Life just seemed to go perfectly today. Since my conversation class does not begin until next week I had a free day. I went with Raivo to Viljandi to look around while he attended to some business meetings. Other than passing through on the bus I had never been there before. I liked it. It was a nice quiet place that was remarkably similar in size and feeling to Creston. There was not a lot of spectacle and a couple hours there seemed just about perfect.

In the evening I went with Herle, one of the German students, to try Estonian folk dancing. Unfortunately we got the time and place wrong and were unable to find the group so we will have to try again next week. Instead we settled for a drink with Silke, another German exchange student, at Krooks. It was a good evening.

I finished up here with a night of television with the Kuldmets. We saw X-Files and Operation Center. Its nice to see that some good American shows are coming to Estonian in addition to the horrible Santa Barbara/Dallas style soaps that have been here up until now.

We really hit a lot of new material in my Estonian grammar class today. It was all right, but this language is going to be quite a struggle. There is so much new material I am still a little bit dazed by it all. I'm learning a lot, albeit slower (of course) than I would like. Truthfully I am moving along quite quickly, it's just that I would prefer to simply know all this without having to endure the hassle of studying for it. If only there were some sort of Estonian language pill that I could take and magically have all of this knowledge appear in my head. In a way, I suppose that there is one, and I have taken it. It's called studying abroad. Whenever I start to feel like I'm dragging I just look back how far I have come already.

I finished up the day at the movies watching Jerry Maguire. It was a nice, fun movie and I enjoyed it even more than when I saw it the last time. I think that my enjoyment was amplified by perhaps being the only native English speaker in the theater.

After classes today I went with Herle and Mark in a second vain attempt to join the Estonian folk dance group. It was much the same story, wrong place and wrong time. We will try again next Monday. I bumped into Tiina Sepp, a friend from Rakvere that I had not seen since I left Tartu last year. I love small countries.

A most amazing night. I met up with some of the Finnish crowd. We went to Illegaard and Zavood and had a wonderful time.

I went clubbing for the first time since I got back to Tartu. After a good birthday party for Marika, one of the Finnish students, and a concert at Krooks I went with Kairit and friends to Atlantis. I was able to speak native English for the first time in a long time, bumping into Conor Mac Gowan, an Irish man who is here working as financial director for Pepsi in Estonia.

I just had my first Estonian language dream of this trip. It was a remarkable experience. I am not quite sure what it meant, my interpretation skills are a little rusty, but it is such a strange feeling to have spoken in another language subconsciously. The best part was that in the dream the Estonian was perfectly fluent, accentless and far better than I will ever be able to speak in real life. (In retrospect, perhaps that's not quite so good. Oh well)