DEEP DIVE INTO ESTONIA - A YEAR THAT CHANGED MY LIFE:
It has now been almost 1 year since I moved to Tallinn, Estonia on a project from WCIA, and as I prepare to move on from my project to a new step, let me tell you about what it was like:
Estonia is admittedly a small country, and before April 2023 it was little more to me than a spot on the world map and a contender in Eurovision. As I would discover in this year, there’s so much more to her. The love of music goes further than Eurovision too! After all, it was ‘the Singing Revolution’ that won Estonia’s Independence.
Being located on the Baltic Sea, I was warned strongly about the weather. However when I arrived it was just flawless; I sat on the balcony drinking Kali (a strange soft drink that is Estonia’s answer to Marmite) in a vest and shorts. It was not until my second month of being ‘lost in Estonia’ however, that my colleagues stopped telling me I was underdressed for the weather!
My placement was a multidirectional education NGO divided up into a youth club, a preschool, summer camp, after school club and adult education centre. I had come to Estonia with the intention to improve my Russian language skills, but I knew many from other countries who spoke zero Estonian or Russian and thrived.
From spending the summer working on teenage camps in Lahemaa National Park on the shores of the Gulf of Finland and visiting friends in summer capital Parnu, to walking on the frozen sea in the former ‘ Soviet secret city’ of Paldiski in the depths of winter and partying with friends in the ruins of a castle in the spring in the 13th century town of Viljandi. Estonia can really offer you as much as you’re willing to get out of it.
While it is certainly true that Estonia has more to offer than anyone can possibly see in a year, this didn’t pause my progress toward my personal dream of “completing Europe”. I was lucky enough to use the fantastic transport links of Estonia and the Baltic states to travel in Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Finland, Sweden, and even as far away as Georgia and Turkey, with friends from those countries that I made on the project! I owe all of this to the project in Estonia.
The opportunity to go to Estonia was one of a lifetime. There are many challenges of such a project, especially living in the hostile environment of the Baltic winter and adapting to a culture very different from ours, but if you’re up to that, it is so incredibly worth it.
A year in Estonia through WCIA truly threw me in the deep end, but at the same time it gave the life ring.
It has now been almost 1 year since I moved to Tallinn, Estonia on a project from WCIA, and as I prepare to move on from my project to a new step, let me tell you about what it was like:
Estonia is admittedly a small country, and before April 2023 it was little more to me than a spot on the world map and a contender in Eurovision. As I would discover in this year, there’s so much more to her. The love of music goes further than Eurovision too! After all, it was ‘the Singing Revolution’ that won Estonia’s Independence.
Being located on the Baltic Sea, I was warned strongly about the weather. However when I arrived it was just flawless; I sat on the balcony drinking Kali (a strange soft drink that is Estonia’s answer to Marmite) in a vest and shorts. It was not until my second month of being ‘lost in Estonia’ however, that my colleagues stopped telling me I was underdressed for the weather!
My placement was a multidirectional education NGO divided up into a youth club, a preschool, summer camp, after school club and adult education centre. I had come to Estonia with the intention to improve my Russian language skills, but I knew many from other countries who spoke zero Estonian or Russian and thrived.
From spending the summer working on teenage camps in Lahemaa National Park on the shores of the Gulf of Finland and visiting friends in summer capital Parnu, to walking on the frozen sea in the former ‘ Soviet secret city’ of Paldiski in the depths of winter and partying with friends in the ruins of a castle in the spring in the 13th century town of Viljandi. Estonia can really offer you as much as you’re willing to get out of it.
While it is certainly true that Estonia has more to offer than anyone can possibly see in a year, this didn’t pause my progress toward my personal dream of “completing Europe”. I was lucky enough to use the fantastic transport links of Estonia and the Baltic states to travel in Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Finland, Sweden, and even as far away as Georgia and Turkey, with friends from those countries that I made on the project! I owe all of this to the project in Estonia.
The opportunity to go to Estonia was one of a lifetime. There are many challenges of such a project, especially living in the hostile environment of the Baltic winter and adapting to a culture very different from ours, but if you’re up to that, it is so incredibly worth it.
A year in Estonia through WCIA truly threw me in the deep end, but at the same time it gave the life ring.