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My first meal in Tallinn. Tallinn during the day...
and at night.This used to be Toompea Castle, built on the spot where the ancient Estonians' wooden fortress stood before the Danish invaded in 1219. It served for 7 centuries as the seat of power for the nation's foreign masters. Now it houses Estonia's parliament.
Emas and me. It was so cold and because I didn't pack accordingly, half of what I wore belonged to our group. This hoodie and hat just so happened to belong to Emas.

In the garden of Peter the Great's palace for his lovers (Kadriorg Palace). We saw a wedding.
Not too far from Kadriorg Palace, was this swan pond, Pirita.


An entrance sign to Old Hansa.The bathroom was so sweet I had to take a picture. Completely lit by candles. On the right is the toilet, and on the left is where you wash your hands - just a pitcher with water!Old Town.
The hotel "water park"!!! You can see the steps leading up to the slides in the back. The jacuzzis were on the right, and the saunas further back.
Ashton and me on the way to Riga.
Inside Riga Student Hostel was awesome graffiti.
Skārņu iela. A medieval replica of the world trade centers, called Blackhead's House.
Fire twirler in Riga.Pancake with cheese for breakfast, with raspberry and strawberry jam. :)
coffee, Jesus, and journalling :)Cute little Latvian boy feeding the pigeons and checking out the locks a bridge.Michael Jackson even in Latvia!

Yes we went there...Inside LIDO restaurant.

This past week was pretty great. Thursday night I had a nice dinner with Danielle (study abroad from California) and it was good just to talk about life and God. We made lots of crepes with raspberry jam. :) We left for Tallinn, Estonia at around 11pm, and we arrived between 8 and 9am the next morning. We arrived and had breakfast at a hotel, which was delicious. (I had beans, oatmeal with raspberry jam, cucumbers and tomatoes, eggs, bacon, sausage, and coffee.) Then we had the freedom to walk around, so we did that the whole afternoon. I went to Peter the Great's palace, Kadriorg, that was built for Catherine. It was beautiful, despite it was raining. In the evening, we ate at Old Hansa, a medieval restaurant. For appetizers we had bread, that could go with onion jam, pickled cucumbers, berries of the blessed, fresh cheese, or (my mom's favorite) French royal poultry liver. For the main course we had lentils, barley, Arabian filet in fig sauce (aka horse), salm in nut sauce, and bear. Yes, I said bear. It was actually pretty good. I left with Sasha and Molly (a study abroad from Minnesota) to go to the hotel by our hostel, where they had a huge pool, 3 water slides, 2 saunas, and 5 jacuzzis. It was AWESOME! After we got back, I went out to have drinks with Emas, Sasha, and Maksat, and we walked around town.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the hostel, and went back to the hotel with the waterslides. Afterwards walking around, and I went to a chocolate cafe, and also market shopping. I got an Estonian scarf- the colors of their flag (black, white, and royal blue). :) Then we got on the bus and drove 4 hours to Riga, Latvia. We checked into our hostel (which was so unclean it was humorous) and went out to dinner/explore the town in the evening. I have to say, it had a worse impression on me than Tallinn. There were lots of drunk people and women offering their bodies, but the fire twirlers were pretty cool. In the morning I had pancakes with Ashton, Danielle and Sasha. It was cold, so we sat in Double Coffee coffeeshop and I journaled for a while. Before we left to come home, we ate at the restaurant LIDO, which was a buffet cafeteria type place. You paid for a plate and piled on as much food as you want. We got back to LCC around 9pm.


This week started off very busy, with doing work that I wasn't able to do over the weekend, and preparing for a few group projects. I taught my first English lesson at Green Hill today. The past few weeks that Inga and I have been observing, a teacher has been sick so the class is extra big. Normally they're 12-14 students, but lately they've been 22. Today when we taught, there were 26, which was a challenge.... but I had SO much fun! I wasn't nervous, and our lesson was about physical appearance. First we did an exercise where the students would use adjectives to describe themselves using the first letter of their name. (Heidi = happy, helpful, honest, etc). Next we had the students describe me physically. It was funny to see how they viewed me, and just a difference in that I thought I was dressed up (for me), but they said it was casual dress! We also taught the parts to an essay (introduction, body, and conclusion) and had them write descriptions of a friend. The intro had how they met, their name and age. The body described their physical appearance, personality, and hobbies/interests. The conclusion wrapped up the general feelings towards that person. It was a good time. :)

This weekend entails a bible study/worship time Friday night that Ashton is leading in Karklu. I will probably spend the night in her room, and will just hang out this weekend.




Clarification of names: Maksat & Sasha are the guy study abroad interns. They're 22. Maksat is from Kazahkstan, and Sasha is from Moldova.
Danielle and Ashton have become good friends of mine who are study abroads from America. Danielle goes to Azusa Pacific University in California, and Ashton goes to Eastern University near home.
Emas is the study abroad director who is 29.
Inga is my TEIL partner who is teaching at Green Hill (my Russian school) with me.