Princess, look out the window, and welcome to Estonia.

Currently, you find me sitting on a park bench by the river, because the dorms are a few of the places in the city without wifi. What. The. Heck. Don't worry, I'm remedying the situation, but for now, my laptop is basically a paperweight that can play movies. I watched both "Mamma Mia!" and "Mona Lisa Smile" last night, after spending the day a-wandering.

But let me back up. I left my hostel in London at around 5am. I'd developed a sore throat, but it wasn't too bad. I got some water at Victoria station, found a bench and chatted with my dad while awaiting a train. From there, I flew to Helsinki. I thought that trip was supposed to be 6 hours, but it was only 2. Yay! Then I had a layover in Helsinki before the 45 minute flight (I thought it was 2 hours), to Tartu. All in all, significantly shorter flying times than expected, but not entirely pleasant. My ear hadn't popped from the flight to Helsinki and was really uncomfortable the rest of the way.

Tartu's airport is crazy small. Clearly we're in driving country. It handles about one airplane at a time, and they're the propeller, Horizon Air, types. The luggage carousel, to quote my dad, looks like a "kiddie pool." From there, we'd all been told to take either the Airport Shuttle or a cab to our dorms. There were eight of us students: two from the US, two from the Netherlands, one from France, two from Switzerland, and one from China. And a number of non-University affiliated individuals. We loaded up the shuttle, and then realized there were nearly twice as many of us as the shuttle would hold. This was the last run of the day and the shuttle driver was really conflicted as to whether or not he'd come back for us. We were all for getting a taxi, but there were exactly zero of them available. Finally, the driver agreed to come back, but said it'd take about 50 minutes to drop off everyone and come back. It wasn't raining, so we piled outside with our luggage and talked, hoping he'd come back, discussing the size of Tartu, based on the airport size and the fact there were no cars driving by and only a couple of people passing us in the hour we were there.

We made it, eventually. Checked into our rooms, disturbed by the lack of wifi, and crashed. I met my roommate, from Russia. We're still working on remembering each other's names; we haven't been in the room awake at the same time much yet. But I do know she's a Masters student in computer science. 

My ear still hasn't popped, though I don't think that's much the problem anymore. My throat has gotten worse, but I didn't let that stop me... much.

I slept, fitfully, until about noon yesterday, having used a scarf as a sheet, and a pile of clothes as a pillow. I found enough wifi at a store down the street to send a quick email and a Facebook message or two, and then went about trying to find bedding. I gave up several hours of walking in the rain later, and stopped by the same store, picked up the items below, having a rough idea of what was contained within the packages. 

My first Tartu shopping adventure.

 We got some toilet paper, a package of sour cream mashed potatoes, a package of chicken mashed potatoes, three orange juice boxes, trash bags, and two packages of chicken noodle soup. I did eat one of the soup packages for dinner last night, and I'm not sure the water out of my faucet gets hot enough for that.
But I still needed bedding, so I asked the houselady (that's what she's called) where I could get some, she gave me a map, and off I went. By this time, the "yeah, it's raining," plus the distance I'd have to walk resulted in "Wow, that is quite the downpour." I added to my shopping list, as much as I thought it ridiculous, an umbrella. They're clearly not only for tourists here. I found a store, bought some of the things on my list, including a rainbow umbrella. I stopped at the store near my dorm later for some (what I'm assuming is) milk and granola with coconut and peanuts. I'm definitely shopping by pictures on containers, and the milk had a cow on it so...
 Here's a bit of my little slice of dorm. I have a desk, a chair, a window, several shelves, a cabinet for my clothes, and a bed, with my new bedding on it. The room has an attached kitchen (no microwave!) and a bathroom with heated floors, which is good because the shower curtain does next to nothing. Floor's a bit too hot for me, but...

 Below is the view outside my window; overlooks a road and a park. Not much to see but there it is. 

Tomorrow I start my orientation, which will hopefully get me into a rhythm. School is school anywhere, right? I haven't gone to the area where most of the school buildings are yet. I'm headed there to hopefully find food, though we'll see. 

Hope everybody has a great Tuesday, and I'll catch you on the flip side!

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"It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that which has been quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it..." -Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, pg. 108