Review #3

Whoa! Almost three months (or 85 days, to be precise) have already passed...quite quickly.
As I promised, I will be honest and I will do my best to analyize all the aspects of being far away from my country, in a country to the north - Estonia.
I already have plenty of experiences - starting from living abroad to discovering the good (and the bad side) of the Estonian mentality.
Well, basically, when it comes to my stay here and daily stuff - like going to the store, working in the museum, keeping the working atmosphere sane, etc. everything is really good.
Of course, there are days when someone is in the bad mood (including myself), but you can't be bursting with energy every possible day, right?
The constant barrier, of course, is the language which keeps me from having special and/or more complicated requests at the store/post office.

As I changed the restaurant where I eat every day, I now eat at a Chinese place and I like the food very much there. The reason for changing the restaurant is that at Sodiaak (where I was eating before) they always served some sweet salad which I didn't like at all and the owner couldn't speak English, so...now it's perfect, everyone at the Chinese place speak English.

My social life is quite good - I have plenty of friends with which I often go out, or better say - I did go out before, and now I'm not because I don't feel like it.
Currently, I am concentrated on working, playing games, listening to music and watching movies...guess you can call it a "lone-wolf phase" cause I'm enjoying myself and I don't need anything else for the time being.

Friends I have here are all wonderful individuals...they respect me, treat me as a friend (and some of them really care about speaking English when I'm around)...and vice-versa, of course.

The Estonian Printing Museum - my volunteering/working place is a quite unique establishment :)...I can't really say Lemmit's exact area of intest...so I will call it a place of various creative industries: starting from making notebook covers with "whatever-interesting-thing-we-find-in-the-museum" guideline, to making your own ideas into reality and "play-with-paint-until-you-fuck-up-all-your-jeans" experience.
Sometimes it can be boring, but that's not that common...I'm generally enjoying working here.

Now, a few things I cannot overcome and the biggest turn-down in Estonia is the existence of this "russian mind-set", general "closed-to-outsiders" scheme and kicking you out of the conversation and ignoring you by speaking the Estonian language in front of you all the time. I believe this will change in generations...but still, the problem is current.
I came to know Estonians during my 3-month stay here and I can honesty say it's quite hard to meet new people by yourself because all you get from most "new" people is a 3-4 word answer...and you really need to give yourself into the "getting-to-know-someone" part, therefore, you are supposed to be the well of topics to talk about.
Sure, there are exceptions to this and most people I call friends here are open and talkative...but the general rule still applies.

Now, for the conclusion, I decided not to continue learning the Estonian language because I am not interested in it anymore due to the constant "pressure" of the 99.9% of people who rather speak Estonian in front of me because they don't care how I might feel about that. The other reason is that I am neglecting my own Croatian language too much (cause here I don't have anyone to speak it with) and I am speaking English all the time...so the 3rd language would be too much. I will just keep raising my level of English and everyone will understand me as they did until now. This is not giving up...it's merely stopping while I still have the chance (and we all know what happens when you force yourself to do something you don't want to, right?)

All in all, I am happy I chose Estonia for my EVS and I can hardly wait winter here so I can see this "Winter Wonderland" how some EX-EVSers call it :)

The end of my lengthy post.
Until next time...
Respect, Goran.

P.S. Best regards to all my friends and family in Croatia...I really miss them all :)