) Neva had waterpipe, hehe. Maybe I shouldn't mention this because my brother might read this also, hehe (he's 17). Well, whatever, he will try all these things some day anyways I guess. So, Neva had something, which was supposed to be pure apple or something like that. Most of us had never tried waterpipe I think, so it was quite amusing to see how different people reacted. For example, how I reacted, lol. I think it was Tomislav who took a picture of me when I tried the waterpipe for the first time and I will maybe post it later in my album. Actually I must say that it was not bad, I was more scared before, but it didn't feel bad. It wasn't anything extremely nice either though. I can imagine that it can be a nice social thing in arab lands. So, one more 'first time' for me :P

I went to sleep at around 3 at Neva's upstares while many people were still having fun downstares and they had a lot of fun with some weird games I guess, hehe :D I needed to get some sleep because I wanted to take a bus at 9AM next morning to go and meet Ziad in Zadar, which is 4,5 hours bus drive away from Rijeka. Neva stayed away among with eveybody else and even though she only slept a couple of hours, she woke up for me and made me breakfast!!

So, I'm was on my way to Zadar on Sunday morning to meet Ziad at the airport and come back to Rijeka together. I was actually sleeping for most of the time, but I can still say that the road to Zadar is really extremely beautiful - high mountains on one side (up to 1700 m) and sea and islands on the other side. The road was of course quite crazy there running on the side of those mountains and usually quite high from the sea level. It was about 200 km to Zadar, but it takes the bus 4,5 hours to get there because it can't drive fast on that road.

In Zadar it turned out that the only bus to airport on that day left in the morning and I have to take a taxi to get to there. That taxi cost me almost the same amount of money as one way to Zadar from Rijeka, lol and it was only about 10 km from the city.

Before I went there, I had some free time to do some sight seeing in Zadar, so I got myself a map, like I always do (you can always find a tourist information in Croatia). I had only just reached to the old town and was checking out one excavation site, while some man asked me something. We started to talk and he offered to show me around a little because he was local and had a day off and had nothing better to do anyways (it was Sunday). That was quite weird actually, but I didn't mind because he was pollite and he spoke very good English. So, I got myself a free tour guide named Franjo - he was maybe about 45 years old and he's was an artist and quite an interesting person to talk to. But this was only the beginning of the longest day in a long time ;)

Around 4 I headed to the airport and waited there for a while as Ziad's flight was late. Even when waiting there, I couldn't really believe that I will see him because we didn't see eachother for 4 months. After he finally came, we took a bus of his travel agency back to Zadar. The problem was, that as his flight was late, we missed the bus, which would of taken us to Rijeka on the same night. Instead we needed to wait for the next bus, which left from Zadar at 23:30 and go to Rijeka at 4AM in next morning. So, we spent some time in the old town and enjoyed one of the most beautiful sunset. In the seaside promenade, there was a big sign, that Alfred Hitchcock stayed in Zadar and declared that sunset there are the most beautiful in the world. I must say that he was quite right about that.

The night bus to Rijeka was quite an interesting experience - sleeping in a bus really sucks, the road was quite bumpy from time to time, but all the bad things were made good by two things. First it was the pleasure of being with Ziad again and resting my head in his chest (maybe that's why it was uncomfortable to sleep, hehe). The second is the most beautiful moon I've ever seen in my life!!! It was full moon, huge, low above the montains on the island on one side with a most beautil reflection on the calm sea... I really can't describe how beautifl that view was, but I can defenatly say, that this picture will bein my mind for the rest of my life!!! Really amazing...

The sun was just rising when we go to Rijeka and the city was pretty much emtpy at that point, expect the bus station as there were several bus arriving and leaving at that time (travelling with a night bus seems to be popular here). The first bus to Omisalj left at 5:45, so we were walking in empty Korzo (the main street) and sitting in the seaside until the bus came. It was quite nice actually because I wasn't alone. In the bus to Krk Island to get to my little town Omisalj, we fell a sleep rigth away I think and I almost didn't wake up in time to get off the bus in Omisalj, hehe. So, we finally got to the hotel at around 6:45 or something and I woke up at 9 to go to work :D

We decided to stay in the hotel until Thursday and enjoy the time in Krk island. I had two more working days and then we had two full days to look around in Krk. First days we spent with swimming, walking in Omisalj, getting ice cream in the marina and other things like that :D I really enjoyed because finally I had somebody there to share my experience with. This is one thing I have defenatly learned from this whole experience - people need to share! Writing this blog is one way of doing that, but having a person with you is still a totally different story.

On wednesday we took a bus to Baska. It was supposed to cost over 70 kuna for us both to get there, but the person who sold the tickets took our tickets from his pocket instead of the machine and charged us only 50 kuna - I guess people need to make money somehow. So, first I met my new friend Sasha, how is working in the market and then we did some sightseeing.

It was a very hot day (like each day for the past month), so the wish for sightseeing was soon overdrawn by the feeling to get cool in the sea. Considering that it was my third time in Baska and I knew how crouded the normal beach is there, I suggested to go to the local FKK beach instead. This means a nudist beach and there's at least 5 of them in the island. Luckily Ziad is as open-minded as I am, so we took a 15-20min walk to find that beach. FKK beach in Baska is in a beautiful little bay and it was totally worth of going there - it was not crouded and people were so relaxing just enjoying the sun and the sea. I was enjoying also, a lot actually. Some poeple (not mentioning the names) will think that this is very weird and not natural, but actually it's the opposite - it's such a freeing feeling to be without clothes and not to have to worry about it.

The next day we took a free bus tour to see Fulfinum and Biseruijka cave. This tour was organised from the town government I think to celebrate some event in the town history. It was nice to show Ziad around in Fulfinum and I hadn't seen Biseruijka myself either before. That cave is about 110m long and there's a lot of very beatiful stalactites and stalacmites (hopefully I'm spelling this correctly). The legend says that pirates used to hide their pearls there long time ago and that's where the name comes from.

Thursday was also full of packing and goodbyes. I really did a lot of this last thing during that week... And it was every time very very hard for me. On my goodbye party I had to say goodbye to all my Aiesec friends and I think it was as hard for me as it was for them. On Thursday I said goodbye to the hotel people, who had also become my good friends. Several people gave me little gifts, like Sanja and Ivica from the reception gave me a little glass cat; restaruant people gave me a cup and some candy; Damir gave me a bunch of things including two bottles of wine and honey from his father. I was really surprised to receive these gifts, bit gifts or no gifts - it was every time sooo hard to say goodbye. When I accept all these people to my life for 2 months and they become part of my life, then it's so hard to accept that I might never see them again and all these people are just cut from my life again. I guess I should of been more ready for this as I knew it will happen, but I obviously wasn't ready enough. Oh well, now all the goodbyes are done and I can only hope that my road will meet with the road of my Croatian friends again some time.

Alright, I will shortly tell about my trip back from Croatia also...

On Friday morning we took a bus to Split, which is about 350 km from Rijeka. We decided not to take the night bus because it's way too hard to sleep in that bus and it's so exhausting. So, instead we enjoyed the ride to Split as the whole road is always running on the seaside and half of the time the view is stunning. In Split we found a place to stay quite easily and fast because there was about 6 ladies in the bus station offering a room. We could pick the best price and closest place and the lady took us to her appartment. It was in a little set of buildings just behind the trainstation (bus and trainstation were together). People were living there really close to eachother, which was quite weird for me. For 200 kuna per night it was quite a nice place actually.

Split its self is very very beautiful city. The old town is amazing. Behind every corner you will see a stunning view with ancient buildings and houses. I was honestly quite stunned. A lot of nice shops also. In the harbour there was one incredible ocean cruser with 2 high masts. It seemed that only Bill Gates could afford a ship like that, lol. It was from USA, so who knows who owned it.

Next day, meaning yesterday, Saturday was the day when we flew to Sweden from Split. Ziad's flight was in the morning and mine at 6:30 PM. We shared the bags, so that mine wouldn't be too heavy. I spent the day in Split doing some shopping and headed to the airport at 2 PM. Surprise, surprise, both of our flights were delayed, so I finally go to Gothenburg at 10:30 PM or something. Staying in Split was very nice and everybody who visit Croatia, should go there too :)

So today I got to see Gothenburg, first by car, then by foot and finally by bike also. It's also a very beautiful city, very clean with beautiful building amd lots of fountains and statues. I was quite impressed to be honest.

Tomorrow we will drive to Stockholm (7 hours drive) and take a ship to Tallinn and night. So, Tuesday I will back in Estonia after being away for more than 2 months. I must say that I really miss my son, especially as I'm so close to him now, so I will probably drive to my island on the same day I get to Estonia :P

There's actually so many more things in my mind, I want to talk about, but I will do that in some other time when I'm back in Estonia. Will stop for now and get some sleep as it's already half an hour past midnight here in Gothenburg....

It's getting better and better, but I have to leave soon

2006-06-28T16:27:00.000+03:00

I started writing this entry about a week ago I think, but the last 2 weeks have been so much full of events and work, that I still haven't finished this entry. So, I will make a new start now and will hopefully finish this time also.

First I need to say that the past 2 weeks have been the most exciting ones in Croatia. It just seems to get better and better here all the time, but now I have to leave soon...

Now I will just make an overview about what have happened during the time what is missing in the blog right now:

-> Wednesday 21.06 - boat trip with a glass boat and divers show
-> Thursday 22.06 - trip to Krk town and then to Baška and to the beach there
-> Saturday 24.06 - to Rijeka and day on the Kostrena beach (new trainees arriving)
-> Sunday 25.06 - day in Baška
-> Monday 26.06 - showing Michael the town
-> during the week - starting tennis, lots of time in the sun, lots of work
-> Friday 30.06 - beach party with restaurant people
-> Saturday 1.07 - Rijeka, day in Kostrena, dinner with Maya, welcome party for new trainees
-> Monday 3.07 - working in Malinska, going tubing with Michael
-> Tuesday 4.07 - buying the plane ticket
-> Wednesday 5.07 - going parasailing

As you can see, I have a lot to write about ;)

My boss organised me two trips, which were with Hungarian groups. It appears that there's one travel agency in Hungary, which arranges people to come here every summer for about 10 years already. There's one lady called Kati (which is a name in Estonia also btw) and she is organizing trips for these people here. Mostly they come by cars, so the whole place is full of Hungarian cars rigth now. Some people come back for 10th year already (30% of them have been here before). That's quite interesting I think.

I don't remember if I told about this already or not, but I was quite curious about Hungarian language because it's related to Estonian and Finnish as we are all from Ugro-Finnski language family. So, I've been listening to their language, but there is no fomiliar words for me. The only, thing that I can recognise is that they use the letter 'ö' a lot.

One more interesting thing, what I found out from my new friend Vesna, is that Hungarians eat a lot. And it's true - they can easily have at least 2 or up to 5 plates of food on the table and that's for one person only. It's quite unbelievable how much they can eat, hehe.

While I mentioned Vesna, then I will tell you more about her. She works in the restaruant as waitress and she came to talk to me first time last week. She speaks very good English, but she was too shy to talk to me earlier I think. And I had an impression that nobody from the waitresses can talk English because I tried to talk to some of them when I came here. Actually now it turnes out the basically everybody who I didn't try to talk to, can speak good english. Vesna said, that they (waitres and waitresses) are all very curious about me, but they didn't feel bold enough to talk to me earlier. But, I'm soo glad that she took the courage this time because she's an extremely nice girl. She's actually from Bosnia, but there is no work for her there as that country is not doing as good as Croatia, so she is working here for 4-5 months in summer. I've been able to communicate with other people from the restaurant more also now. Before they told me hello and stuff like that, but now it's more. Some of them speak to me in Croatian and although we don't understand each other much, it's still very nice, because it's stil communication :) Most people here at the hotel just come to work here for the summer (hotel is closed in winter anyways) and some of them have quite different jobs in winter time when they go back to their towns and villages on the mainland (one girl is actually a hair-dresser for example).

They invited me to their party on last Friday, which was on the beach near the old Hotel Učka. There was about 20 of them just sitting, drinking, chatting and singing very loud and quite off key, hehe. It was very nice though to sit there in the moonlight with those young people full of energy and life.

So, back to the point - I had 2 trips with Hungarian groups and the tourguide Kati. First one was a ship trip by a panorama boat with a divers show. What it means, is that it was a small katamaran (not sure how to spell it in English). This type of boats have 2 "legs". So, these legs had windows on sides, where you could see under the water. The boat was driving half of the time in a shallow water, where people could see the sea floor. Actually there was not much to see there, I was quite dissappointed - no fish, only rocks and plants. I am able to see much more sea life when I'm just walking on the sea side here and keeping my eyes in the water beside me.

But this doesn't mean that the trip would of been bad. It is amazing how blue the sea was from under the water!! I still can not believe how blue it was. Especially because from top it was quite grey that day. There was also divers show, which was very nice :) The diver was showing some sea creatures (which he had taken with him in a bucket, lol) through the windows. The main attractions were two octopus'es. He was also showing starfish, sea hedgehog and corals. Quite a nice show, soon I will upload pictures also.

The next day - thursday - I went to Baška with the hungarian group. First to Krk actually, which was my 5th time there. So, this time I took some different roads than the usual tourist roads and got some new nice pictures also. After an hour in Krk, we drove to Baška. It had been my dream to go there for quite a while because everybody is always telling how beautiful it is there and I have to go there. The road to Baška was amazing - first over one mountain (not so extremely high) and then between mountains, which were about 500m on both sides, quite sharp and rocky. Really very very beautiful, especially to a girl from Estonia. In Baška I first wanted to see the church with the mosaik floor, which was found last year by the same archeologist, who worked in Fulfinum near Omišalj. So, I got some maps and directions and found the church withouth problems, saw the amazing mosaik, but could get inside the church unfortunately.

It was an extremely hot day (+35), so I finally realised that I should just go swimming to cool down my body. The beach in Baška is quite long but very crouded. It has little rock on the beach, but sand in the sea. So, the rest of the day I spent sunbathing and then swimming after every 20 minutes to cool off.

So, until now I have covered only the first two points in the list on the top of this posting, ouch.

Alright, that weekend was really very nice also. On Saturday I went to Rijeka and me, Alen, Marta, Neva and Agata (new trainee from Poland), we went to the Kostrena beach, which is close to Rijeka. It's the same one I was walking at one week earlier with Maja. Sunbathing there was nice, but that was only the beginning. Me, Neva and Alen decided to go and see if we can do some jumping from cliffs :D :D Maja had shown me the place where it's possible, so we headed there. That's kind a like an official place for jumpping, so the water is very deep there and there's sort of platforms for jumping built to the rocks. The highest one was about 10m high I think.

Of coures we didn't jump from 10m, but instead started from 1,5 m. Even that was such a challenge for me at first. I was really scared of doing that jump, but when I finally did - it was an amazing feeling. You know, when you are soo afride of doing something, but you take all your courage and streanght and still do it, then the feeling you get is awasome! So, after the first jump I also jumped from 2,5 meters and then from about 4,5 meters. Each of them was sooo scary, but I still did it and I'm very proud of myself because of that!

When I was jumping from 2,5m, then there was one guy jumping from 4,5m and I was encouraging him to jump. So, afterwards we started to talk to him and his friends and it turned out that they were actually from Philippines, but their ship was in the harbour of Rijeka. And these Philippines people were really very friendly and nice. They said that they met some local people who showed them one cave, which was nearby. So, people who know me can now guess if I wanted to see the cave or not :D Of course I did!

It was a little bit of walking and jumping on the cliffs to get to the rigth place. The entrance to the cave was actually under the water, so you people needed to dive for about 1 meter deep in a shallow water to get into the cave. Other went in without a problem, including Neva, but when I tried to dive in there, I got totally klaustrofobic (not sure how to spell it in english) and I had to turn back. The problem was, that my eyes were not used to the salty water, so I had to dive with my eyes closed and I just couldn't do it. So, everybody else went in except me and the guy who I helped to jump by chearing him. And he was convincing me for 10 minutes to go to the cave, he would give me his hand and pull me in when I have problems and so on. So, finally I tried again and he helped me a lot to get into the cave. If it wasn't for him I would have never seen that amazing place.

And that cave was really incredible!! The light came in from under the water, so it had a special effect. It was about 3 or 4 meters high and the water was about 20 cm deep. I have no idea how big it was because it went to the darkness. This whole day was incredible and I will defenatly remember that for the rest of my life.

So, I met two new trainees on that day. One was Agata from Poland, who works in Punat now and she came with us to the Kostrena beach also. The other trainee - Michael from Austria who works in Malinska - he came later that day by car with his two sisters Katarina and Barbara. We all slept in Sanja's place that night. She was preparing to have 3 people (me and 2 new trainees), but it ended up being 6 guests, hehe. Sanja was cool about it and we all fit there without many problems, incredible! If all people would be so tolerant and hospitable, then the whole world would be a different place.

The next day, Sunday, we went to Baška beach with Michael, his sisters and Agata. It was very nice because we could go by car and get burnt in the sun :D Baška is very beautiful btw, everybody should visit that place for sure.

Alright, I can't believe how much I have already written and how much more I want to write here.... huh

So, here comes the new week. On Monday Michael came with Maja and Matea to my hotel. Michael (will call him Mike as it's shorter) was supposed to stay in my hotel in my room actually, but there was a problem between Aiesec and the hotel, some communication problems I guess, so aiesec had to find a different place for him to stay. By now he has a place near his work place, so it's actually much better for him that he can stay there and doesn't have to take a bus every morning from here.

Damir, my boss, asked me on Monday if I would want to play tennis. He actually asked that earlier also, but I guess he forgot. Well, this time he was quite serious about it and introduced me to the tennis teacher Amir. So, on Tueasday, Wednesday, Thursday, Monday, Wednesday - I've had a tennis lesson for an hour each night at 8! That is really sooo nice and I just love to learn something totally new. Amir is extremely nice person also and a very good teacher, so it's a pleasure to learn. Last time, when I felt that I was still so bad after all those lessons, he told me that I'm a diamod, which needs to be polished. Well, I think I'm a very dirty dimond in that case, lol :D But I'm learning and I hope to take keep on practising in Estonia aslo, because I really enjoy this sports. Especially as I didn't do any sports in Estonia for 7 years, so it's time to choose something and get active again.

Btw, I'm not afride of swimming anymore either. Several times I go swimming after tennis, when it's dark already ;)

Last week was also full of work, because I started feeling that the time of my leaving is getting so close, so I need to finish my work stuff here, especially the website. So, on Thursday I got a lot of feedback from Damir and he said what needs to be changed, so I could finally be sure that what I'm doing, is what he wants also. On Monday (3 days ago) he drove me to Malinska to that company, who is actually making the website, because I realised that it's impossible to make all my ideas understandable over the emails. I was working with the guy there (called Tomislav) for 5,5 hours and we did really a lot of work with the website. So, now I can say that it's almost done, still some things not perfect, but it's getting very close. You can check it out for yourself here and feel free to give me feedback because I still have a little bit of time left and can do some work with it. So, this is the big thing what I have accomplished here and what I can actually show off.

On last Saturday I went to Rijeka again as almost every weekend. This time we spent a day in Kostrena beach again with both Maja's, Neva, Marta, Micica (not sure actually how to spell that) and Mike. This time we jumped even from higher place - ~5,5 m maybe. This time I jumped with Mike because Neva had to leave earlier. Again it was just so thrilling and overwhelming to do that because I had to collect all my courage again, it didn't matter very much that I had just done it a week earlier.

After coming back from Kostrena we went to Maya's place and she had prepared dinner for us - very very good food, especially as it's so rarely when I can eat home made food here. Thank you Maya for that :)

By 9 o clock aiesec people started to gather in front of the Faculty building, where they always start their parties from. This w time the reason for the party was the fact that there was 2 new trainees in Rijeka and they needed to have their welcoming party. The only weird thing was, that Agata didn't come and nobody really knew why was that. Well, we had a lot of fun anyways. All the most important people were presented I think, people who have become my friends here. People were mostly drinking something called "bambus" - made of coca cola and cheap wine - drink of students. I drunk only Fanta though. Later Alen asked me, if I really didn't drink anything, because I still had so much fun and was totally relaxed and free.

It was a bit weird feeling for me to be there because it started to hit me, that I will not see some of these people again probably. It always makes me very very sad when I think about that. I took a lot of pictures to make sure I have all people stored not only in my memories, but also in my computer ;) I will try to upload them as soon as possible.

Later we went dancing to a place called Budda Bar. I really had sooo much fun that night, it was exactly what I needed actually, to get my energy all wasted and feel free dancing and relaxing and chatting with people.

I have to say that the last 2 Saturdays have both been the best ones so far and actually everything seems to be getting better and better all the time. This is one reason why it's so hard to leave this place next week... I think I will probably cry when I have to leave, maybe not in front of other people because I don't like to show my feelings out so much. I will miss all the people I have met, both from Aiesec and from the hotel and the country and nature and just everything. Actually I'm trying not to think about this too much, because I want to enjoy my staying here until the last minute. I told one of my friends that I feel so sad about leaving and this is what he replied to me: "But life is like that, you put the seeds and they grow, everywhere you go - then go to see how it grew, and re-live the experience". So, now I keep this in mind and I feel a little bit better, because I do plan to come back to this place some day. All the people and the whole place has grown to be attached to my heart so I have to come back here.

Alright, back to the enjoying part! On Monday, after working with the website in Malinska, I met Mike (Btw, Mike is a very nice guy also and I'm glad I met him before my traineeship is over) because he lives there also. We had arranged that we meet and then try to do some water sports together, because it's much more fun if there's more than 1 person doing that. So, we hitchhiked to a nearby town Njivice (actually one guy just took us there when we mentioned that we need to go there). I wanted to do parasailing and Mike wanted to do water skiing or something like that. It turned out that the wind was from a wrong side that day, so parasailing was not possible. So, instead we decided to try out something called 'tubing'. It looks like something on this picture. It cost about 7 EUR and it was better than I expected!!! Really so much fun. There was two hungarian guys also with us and all 3 guys fell to the water at least once, only I stayed on my tube all the time, hehe. 10% of the time the tube was in the air jumping over the waves when the boat was driving in zik-zak. I can totally recommend everybody to try that out. The only bad thing was that the next day my whole body was so painful from holding on so tight to that tube, hehe :D But it was totally worth of that money and the pain.

Yesterday, on Wednesday, I could finally do the parasailing also, because the wind was finally ok. Mike didn't come because he probably wants to do waterskiing instead of that. So, I got a ride with Damir to Njivice and I went parasailing alone, juhhuu. That was a lot of fun and it was not scary at all, like I had expected. Actually I felt quite safe 50m up in the sky. One time the boat driver slowed down, so I glided with the parashute down to the sea level until my feet touched the water and then the boat fastened up and shooted me back to the sky - that was a lot of fun. I wish he would of done more things like that because it got a bit boring haging in the air there. I'm very glad I tried this, but to be honest, now I would better do 4 times tubing, than 1 time parasailing (the price was 4 times higher) ;)

I also tried something called banana ride, which was nothing special I think.

Oh, one more thing related to work. Damir bought a laptop, which he had no plan of doing before I came here btw and I actually never recommended that to him either. So, he has a laptop now and he is so excited about it, hehe. The problem is, that he doesn't know very much about computers, he didn't even have an email address, before I helped him to make one today. So, I've been teaching him a lot of things what he needs to know and it's really nice to see him be excited about it. I will miss him also when I go back because we have become good friends. He has never taken me as employee, but instead as something between a friend and a guest. We just talked about it today, so I know now, hehe.

Whate is also important - I finally have a ticket home (or almost home). I searched for a good way out of here for at least 6 hours and finally bought a ticket from Split to Göthenburg on 15th of July. I need to fly there, because my boyfriend lives there right now and I really miss him (haven't seen him for 4 months now actually). This also means, that I need to go to Split after the traineeship is over on 11th. It's about 8 hours drive by bus, but everybody tells me, that it's a very nice place to visit anyways, so why not. I will try to stay at some aiesecers home if I can to save a money.

Tomorrow me and other people from Aiesec will go to Malinska to one night club, then to Rijeka from there with the first bus at 4:45. On Saturday I plan to do some shopping in Rijeka and in night there will be a goodbuy party for me, which I hope will be as much fun as was the party last saturday. And I would have to say goodbuy to everybody :(

I really can't believe that it's been 2 months already and I have to go back to my normal life... Alright, I will go to the beach now to take some more sun to my already tanned skin. Btw, I have the biggest tan every in my life ;)

PICTURES ;)

2006-06-19T02:15:00.000+03:00

So, finally I have been able to fix all my photos, make them smaller and made a choice for the web. And I have also uploaded them. It was really a lot of work I must say, but I can blame only myself for taking so many photos, hehe.

So, here they are:

Places I have visited
Plitvice National Park
Rijeka and AIESEC people
Omišalj and the hotel

I have also done one little video about the band who comes to sing at the hotel. Thanks for the commentator, who gave me good advice how to edit my little videos. So, please consider that this is my first try with that program and hopefully I will learn more in the future. I will make a couple of more videos like that about other things, but right now you have to settle with only this one.

Well, while I'm here, I will write about my past weekend also, which was a very nice one, I must say. On Friday I met a new girl called Neva, which means a huge river in Russia btw. She and her brother were both so nice and friendly. I also stayed at her place for the night. Her brothers name is Marin, which is a girls name in estonia, hehe, and he is studying ship building. Usually people I have met are studying economy (except Matia who's studying computer science). So, it was interesting to talk to him because Estonia is also a sea country and my best friend Helle has a boyfriend who is also styding the same thing. We went out that night and met Tomislav and Antonio and later also Marta, Alen and his friends. So, first sitting in the pub and then a party in the beach. That party was a huge one because they were celebrating the end of school and a day of the saint who is protecting Rijeka. I had very good time :)

Saturday I met Matea and later Matia and we just hung out and talked. Later Maja took me to the beach, where people from Rijeka go to. That was maybe about 8 km from Rijeka by car and we had a very nice long walk there before the sunset :)

Unfortunately it turned out that there was a problem with my accomodation on that night, so I suggested to come back to Omišalj. This was totally fine also actually, because it meant that today (Sunday) I could spend the whole day on the beach and just relax and get a better suntan. I must say that I've never been so tanned because sun doesn't usually like me very much and my skin usually only gets red, but not brown. As you remember, I have that mattress for the water, so I was floating with that thing again and sleeping there a little. Topless btw, hehe. People here seem to do that a lot. Sometimes you can see totally naked people sunbathing. And not only on special beaches, but anywhere, so I decided to try also. I can only suggest that everybody try that at least once and just forget about the stupid borders we all have so deep in our subconcious. It's quite freeing feeling, plus the tan is better ;)

Oh, there will be two more trainees coming to the island, one of them is going to stay in my hotel in my room. The funny thing is, that they were only able to find a guy here.... so my room mate will be a guy, which is quite weird. I will try to see if some other option would be possible as it might be a problem for him or his girlfriend. I could even live with that, although it would be weird.

Will go to sleep now, it's 1:30.

History lessons

2006-06-15T23:42:00.000+03:00

It's so nice to write here again. I usually read my previous post through before I start a new one, so that I wouldn't cover something twice, but at the same time it brings back all the memeories, what I had last week :)

Alright, so, what has happened during this week.... A LOT! Hehe! Well, first about the previous weekend. I was in Rijeka this time again and on Saturday I first met one new person - Alen. He's a very nice guy, but first I had trouble remembering his name for some reason (I hope I got it right now ;). Finally Tomislav suggested me to remember it as one previous trainee did - remembmer the word 'alien' and then the name will come from that. After that suggestion, I have no problems with his name :D

After spending some hours with Alen, I went to another town called Fužine. It was with Tomisalv and one other trainee, who came here through a different student organization called IAESTE. He's name is Liang and he is a chinees who lives in Houston, Texas, USA. So, just 3 of us, but we had a very good time and enjoyed the trip a lot. We took a train up to that town and the train was driving higher and higher on the mountains all the time. The town is situated over 700 m above the sea level. The view from the train was amazing - Krk bridge, Omišalj, Njivice, Malinska - all my favourite places were so sweet down there.

This town is more like a winter center as I understand as they have snow and ice up there, while on the coast it's min 0 degrees during the winter. The nature was quite different in Fužine, more high trees (on the coast they are quite low usually and the weather was much colder. It was raining for half of the time, but we managed to have good timing with our walking and our mood was always good :) There's a very nice lake there and while we were walking on the lakeside, one dog started to follow us. Actually she was like a tourguide for us, always going in front of us, chasing birds and lizards all the time. She even turned back when we did. Finally we even gave her a name - The Dog! lol

I stayed with a girl called Dunja for that night. She was basically a new person also, as I only met her for a very short time last time. And we had very good chats and everything was so nice at her place. I really must say, that Croats know how to be good hosts! Sunday was slow with no trips, but with walks and talks with some aiesec people - Tomisalv (again, poor him, lol) and Antonia plus we met Antonio when walking in Corzo. Usually, when I get back to the hotel, I just sleep for a couple of hours because I'm so tired of all the emotions I get in Rijeka :)

This past week has been also SOOOOO interesting for me. It started on Monday (or was it Sunday) night, when I saw a live, moving SEASTAR in the water near the hotel!!! That was my luck sign or something. That thing was huge - about 35 cm diameter. And it was actually moving in about 1,5 m deep. Amazing!

Then on Tuesday morning my boss asks me if I want to go to an archeological site nearby. Actually he had been asking me several times before about it because I told him that I walked there once during my first week here. I think he was trying to see if this stuff is interesting for me and it defenatly is - I love this kind of old stuff and history. So, he drove me to the archeological site of the ancient Roman city Fulfinum. I told about this earlier here, how I went there. This time there were real archeologist working there and they had digged up a worship place. My boss (Damir is his name, I will maybe start using that) introduced me to the head of the excavation who is his good friend. So, I was told the whole history of that place and what they have found so far etc. For example how they believe that the building was first built on the first century, when it was quite big. Then some hundred years later, it was rebuilt, but smaller at that time and with some additional things. And then about hundred years later, some more things were added.

The most amazing thing about it was, that there was a 2000 years old floor, which was still there and it only needed to be cleaned up. And it was no regular floor - it was made of tiles, which were put in a certain pattern like a wish tale pattern. It was soo amazing, that the floor was still there after 2000 years and still had that pattern with only some dirt between the red tiles. Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures of that floor because I was told not to make any pictures there. Later I thaught that it was problably because of the people actually and not because I coulnd't take pictures of the excavations.

One lady called Buga also showed me the ruins of the big church, which is from the 5th century and from the town Mirine, which was built on the same place where Fulfinum was. That church is huge and many of the walls still up after 1500 years. It was partly rebuilt some of years ago, when UNESCO was afride that it will be destroyed during the war. So, they made a big campage to save that site.

I will tell a little about the history of that place, so that I wouldn't forget myself later. Fulfinum was built on 1st century by Romans, who used that city as a port and trading point. It was very big for that time - about 3000 citizens (somebody said 300, so I have to check this). Rome sent it's veterans to live there and the city had good relations with the locals who lived on top of the hill where Omišalj is right now. So, Omišalj is basically a very very old town with traces back to I-don't-know-what-time. Also there's another fortress on the next hill, which is between Fulfinum and Omisalj. This one has only ruins right now, but it used to be like a twin fortress and very inportant city in it's time.

So, back to Fulfinum. It had even watering system for the citizens and it was a very important port in the area for several centuries. When Rome started to fall appart, then the city got less traffic and started to get smaller until it was totally abondaned somewhere on 5th to 7th century (don't remember this so well anymore). Actually it was called Mirine in the later period, not exactly sure why exactly. So, this Roman city disappeared, but Omisalj on top of the hill was always there and still is :)

Btw, I could do some archeological work myself also :P using the fancy brush and other tools. That was so cool, hehe! I have some pictures also ;)

The next day, that was yesterday, my boss had a history book with him with all sorts of maps of different times and stuff. So, he told me the history of Croatia and this area since people came here until now :D He was so excited about that because he seems to love history and I'm a good listener plus it was very interesting for me too actually. So, now I am so educated that I can not believe it myself, hehe.

Today I had a day off as it was a holiday in Croatia. So I had a chance to go to the beach and get some sun. I bought a big mattress long time ago, today I could use it for the first time :P I had a very long float on the water and it was really soo enjoyable :P

Last thing - I saw a scorpion for the first time in my life tonight. It was a couple of cm long and black, on the walkway. It was quite dark, so I'm surprised I could see it. So, I took 3 pictures and then killed it because Tina told me that I should do that when I see one. I felt quite bad about doing that actually as it was so small, but what is done, is done. I know my sister (my dear Maia) will be mad at me when she reads this... sorry....

Today I have a feeling that I have missed something, what happened in between... will see later if I remember. I've actually wanted to share my thaughts about croats for a while, but always the post gets too long even without that, so I always think, that I'll do it the next time. So, next time maybe.

New pictures and videos coming soon also ;)

"Short" update ;)

2006-06-08T18:00:00.000+03:00

I wanted to make the next poste once the new website for the hotel is done and ready to be shown to the world, but it seems to be taking too long, so I will make an update now. Hopefull next time I can show you what kind of useful work I have been doing here also. Right now the guy who is making the website is working with my text and material to add it all to the web and then I can tell him what I need to be changed and fixed etc. It's quite interesting actually, I enjoy this work a lot.

Shortly about the trips on the previous weekend. I had 3 trips from Friday to Sunday. the first one was a Krk tour again, which included Krk town, island Košljun with it's franciscan monastery and Vrbnik town with wine tasting. This trip was quite nice, just like the first one I had, when I came here. Only this time I already knew the places and I did some shopping in Krk as there is no shops here in Omišalj. Btw, at night, when we were driving back from the wine tasting, it was quite funny in the bus - the whole bus was in a 'good ' mood and singing all the way back to the hotel :D It was about 45 people in the bus, so really quite funny for me. I took a video there also, but I will see if can make a bit smaller, so that I could post it to internet.

So, this was on friday. On Friday morning, before the Krk tour, that German group had a very weird event, where I had to go also as they went to the excursion straight from there. And that whole thing was defenatly an experience ;)

So, first we needed to get to the mainland, but it was very-very windy that day. So, first we had to wait because the bus was too high to cross the Krk bridge with that kind of wind. So, we were waiting in the parking lot until the wind was a bit lower. And it was really quite a storm, because the bus was moving in the wind all the time like we were sitting on a tree or something. Finally, when we were allowed to the bridge, then we were driving about 15-20 km/hour probably. When we got to the other side, then everybody started clapping because it was really quite scary.

So, the event where the people went to was some sort of promotional selling thing. Basically the group was sitting there and one guy was trying to sell them some stuff. It was just like in TV shop, lol. The selling guy was praising his stuff to the heaven and people could try some things out and decide if they want to buy something. So, this was all in German and I must say that it was probably the most booooring 4,5 hours in my life......... Really... Finally I was so sick of that promotional selling talk. It sounded all so stupid and the stuff they were selling was even more stupid. For example something you put to the corner of your room and what should guarantee that your air is good and that the air has no negative ions in it. Or somehting like that. Or then a weird thing, where you put water inside and then some powder and then you have like a mask (you know, like an oxygen mask which is used in hospitals) and then you breathe from there for a while and which should somehow help your body. And 4,5 hours, unbelievable that I was alive after that time, lol. Well, finally it still ended and then we of course had to wait for a while to get back to the island because the wind was even stronger by then. So, the whole thing was quite an experience and quite a challenge for me ;)

Alright, the next day - Saturday - we went to an island Rab with the same German group. First we had to drive for about 2,5 hours on a road which run on the mountine side on the seaside. It was usually quite high and the view was always amazing and the road was always crazy. At least for me - for a girl from lowlands. I also took some videos from that road, but most of them are too big to post them, but one was small enough for posting, so you can enjoy it from here. Btw, at some point we also had to wait because the road was closed because of the strong wind.

Finally we took a ferry to the island Rab. That ferry ride was amazing also because it was soooo windy. Most of the people were sitting outside and the wind was so strong that you could barely open your eyes. Quite often the wave smashed to the ferry and water flew so high that a lot of people go quite wet. But it was really amuzing to everybody, nothing bad and nobody felt scared I think. What was also quite funny, was that every inch on the ferry was covered with a layer of salt. Anything what you touched, was salty and later the hands were salty and lips were salty because there was always some water in the air from the waves. There was a lare of salt on the ferry floor, which was actually totally visible for the eye.

Rab itsself is not very big. From one side it's empty and almost no life there because of the sea winds which are salty and don't allow anything to grow there. But the other side is very beautiful. Lots of little villages and small towns, lots of history and beautiful old towns, yachts, good restaurants and little shops - I really liked Rab a lot, would suggest everybody to visit that little island.

On Sunday I had a tour to Cres for the second time. The ferry to Cres is going from the Krk island and it's about half an hour drive from Omošalj to the ferry. Cres has a lot of mountains and verry narrow streets. And I mean VERY narrow. I wouldn't suggest anybody to go there with bus or with one of these motorhomes (or whatever they are called in english). Often the bus needed to stop totally when there's a vehicle coming from the other side. Then one was moving really slowly to be able to pass eachother safely. And you have to remember, that the road is always high on the mountain and from one side there's a possibility to fall down. So, it takes forever to get 10 km behind you. But it's an experience also :)

On Cres we went to 2 towns - Osor and Cres. Osor is a like a gate between islands Cres and Lošinj as there's only a small bridge between these 2 islands and a small canal. This town is very sweet I think, it's like a cultural center of the island. It's really a very small town, a village in my mind, but I could cound at least 16 bigger and smaller statues during the short walk there. And these statues are all very beautiful - people playing instruments, famous artists of Croatia etc. They also hold a lot of cultural festivals in Osor during each summer.

After Osor we drove to town called Cres. It seems to be a rule, that the biggest town on the island has the same name as the island its self. One very interesting thing happened in this town ;) I was checking out one little shop and chatting a little with the owner and he asked me where I was from. After I said, that from Estonia, his eyes went big and he said, that there's a girl from Estonia who is living in Cres and her name is Sigrid. That's defenatly an estonian name, so I was quite excited also. The guy from the shop called her right away, so after 10 minutes she was there with her boyfriend and we had about half an hour to sit in a little cafe nearby :) Sigrid is about my age and she has a boyfriend who is Croatian, so she has lived there for 1,5 years already. First she went there as a volunteer through some project and worked there for half a year. So, she met her current boyfriend and decided to stay. She even spoke some croatian by now and her boyfriend could speak a little estonian ;) So, that was very interesting for me and I hope I can go there again and talk to her longer.

That weekend was really full of different emotions and new experiences and I had a lot of fun. The german group I was with was really nice also - old people, but very joyful and open. Very many of them came to talk to me and a lot of them could speak english also. Of course, most didn't, so I had to talk to them in German, lol. Considering my extremely pure german, this was quite a challenge. But the best way to learn is really through practice and by now my German is much better than 3 weeks ago.

Btw, the tourguide was talking to me in Croatian half of the time because she doesn't speak English and my German is so bad. So, by the end of each day my head was so messed up from 3 different languages :D

Today is the first day with nice weather after 1,5 weeks of cold, wind and rain. It was usually about 13-15 degrees only every day, which is very unusual here for this time of the year. But hopefully will be better from now on :)

One more good thing is that people at the hotel are often talking to me or I talk to them actually. They are used to me and everybody is greeting and smiling. Who can speak English, they ask me sometimes about Estonia. My boss is the most curious one. Almost every time we talk about something, the chat stretches long as he has so many questions all the time. But it's really interesting to see what interests him and gives me an opportunity to talk.

Today I asked him, what would be a good place for lunch and what's good to order. So, he gave me specific instructions about the food - green pasta with scampi in white sauce. As I have never eaten scampy (shrimp) before, so I wasn't sure if I would like it. So, he offered me a deal - if I don't like it, then he will pay that bill and I can order something else, hehe. So, I took that offer and tried scampi with green pasta with white sauce :P And I must say that it was very tasty, no bad words. Actually the most interesting part was that it was the pasta which turned out to be weird food - it had strange smell and taste. Quite unexpected as I was expecting the scampi to taste weird. Oh, and when I got to the restaurant, then the waitress came to me and asked: "So, you will take green pasta with scampi in white sauce?". I was stunned, asking how come she knew that. She said that some man just called from the hotel, hehe :D

I don't remember if I had said here that I have also tried one national food called - ćhavapćići. I practiced for a while to pronounce this correctly ;) That's actually from Bosnia (or Serbia) and it's basically meat sticks sometimes served with bread, sometimes with french fries. Probalby the first option would be more national ;) You eat it with a special sauce called - Ajvar . It's a red sauce with paprica and extremely tasty. Btw, in Estonia we have a mans name Aivar, so it was very easy for me to remember this word. Words and names are one of the biggest challenges as they can be sooo different from what I'm used to.

Ok, enough for now :) When I started, then I thaught that this time there's not much to write about, but when I start writing, then I can't stop anymore, hehe. Until next time then ;)

Emotions, emotions....

2006-06-01T22:58:00.000+03:00

I am really full of new emotions to share and this entry will probably be the longest one so far ;)

So, where should I start. I think I didn't tell here that I went to another island called Cres with the German group. This trip was quite nice, but I was so tired at that day, that I couldn't fully enjoy. The thing was that my biggest boss here, he gave me some work to do - I had to make some files with information about different islands and one about one nearby town. So, I was up until 2 AM making these things. But it was fine because I felt that I hadn't been working enough so far, so this was kind a like making up my hours (like I do at my regular work in Estonia sometimes ;)

So, Cres was a bit different island than Krk. For example, it was full of olive trees. They were growing on almost each hillside. And it was also full of stone fences, which I understand are there to know where one person's land ends and the other begins. So, the view from the bus window was always really weird and interesting for me. One interesting thing, which I found out was that it's possible to take a daytrip from there to see the dolphines and it's 90% of chance that you will see them. So, I am seriously considering doing that at some point. But not before there is somebody here to go with as it's so boring to do everything alone. I mean, these german groups are nice, but usually I can not comunicate with them much. In that group there was a couple of people who could speak a little bit of english. One old man was speaking quite good even, which was surprising. Especially while lots of young germans I have tried to speak with, don't know English at all.

Actually my German is slowly improving also, which is excellent and sometimes some germans talk to me, especially when I'm sitting here at the hotel in the lobby and use my laptop. So, I try to explain them what I'm doing here etc. Quite challenging for me considering my bad Deutch, but a good learning point.

So, Cres was nice and I will go there again on Saturday with another group and another excurions agency. This is because my wants to get some feedback and wants me to compare to excursion companies so they could pick the best one to offer to their tourists. So, I will take the Cres tour again and also the Krk tour - will have a busy weekend. And on Sunday I will go to a new island - Rab, which is supposed to be extremely beautiful also. So you can wait for some new photos again.

Actually I have so many new photos (about 400) waiting that it will again take me half a day to fix them all (make smaller) so that I could post them. I think that I am defenatly taking too many photos, but I really can't help myself...

So, I think there was one weekend in between also, when I was in Rijeka again, went to another little nearby town called Bakar with Maja and one girl who will go out of Croatia as a trainee. And I must say that I really enjoy trips where I can actually talk to people and don't always have to be alert to make sure that I understand as much as German as possible. Although, don't get me wrong - I do enjoy a lot the trips with German tourists also.

This new working day has be quite interesting also because on Monday I had a talk with my boss and we talked about making a new website. He is really openminded and always ready to listen to my ideas. So, he said: "Fine, lets make anew website. I will make a call right now." And after an hour one guy came who can actually MAKE the website and we put down the basic stuff about it. So, we are working together with this now - I come up with ideas, text, pictures etc. It's very exciting for me as it's something I haven't done before and I feel much more useful here also now.

Soooo, now I come to a very exciting thing :P - on wednesday I had the most interesting trip so far! My boss organised a trip to Plitvice National Park with one German student group. That whole trip was AMAZING. So, first there was a a 3 hour drive to get there and half of the drive was on a coast line, so that there were islands on the right hand side and we were always quite high from the sea level. So the view was stunning of course and the road was crazy, lol. Later the road went to the inland and most of the times it was running in beautiful vallies with mountains around us all the time. That was a totally new experience for me as the land was mostly flat there, no crazy roads like in the seaside, but I've never seen a circle of mountains around me like that. It actually seemed to be like a plato (not sure how it's in english), but I mean it was quite high all the time and still there were mountains even higher around us. At some point this flat land ended and we drove down from one of these surrounding mountains. And from up there, while going down, you could see a stunning view with a valley and more mountains and some of them even had a snowy top. Again something I had never seen before, so of course I took a bunch of photos ;)

But I want to tell a little about this first beautuful plato where we where driving through. The tour guide said that this place was where several battles were held during the civil war 15 years ago. It was mostly clear land without many trees and here and there some houses and little villages plus one little town also. And it was such a beautiful place, so it was quite hard to imagine how this war was in that place. But there was a lot of signs from the war, which were prooving that the guide was telling the truth. I think at least half of the buildings had some bullet holes in their sides or you could see that the houses had been renovated recently. In some houses the holes were still there, in some places they had been filled with new cement, but you could still see them. So some building were looking like they had dots on them, sometimes a lot of them. At the same time people are having a normal life now and if there wasn't of these bullet holes, then there wasn't many other things, which would of told that this place was a war zone some years ago.

Actually there was also a lot of emtpy and abondaned buildings and houses. Some were in ruins and not because they were so old. Some were still standing, but you could tell that nobody hadn't been there for a long time. So, I got a feeling that lots of families fled from the war and never came back again.

Other than pictures of war time, that place was extremely beautiful, but it was quite different from the sea side. I mean that houses were different, not anymore like these typical mediterranian houses, but more like farm houses. Sometimes reminding me of estonian farms with some animals, a barn and a pile of amimal dirt (mostly their shit I guess, sorry for my language). So, in some way I even felt more at home than I normally do here at the island. Lots of people had a little stand at the roadside, where they were selling there products, like honey, wine, cheese etc.

So, now to the Plitvice.... :P This national park belongs to the UNESCO world heritage list, so you can imagine that it has to be a special place. And it is, it toally is!!! We were mostly walking there as there are these wooden ways going in between the lakes and at the sides. Some parts were were driving with a boat and there's also like a little train-like-thing to take people to a different part of the national park. So, the best was just to walk because these roads were built so good and so close all the time that you could feel and see everthing.

So, Plitivice consists of 16 lakes with different sizes and they are coming down the hill so that each has it's place and then it gives it's water to the next lake which located a bit lower then the first one. And depending on what is the height difference between each lake, you get a waterfall or a system or waterwalls with different height. The water is crystal clear, so you can see the fish floating around in the lakes. The colour of the water is usually extremely beautiful green and the water cascades are just pure white foam between these green lakes.

We were walking there for a couple of hours and at one point there was the biggest waterfall in Croatia in front of us - 78 meters high. It had been raining for the previous 2 days, so I think that gave a little extra touch to the picture and it was really just breathtaking. I hope to get some pictures up soon, so that you can all see what I'm talking about, but trust my word - this is a place which is worth of visiting, defenatly!

That trip was yesterday, but today I also had a very exciting day because I went to the local highschool in Krk town and made a presentation about Estonia to about 40 students... This was another challenge which I happily took and I think I did quite good. Especially considering that there were some technical problems (which I was expecting actually, lol). You can imagine how hard it is to get attention of 40 people who are about 16 years old, so it was really quite a challenge I think. And it seemed that I was even able to make them to be a little interested about my country, so I am quite happy about these experience :)

After the presentation I had a chance to go to Zanna's parents house who also live in Krk town and eat a national lunch, which her mother had prepared :) This was really the best food I have eaten for a long time. She made filled paprica (pepper) and some special cakes and so on. It was Bosnian food because she is originally from there. And then she also packed me some of these cakes so now I have a bunch of them here and every now and then I take a little bite because I don't want them to end too soon....mmmmm....

One more last thing before I stop for today - I met some nice local musicians today, hehe. My boss introduced them to me and they are a band of 4 old guys who are making national music. So, they promised to find me a nice man here to marry so that I wouldn't have to leave. Probably they will fight now who's son will it be, hehe.

Alright, these are the most important things now. I have much more things in my mind, but it's too long already I think :D

Great weekend and several trips are behind me :)

2006-05-25T23:06:00.000+03:00

I feel better and better here these days. Here are the reasons why:

-> I get more used to everything, not so confusing at the store anymore for example and I am able to choose a paste.

-> People at the hotel (the employees) are getting more used to me and don't take me as a guest anymore. This means that they start to comunicate with me in a different level, which is not so formal as with guests. Basially makes communicating more free. My boss is especially nice and feels totally free when he talks to his employees, it makes it easy to talk to him.

-> I have more work to do. For example I fixed some price lists and corrected the bad English. I have also made some picture and document files for handing out to the tourists. And my next mission is going to be to make a new website for the hotel. Actually somebody else will do the website, but I will have to come up with ideas, pictures, layout, text etc. So, that's quite exciting.

-> I have gone to several daytrips this week.

On Monday morning I asked my boss, what should I do in the morning as I couldn't use internet in the mornings until 1 PM. So, he thaught a little, made one phone call and told me to ready in 15 minutes to go to a boat trip to a nearby town called Crikvenica. The trip was with a German group of tourists and it was really very nice.

On Tuesday I went with the same German group to a bus trip to some places on this island: Krk town, an island near Punat with a franciskan monastery, Vbrnik town. Again an amazing trip.

Today a trip to another island calles Cres. That is also a breathtaking place with it's high mountains (350 m going right up from the shore), olive trees all over the island etc. I also checked that it would be possible to take a boat trip from there to go to see the dolphines. So, I will try to make that trip a little later :P

Btw, all these trip have been for free for me as my boss wants me to "get to know the product". So basically that I would know what this place has to offer and that I don't only know it on paper but have seen it and tried it out. Actually I can not believe how lucky I am with this because normally I probably would not have money or time to do all these trips and see all these things. The only weird thing is that I went with a German group (not many English speaking tourists here usually), but my german is so-so and I was maybe able to understand 30% of what the tourguide was telling, hehe

Now about my last weekend. As I said in my previous post, I went to a nearby big city Rijeka. There's about 250 thousand people living in that city and it's mostly an industrial city, but still very beautiful old town and city center there.

I met a lot of Aiesec people there and they were all just sooo great. They were all so friendly and all talking to me and asking questions and so on. I only had hard time remembering all their names, but I think I was able to pretty much remember all of them. Most of the names are quite hard for me to remember because I haven't heared them before, like for example Matea, Sanja (not sure how it's spelled), Matia, Zana, Zoki. Anyways, I can't wait to see them again.

On Friday I first went to a tv shooting, hehe. It was for a local tv and it was like a show made by students and about student issues. So, I had to sit in a big room behind a table with 3 other people, there was audience and it was kind a like a live show, because they didn't make any pauses. I wasn't asked many questions, but it was defenatly a new experience for me :)

Then I had my welcoming party on Friday night with a Aiesec Rijeka style - first sitting in the economics faculty garden and drinking a little (aiesec people was mostly drinking their favourite student drink, which consist of coca cola and some cheap whine). Then we walked to one pub and sat there a while just talking and then went to a night club. By the time we reached there, most of the people had left because it was quite late and everybody was so tired, including me :D I met sooo many wonderful new people that day and that was the best part of the whole weekend I would say.

On Saturday we went to Opatija ;) I think that most people have heared about that kurort town. It was about 20 minutes drive from Rijeka and a very beautiful tourist town with a very nice promenade, beautiful hotels and parks. I can only imagine how many people will be there in the summer. Btw, that town is so expensive that most locals even go to buy there food from Rijeka and the whole town has mostly hotels and only a little part is for people to live.

I have made a bunch of photos on those trips and in my area here and who has been patiente enough to read to the end of this post, can now get a link to my photos ;)
Here it is - http://www.album.ee/?o=316976396&uilang=3

I have to go to sleep now because I was up until 2:30 last night doing these files for my boss as he needed them today. So, enjoy the photos, there's over 140 them there, hihi

Life is beautiful and I'm not sick anymore :)

2006-05-18T23:30:00.000+03:00

Alright, I feel much better today, my sickness is gone and I am full of energy again.

Today I also talked to my boss Damir and asked for some things to do. It is so weird, because he doesn't seem to have a clear picture about what I should be doing here exactly :D We had a talk and some things came out from there and I also had some of my own ideas. So, now I have a couple of things to do here - some translating (actually fixing the translations they have), contacting some companies and... eee... that's it for now I think.

Oh, btw, the old guy here who is arranging all this computer stuff, he is very crious about Skype because I installed it to his computer, when I couldn't use the laptop yet. So, he asked me to show him how it works :) He's a cool guy - old, but understands this computer stuff really well. I was so surprised when he was able to figure out how to connect the laptop to internet because at first it didn't want to work at all. And he is always talking in both German and English words and it's like a puzzle to understand what is he saying exactly, hehe

You know what is one of my most favourite things to do here - sit on a rock and watch the sea life between the rocks. It is so different from the what you can see in Estonia. Water is FULL of life... all sorts of weird creatures wonder around there if I sit long enough and don't move much :D I've seen crabs for the first time in my life, one was about 12cm wide. There is so many different fish that its amazing. And two days ago I saw some extremely weird sea creatures - I think they were plants, but I'm not sure. I've only seen things like that in TV before.

Here comes one problem actually - I can not imagine going to swim here because the beach is also full of all sorts of plants and sea creatures and it's not at all like a regular beach in Estonia. I'm used to having a beautiful sandy beach with nothing in the water, only sand (and maybe a couple of rocks here and there). So, I really have to get my act together and go swimming at some point as other people don't seem to have a problem with this.

First time in my life I have seen sea tide here. It doesn't occour in Estonia or if, then maybe only a couple of cm. But here it seems that the water level is changing by up to half a meter it seems. That's totally a wow thing for me.

So, tomorrow I will go to Rijeka, which is this big city on the mainland and where Aiesec people are also, and have my welcoming party tomorrow night. And also have this TV thing, not sure what it's going to be like, so I will tell more about it later. So, at least my second weekend is hopefully going to be fun and I'm not gona have to be here alone.

Some pictures finally ;)

2006-05-18T22:47:00.000+03:00

I will try to upload more photos soon, but this is the best I could do right now. Btw, I think that I have taken several hundred pictures already, hehe

Me and my hotel on the backround

This is a map of Omišalj

Up on the hill in the old town, Rijeka and some mountains on the backround

This is taken after a loooong walk to a nearby ruins of an ancient town and I am sooo tired from the sun...

This is taken from Omisalj harbour and the town itsself is on the top of the hill on the backround

This is taken from the other side - hotel on the seeside and Omisalj old town on top of the hill. So, now you can imagine what it's like to walk up the hill to go to the store ;)

Just an update

2006-05-17T15:52:00.000+03:00

I have been in Croatia for one week now and it seems that I'm getting more or less used to the life I have here. I can not say that I am totally happy about the life I have right now because I don't have much to do. Hopefully tomorrow I will talk to my boss again and ask him for more things to do and for more responsibility. It was nice to be a tourist at first but it's not very exciting to be a tourist by myself for days and days.

Don't get me wrong now, I still totally enjoy everything here. The most probably the nature, mountains, all the different sea creatures I see living between the rocks in the shallow water and so on. The only thing I'm not happy about is the lack of comunication I have right now. The people here don't speak very good English usually. People who do are usually some kind of salesmen in a market or something and they don't have time or will to stay in chatting with me. And the tourist have their own groups and things to do, so I'm pretty much alone all the time. Wondering around alone, eating alone etc. Its probably partly my own fault as I haven't been extremely active to find contacts yet. So this will be my mission here I guess :)

I also miss having another trainee close or having Aiesec people living closer. Right now the Aiesec people are in Rijeka, which is 50 min by bus. Also one trainee should come here at some point, but I have no idea when it will be.

Oh, for the weekend I will go to Rijeka and have my offical welcoming party :P
So, something to wait for now.

Oh, and I probably have to go to the local tv in two days to talk about traineeships along with some other aiesec people. So, that's quite exciting also, but it's not sure yet, that it will happen.

Actually there's one more thing which is keeping me from enjoying myself more right now - I am a little sick. Probably have some sort of ear infection or something. So I decided that if I don't feel better by tomorrow, then I will go to a doctor. Maya, my Aiesec contact person said that she can help me with that but I would have to go to Rijeka then probably. So, will see what happens and how I feel tomorrow.

So, that's it, nothing very exciting to write this time, more whining it seems. But I believe that it will be only getting better now once I start feeling better myself also.

Alright, I'm really hungry now, will go and get something to eat. Not sure which local restaurant to choose this time...

First impressions of Croatia and Omisalj

2006-05-13T15:28:00.000+03:00

Sooo, finally I am able to use internet. It is so weird not to have internet available 24/7. It seems that it's not possible to use internet in the little town where I am staying, so I had to drive 24 km by bus to the biggest town on this island as there's several internet cafes and shops here.

I have so many emotions that it's crazy. It would take me 3 hours to write everything down, but I have to pay for using internet here, so I will try to be a little shorter.

So, I will start from the beginning now.

When I flew to Zagreb from Berlin, then there were two Croatian guys sitting next to me, so I was able to ask from them for some information and for some words in Croatian, which was all very good to know. Also, when I took a bus from Zagreb to Rijeka, then there was a lady who could speak english and she told me many more things I needed and wanted to know. So, when I arrived in Rijeka, I knew the basic sentences in Croatian, some things about the history, the war, about life in Croatia etc.

Now I try to use Croatian as much as possible as I can see how it makes everybody smile all the time when I greet them in their own language or say 'thank you' or 'how are you'. The thing is that Croatian is a little similar to Russian, so I find a lot of expressions and words not very hard to learn for me.

The bus trip to Rijeka was amazing for me because it was the first time I was travelling between such kind of mountains. I was so amazed for most of the way, so the lady (Roza) was surprised that somebody can find these mountians so special.

In Rijeka I met all the Aiesec people, who however had to travel to a national conference the same day, so I could only say hi and bye to them. But one girl called Tina stayed to Rijeka to be with me and be me guide. Tina is a very very nice girl and we had a lot of fun the first night walking around in the city. It was the first time for me to see so hight mountains around me all the time and to walk in roads, which go up the hill all the time.

She also told me that the nearby biggest mountain called Ucka is like a weather report - one should every morning check Ucka out. If it'c clear above it, then it's going to be a sunny day, but if it's cloudy above that mountain, then it will probably be a rainy day :)

For the first night I stayed at one Aiesec girls appartment and next morning we went to the Police with Tina because it's required here to register yourself there if you stay in the country for a longer period of time. And they require sooo many different documents that it's crazy. Abyways, I have to go to the police again because I need to do it at the town where I will be staying - Omisalj. So, wish me luck on Monday.

So, on my second day in Croatia me and Tina took a bus to Omisalj, where my hotel is. That was 40 minutes drive on the seeside, but up on the mountains mostly, so again I had to hold my breath for the amazing views I saw from the bus window. The sea is so beautiful here, green and blue and very clear. And little towns on the seeside have those lovely red roofs, so it's always like a picture from a postcard.

Now a little bit about my work here in Coratia. I met my boss in the hotel and he seemed to be a very nice guy. He's idea is, that for the first 7 days I will be like a regular tourist, nobody at the hotel will know who I am. So I will be a like a test for them and like a little spy, hehe. He wants to get feedback later and ideas, how to make things better at the hotel. So, this is perfect for me, I can relax and take it easy for the first week and just observ a little.

The only problem is, that they only have internet at their office and I can not use that option as long as I am there incognito.

About my expriences so far in Omisalj.... I have been trying to walk around as much as possible to know my surroundings better. The town itsself is extremely beautiful on the hill, which is about 85m high. My hotel is down at the seeside, so every time I want to go to the town, I have to walk up the hill. This seems to be somethine very hard to unerstand for my brain, that a road can be tilted like that for that long and every time I go up the hill, I start feeling dizzy, hehe. But I try to take that road at least twice a day because it's such a good excercise for me ;)

The old town in Omisalj is very pretty with it's extremely narrow streets, white and pink houses and little gardens. And the view is amazing from the top of the hill - Rijeka, Ucka, sea, other mountians - everything you can see from the viewpoints in Omisalj.

Yesterday I took a walk to the nearby ancient ruins of a roman city. The city is from 1 century AD and some parts from 5 cen. AD. The walk went through forest and that was quite an experience for me because I was so stress all the time. It's because I heared that there's a lot of snakes in Croatia this year and they also have a lot of scorpions. And two years ago there was a huge amount of black widow spiders in Croatia. So, you can imagine how I felt when walking through this little forest. I was jumpin up every time I heard a little noise in the grass. Mostly there were actually little lizards trying to get away from my way and I didn't see any of those animals I was afride of. So, now I feel quite stupid to be so afride there, hehe.

The weather is so nice here, just like a regular summer weather in Estonia - very nice and sunny in daytime and a little chilly at the evening. And the water in the sea is totally swimable also already, although I haven't tried it out yet. But I will do it tomorrow I think.

I have taken so many photos here, but I will upload them once I can use internet at the hotel.

Solong now, who knows when I can use internet again... :D

Berlin

2006-05-09T21:42:00.000+03:00

So, today I had my first flight - to Berlin it was. And tonight I stay at one hostel here in the center between Alexanderplatz and Brandenburg gates. The hostel is better than I expected actually, I even get to use wifi for free here ;) (http://www.helterskelterhostel.com/)

I took a walk in the city earlier and the best part was in a little park near Brandenburg gates. It was not like our parks, but more wild and there were birds singing (ööbik in estonian). Soooo beautiful.

I was surprised by how many policemen I saw in Berlin, very nice I think.

oh, and last night I could also talk to Maya who is the Croatian girl from Aiesec and she was able to take away most of my worries about those papers and their translations. So, I hope it will be ok even if I don't have the translations, but we'll see. At least I don't worry about it anymore and can enjoy my trip.

So, I will wake up really early tomorrow and head to the airport to take a flight to Zagreb and then a bus from there to Rijeka. Actually I will try to make a stop on my way to the airport to see the Alexanderplatz and the remaining Berlin wall also... At least I want to do that :D

last minute problems... as usual I guess

2006-05-08T22:45:00.000+03:00

Today, Monday, I have been running around like crazy...

On Friday evening I found out that I need a bunch of papers, which are necessary for the local police in Croatia:
- several papers from school (which I have now)
- a paper from police here stating that I have no criminal record (I have it, but it's in estonian)
- my birth certificate, which is issued during the last 6 months

This last things is the trickiest as I need to go to the city where I was born, but that's 4 hours drive away on an island. So, quite impossible to get there today and be back by tomorrow morning for my flight. Plus translations of each documents...

I also need a bunch of other papers and copies of papers and pictures etc. It would of been fine if I knew about it a little earlier. I just hope I won't be sent out of the country if I don't have all this right away.

Btw, when I got the paper from the police, then they said: Ok, come and pick this up after a week. Nice. So, I conviced the nice lady there that I will leave tomorrow and she was actually able to print it out in 2 mintus. What a bureaucracy to make people come back after a week while they are actually able to give the paper right there.

Well, wish me luck for tomorrow to get all this translation thing done before my flight leaves to Berlin, where I will stay for one night and then fly to Zagreb. Then a bus to Rijeka.

I'm sooo excited desbite these last minute problems and can't wait to go :P

Hectic time before the launch

2006-05-06T00:34:00.000+03:00

So, I am finally sure about Croatia. It was a long and painful waiting, but yesterday I got a written confirmation that the company in Croatia has accepted me. Since then it's been crazy - emailing everything and everybody, getting all the necessary papers and stuff, buying the last things I need (like a digital camera ;) etc.

But this is all fun and enjoyable and I can't wait to be there. I also got some more information about the job today and I got even more excited about it.

So, tomorrow morning I will go to my parents house to Saaremaa to take some stuff there (flowers, cat etc) and say goodbuy to everybody. I am also going to have to explain them that it's safe to go and make them feel more comfortable about all this. Especially my grandmom and mother are worrying a lot.

And then on Tuesday I have a flight to Berlin, then stay there for one night and on Wednesday morning will fly to Zagreb, from where I will take a bus to Rijeka. So, wish me luck to get there safely and without losing my luggage or something :D

Rocket launch... destination - Croatia

2006-04-26T12:03:00.000+03:00

It seems that my searches are finally over and I have found a perfect traineeship :) Actually it found me and it didn't take me long to realise that this is the one I've been looking for. Interesting job, great country, great people - what else could I ask for.

The only thing is that I have to leave in less than 2 weeks, while I planned to leave at the end of May. But I can make it, although it means some sleepless nights for studying and long hours at work to get everything ready. But I love the adrenaline I get because of all this and I know I won't regret anything... :)

First entry :)

2006-03-13T10:58:00.000+02:00

Alright, so I have also started a blog now. I created this so that my friends would be able to keep track on my life when I will go to my traineeship. As that time is getting closer and closer, then it was time to start my own blog.

I want to start my traineeship at the end of May or beginning of June, but right now I don't have a place to go yet, so wish me luck in finding something nice in some interesting country. Just today I checked out Taiwan and also sent an application to New Zealand. I guess I've almost given up the possility to find something in Latin America, but the rest of the world is just as intersting, so no problemo :)