On the night before Estonia..

Its already here, today is our final day before Estonia! Wednesday evening very late the last passports arrived with their visas inside, largely thanks to Irina Borisovna. We haven’t seen them, though, they are keeping them until tomorrow morning so no one has a chance to lose them. This week has gone really quickly, maybe because we have all been anticipating Estonia and walking extremely quickly outside through the cold and the slush. We have also started to notice the retreating daylight, its become much more difficult to get up in the morning in the dark even at 9 am and last night when we left school at 6:30 it seemed incredibly dark.

Yesterday after classes we had a meeting about the many things coming up – starting with what Jarlath has dubbed ‘enthrallin’ Talinn’ and including a film studio tour and library tour next week and a Halloween Party and a rock walk – and then there was a discussion set up with Russian students in the Political Science faculty about relations between Russia and the West. It was a little disorganized, and my Russian foreign affairs vocabulary is sorely lacking, but it was still incredibly interesting and they are hoping to reorganize it into English and Russian language sessions and smaller groups and make it a weekly or bi-weekly event. We primarily discussed the ‘reset’ in relations between Russia and the US; whether it had taken place in reality, how much the idea has to do with the personalities of the leaders, what challenges remain in the development of the relationship. Many of the students held passionate opinions that were not necessarily what you might expect. I would say that a majority are of the opinion that the because of the higher prominence of the US, we do not always take them seriously in international affairs and that the ‘reset’ claimed by Obama and Medvedev is in reality simply a slight difference in atmosphere rather than a tangible step forward in the relationship between the two nations. Please debate amongst yourselves, and let me know what you think on that point. I know what I think, but I’ll save that for later.

After the very interesting discussion with the Russian students, I got home a little late but my host mom sat down to talk to me while I ate. Russia and Azerbaijan were playing each other in soccer, and one of made the comment that all of the players on both sides would have been teammates 20 years ago. That comment started my host mom off on a speech about how life was better during the Soviet Union. I was torn between being excited that I could understand her and disappointed that I can’t yet ask sophisticated questions in the language. Essentially, she talked about how everyone had an apartment, a job, a great pension, and paid vacations by the government. You might not have had exceptionally beautiful possessions, but then neither did anyone else. She grew up in Kazakhstan, her mother was (and is) an economist, while her father was a professor at a university. She is young enough to have still been studying when the Soviet Union fell, but she remembers her parents talking about how much better everything was before Gorbachev and perestroika, when there was never anything on the shelves in the stores. Their family was given the choice between a 3-room and 4-room apartment, which she said was very nice, and you didn’t have to pay for the apartment or the utilities. Everyone had a job, and went to work in the morning and came home at 5 pm. Today, she says, people have to work 2 or 3 jobs to afford their apartments and utilities, and it is difficult to travel anywhere because it is so expensive. I asked what she wants for Pasha in the future, and she talked for a while about wanting him to do an exchange in America or England to learn English well enough to help him get into a good institute or university and one day work and live abroad, in Europe or the United States, where she of course will follow him. Everything is extremely expensive, so she has been looking at exchange programs where Pasha could go to England, for example, and live with a family who would send one of their children to Russia. It was very interesting to listen to her opinions, it was the first time she has talked for a long time about her views on something and I feel like I got to know her a lot better and can’t wait until I can ask even more questions about it.

So the learning continues, both in the classroom and outside of it, and this weekend we are headed to a part of the European Union that I have never seen! This experience has been wonderful so far, and I am sure it is just going to get better! I hope time isn’t flying as fast for all of you and you have time to enjoy the fall leaves before the snow starts falling! Much love - Beth

PS we are staying in a 5-star hotel this weekend with a pool and…wireless internet! So I’ll be online a little more often, probably not sleeping as much as I should but it will be worth it so that I can see the city and leave myself online at a time that’s better for talking to all of you lovely people! Just thought I’d let you in on the secret, and you might even get a blog from EU soil! ☺