It's Uoooo Not Uoooo

The only class I had on Wednesday was my Estonian Culture class at 2:15 so naturally I slept until noon. I think this class will be my favorite of the semester. The teacher is very fun and energetic and she smiles and doesn't speak in monotone. You can't beat that here! The class is all about taking trips to museums and watching Estonian flims. I am very excited to learn about the culture. The teacher started talking to us about how fictional history is very big here...so I really am starting to question everything I learn here. They make up their own language and now I learn they like to make up their own history. I just don't know what to believe anymore. As Sean puts it "its sorta like Willi Wanka and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland, and Hilter." I also learned that they have this holiday, their idependence, where the Estonian people sing. I was quite shocked by this because 1) you can get fined for singing in public and 2) Estonians never talk so how can they sing? I am definately looking forward to seeing how this will work.

I have made a goal for myself and I don't plan on leaving until I have succeeded in completing my goal. I want to meet the President of Estonian. It can't be that hard. This is a very tiny country and there are only 1.3 million people living here. I can see this being a difficult goal if I was wanting to meet Obama but the President of Estonia is in charge of a tiny country not the United States of America. So I am going to email the Estonian governement office and figure out how I go about meeting this man or at least seeing him. Who wouldn't want to meet a fine young gentleman from Nebraska?

My last class of this week was the dreadful Estonian Language class. I am fairly certain I will never look forward to this class. The teacher made us read words again in front of the class and I still have NOOO idea how to pronounce half of their letters. Of course most of the class laughed at us becuase none of the Americans could pronounce the words correctly because we don't have these sounds in the English language. But I took comfort in knowing that there were 8 Americans in the class...which really makes the teacher uncomfortable! What really made me mad/was kind of hilarious was when she tell us how to pronounce these letters. She would say "It's pronounced OOOOO not OOOOO. She literally said the same thing both times so we could not tell a difference in the way she was pronouncing the letters. She would then tell us after was read the words outloud "I'm sorry, but I did not understand a word you just said." So then she would tell us how to say it and then we would have to repeat it back to her. But like I said, I think this language is totally made up and she just wanted to make our class hell so she told us we were saying it wrong, when really there is no correct way to pronounce it.

I have learned after being around so many international students that lots of people really hate the United States. I usually don't say anything back although I do have a lot that I would like to say to them when they make some stupid comment.