Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Happy Halloween, e'rybody!

HEAD SÜGIS VAHEETAPIKS! HEAD REISI! = Happy fall break! Happy holiday/travels! :) or something like that. So, my school -like every school in the country- took a week long fall break. It was excellent. Here's what happened..
As we know, Americans love Halloween. Well, Estonians don't celebrate Halloween. Mm. I guess I should say, they don't really celebrate it. They don't go all out. Sometimes they just wear costumes and watch scary movies, but that's about it. No haunted houses, no apple bobbing, no trick-or-treating, no pumpkin carving.. etc, etc. Terrible, right? Luckily, there is another American here. Believe me, it's nice. Anyways, Halie and I threw a pretty big party on the 29th. About 50 people showed up. In costumes, too :) So cute to see them have fun with the costumes. Some were really creative.
Since Halie lives in Haapsalu, I rode the bus there on Wednesday.

WEDNESDAY- So I left Rapla at 10.00 and went to Tallinn, waited for half an hour, then hopped on the bus to Haapsalu. Took about 4 hours, but I made it there and we started to carve pumpkins. Can you believe the Estonians don't even make jack-o-lanterns? Gosh! So behind! :D So our pumpkins turned out to be amazing. And of course, we had to bake the pumpkin seeds. 2 of the pumpkins had white, normal seeds. We made those into spicier flavored seeds. The other pumpkin had green seeds. We weren't too sure about that one, but we ate it anyways, with a sweet flavoring. They were all delicious, though, the Estonians weren't too keen on them. haha. And the rest of the day was dedicated to decorating and planning of the party, searching for recipes, thinking of ingredients, and staying up way too late.

THURSDAY- Shopping day. Since we went to bed kind of late, we woke a little late too. Oh well. Anyways, we had to buy all of our ingredients. Ok, so it didn't go all that smoothly. :/ We thought we had to buy some milk. Turns out it wasn't needed. And note to my Americans reading this. Milk comes in bags here, not cartons/bottles/jugs/things with handles!! 1 liter bags! YEAH! So, anyways, I dropped one of the bags.. of course it popped. Crap. Luckily I dropped it in the refrigerator at the store. I left and got a new bag, bagged it with another bag and high tailed it out of that area. Gosh.
We went back home after our hours upon hours of frustrating ourselves in the store.. It did get frustrating. There were very limited supplies.
But we did manage to go back out to look at Estonian movies, books, cards, maps in one of the grocery stores. Halie bought Pride and Prejudice with Estonian subtitles. I think I will buy a couple of movies that are dubbed in Estonian, so I'll still be able to hear the language back in the US and hopefully it will be harder to forget it all. haha.

FRIDAY- Cooking day #1. Again, woke up a little late. But it was hectic. 9 hours in the kitchen. Cooking, baking, baking, cleaning up, baking, -UGH! So we baked all 5 cakes that day, plus brownies, made an awesome bean dip, and a few other goodies for Saturday night. :)
Basically, we stopped cooking at 12am, then cleaned up. Djeesh. :S

SATURDAY- Cooking day #2. Party day. Busy day. Oi, oi, oi.. Busy, busy, busy! Another 9 hours in the kitchen and cooking! I spent 2 hours just making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! haha. They turned out adorable. I cut them into ghost and pumpkin shapes. I used 3 full loaves of bread! So we made the icing for the cakes, decorated them, sent Halie's sisters to the store for us, made a huge bowl of punch, and CLEANED! Gah. Finally, we got ready ourselves and got into our costumes. I was an Indian (I couldn't resist. I saw this head dress in one of the shops and a toy drum :D) And Halie was a cowgirl. Yeah, we decided to go all Americana for an all American party.
Party time! So we weren't too sure how many people would show up. One of her sisters invited 10, the other invited 15. All of them confirmed. Then Halie's classmates showed up. All in all about 50 people came. It was really fun showing them American games and explaining what chip dip is. Even explaining what Rice Krispy Treats are!

SUNDAY- The last few guests left with their coffin at about 6am. Finally, we could sleep. I didn't wake until almost 4. I wish I woke up earlier, but man. I was tired of all the cooking, decorating, and everything. It was a little late for a bus, so I just stayed another night..

MONDAY- Not really sure why, but whenever the Americans get together we always start watching American tv shows online. Last time was It's Always Sunny. This time was Tosh.0. They don't have them here! We're forced to watch them online. So we stayed up until 2 watching that and Demetri Martin clips. Hilarious. But we didn't think it through that well. My bus left at 6.15am. I ended up getting 2½ hours of sleep. Great. I didn't have any complications on the bus, but I always seem to be right there in the middle of the drama whenever I travel, though, it makes me wish I knew what they were saying. At one of the stops, one lady walked on with an animal cage in one hand and a Jack Russel Terrior in the other. Why the dog wasn't in the cage -I don't know, but it was all squirmy when she was walking down the narrow aisle. Then the driver would keep pulling over to yell something at her. At the stop before Rapla, quite a few people got on. And one was pretty familiar looking. It was one of my classmates. Turns out she lived in the town near Rapla and takes the bus everyday. So we talked for a while.
We pulled into the bus station. I got off, but I didn't have a ride back home. I had to walk the 1 hour and 15 minutes, but it was alright. I needed to get some exercise from all the eating :) But I had 2 bags with me. They're not the best for walking a long time with. They tear up my shoulder. I think by the time I get back to the US I will have some serious neck, shoulder, back damage. ahaha. Tough, I guess. Anyways, by the time I reached home it was 9.20. I really didn't feel like walking the hour again back into town for school, plus I was completely exhausted. I spent the day sleeping. It was really nice.

So all in all, I'd say this fall holiday was a nice one. Definitely memorable. :)
And, I'd like to thank my Rotary club here in Rapla. They pay my allowances on time. I didn't have any kroons on me when I needed to pay for the bus ticket at 6 in the morning. Thank goodness for ATMs and automatic money transfers.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Umm... I must say that I was pretty insulted as an Estonian, when you said that we are "so behind", because we don't celebrate Halloween as Americans do. It's just not that big of a holiday for us, not that we are "so behind"... I'm pretty sure, you don't celebrate all the holidays that Estonians do. Does that mean, you're "so behind" ?

kati r, said...

i would love it if we-estonians-would celebrate halloween. i, as an estonian, don't get it why don't we. it would be so much fun i think :)

Anonymous said...

"HEAD SÜGIS VAHEETAPIKS!"

"Head sügisvaheaega" would be correct. :) just in case telling u..

also ''HEAD REISI!'' means like have nice travelling :)

Laura said...

Hey Marina !:)

How do you like Estonia so far? . I have here in California pretty good time, warm and sunny:)
And for me is so interesting to read what you thinking about Estonians and our life style.Yes, we maybe seem a little bit weird and funny people to you but I had here my first Halloweeeeen :D So for me it was new experience and it was fun ! but this is true, for us it is just not that big thing. But I also think that this is actually very cool:)
And that`s why we are exchange students and in another country.We will get to know different nation and people:)
Take care and have a good time there !!:) Ma tahaksin praegu niiiii väga kohukest süüa-Right now I would like to eat kohuke so much !:D

Laura

Anonymous said...

lol it is a cool blog indeed but i dont know how u missed that, but we do have the carton ones also! without the handles though...anyway its cool u had halloween for estonians and i wish i could eat all those lovely things but since the other reader was a little insulted i should let u know that we have mardipäev and kadripäev here which are quite similar to halloween but still very estonian...u should ask your family about it if u already haven't
but anyways enjoy...i was an exchange student in south africa last year and damn i miss it

Anonymous said...

we have milk in bottles and cartons also!!!!!!! :D

Aimpzzz said...

lol@ first Anonymous. She was obv jokeing about the "so behind" thing. And we have our own witchnight "Volbriöö" what is close like halloween.