really weird....

estonia was fantastic... i think it was actually colder there than in stockholm... i was only gone for three days and already most of the leaves have turned yellow... i am so incredibly tired... it still feels like i am rocking from side to side on the boat (which is really an odd feeling even ON the boat, i have to admit).

yes, but i am sure you want to know what i did, right?

friday i reveled in the extravagance of the "ferry" to estonia which was more like a luxury cruise... lots of mirrors and gold railings... found that sitting in a karaoke bar and singing foreign swedish songs (with a few american 80's ballads thrown in for good measure) with intoxicated 40-year-old swedes, really can be quite amusing....

saturday morning i realized why they make the bathrooms so small on ships... so you can give the toilet a shower, of course! though, as much as the other exchange students were amazed at my super-woman like abilities to bathe under such stressful conditions, i thought it paled in comparison to the "pull-string gas" showers at Buffalo Mountain.... tooled around tallin... visited the old town, became engrossed in the russian church (where i just happened to be a little too interested in the iconography--the group left me while i was in the gift shoppe... yes, the church had a gift shoppe... something that seems to be rather typical here in europe... anyways, the lostness found me wandering downtown where i...), just happened to arrive 5 minutes before an organ concert at st. nicholas' church!! yipee! (it was nice... and admission to the history "museum" a.k.a. old church stuff with a few sentences of descriptive text was included!), popped into a few art shoppes, listened to a street musician man play greensleeves followed directly by some john lenon songs, had an experience with finding out what happens when you fail to make reservations (you see, in tallin people make reservations and thus, have the table for the entire evening), ended up in a gorgeous restaurant anyways (haha! and they thought they could break my spirit by throwing me out of 4 restaurants!), returned to my nice hotel, took a marvelous BATH (ahhh....), and went to bed.

sunday, woke up and had the best breakfast i have ever had (or seen)... at the hotel... it was a buffet and was included... mmmm... ate so much i almost made it until bedtime without getting hungry (but, alas, i had some chocolate, and that, according to the cooking section of the estonian museum, stimulates salivation, and thus, hunger). went to an estonian history museum... mostly about tallin, its history, early colonial life, cooking beliefs, social thing-a-ma-do-gees, etc. quite interesting to look at old maps, etc. then, made my way back to the boat (this one was not so great though, was from the 70's, and while i admire some basic 70's style, on the whole i am not much a fan of smelly orange things a.k.a carpet, sofas, bathrooms). danced a little in the wee hours on a swaying dance floor (my abdomen will attest to this)... went to bed.

that's about it... doesn't sound like much, but it felt like i had been gone for at least a week when i walked up the stairs to bergshamra....

and now, i am skipping my swedish class (will go to the alternative class on wednesday) to recuperate and write this!