Area Studies Week 4

Twice today in Area Studies, someone walked past me, saw the "Basic Estonian" text on my desk and asked if that wasn't an oxymoron.

Yes, yes it is.

It is probably no accident that the Estonian word for "gentle" is "hell."

I can't believe we are already more than a month into language training. But I do finally feel like I am making some progress. Each day, we have to do "uudis" (news) in Estonian. Nothing major, but a few sentences on something we saw in the news or something going on in our lives. And I make a lot of errors because I try to struggle through cases that we have yet to cover.

But I am beginning to make fewer errors. Some things are beginning to click, and I am really liking that. I am beginning to think that by the end of 10 months (dear god, I'm only 1/10th of the way through??), I might be able to speak and understand this language.

But let's get back to area studies.

Today, we moved classrooms again, to a...wait for it...room with fewer seats. Yes I said fewer. There is now a cadre of us who get to class thirty minutes early and just eat lunch there so we can make sure we have a seat at the table.

Today we had a guest lecturer, and I did find the lecture interesting. I also managed to multitask and finish transerring all my notes from the past month to a new and better organized notebook.

I did all this with one major distraction.

There was a guy sitting near me who was making pig noises and farting the whole time.

The WHOLE TIME.

For three HOURS!

Yes, seriously.

And I used to work with pigs...the noises were frightenly accurate.