So here come my promised recaps of my glorious 3 week travel break. The first week was my DIS "study tour", a trip with my psychology class to Stockholm and Tallinn. I found that these study trips are actually a lot of fun and have a good balance between the academic visits, cultural visits and free time.
Stockholm is a stunning city. The city is made up for four islands. It is full of character. For example, the metro stations are all unique, and look like beautifully painted caves! I wished we'd had more time in Stockholm than the 2 and a half days we spent here. I felt like it was a city that I could spend days just wandering through. There are so many nice squares, grand buildings, little alleys, cute cafes in the basements, and art. The city was especially beautiful because fall was at its peak and everywhere you looked, it was yellow, orange and red trees, piles of leaves on the ground, and crisp, fresh air. The last day during our down time I went to a huge park that was breathtakingly beautiful, it was on the water and perfect for tree climbing. With the group we went on a guided tour which was actually great and informative and showed us the main sights of the city, as well as a canal tour, a visit to the Vasa viking ship museum - a magnificent Viking ship that was about 6 stories high and covered in intricate wooden carvings, sadly this ship that was built for over 2 years only made it about 20 minutes into its journey before sinking! Our academic visits were also interesting - the Swedish education system is similar to the Danish. However, one school we visited was a Reggio Emilia school - an Italian educational movement that is becoming increasingly more popular around world - wikipedia it if you're interested. The school's facilities were amazing, though after some group discussions we were dubious of how sincere the teachers really were...
Anyway after 3 days in Stockholm, it was time to go to Tallinn, and what better way of getting there than an overnight ferry, a.k.a. cruise ship Tallink? That's right, I am getting school credit for taking a cruise! As it turns out, the ship was not what we expected - it was full of old men with tattoos and jail stories going to the Estonia vs. Turkey football match - and needless to say, they were a little too excited about the group of 20 American girls on the ship. Thankfully the 5 boys in our group made sure to stick with us and rescue us when needed. We all made it out alive, and arrived in Tallinn the next morning safe and sound!
I had been to Tallinn before with my family - my mom lived there when she was younger, and we have some family friends there. So it was great to go back to this city, I had very fond memories of it. Tallinn is an old medieval city with a big wall surrounding the old town and towers everywhere. One of the nights we even had dinner at a Medieval restaurant! The whole group seemed to fall in love with Tallinn. It was great for me too - all three days I met up with my mom's friends who showed me around and made my time there so much more special. We had a lot more free time here, but the last night did go to a jazz concert as a group - their new album is titled: Love Song to a Migratory Bird. Despite the cheesy title, the concert was very relaxing and enjoyable.
The academic visits in Tallinn were very interesting to me. The first school was an Estonian Waldorf school. I went into a classroom where they were teaching first graders how to speak Russian. Picture us in dancing in a circle with these children singing in Russian and grabbing each other's noses and ears as they learned body parts! The Estonian children were very shy but curious about us, but overall I had a great impression of the educational approach there. The next visit....not so much. It was a Russian preschool, and sadly, it seemed like more of a Soviet preschool than a Russian one. Watching the children learn English as the teacher yelled at them to speak 'LOUDER' and made them sing the same song over and over again about a "butterfly in the sky" shocked the whole group. It was very interesting to see the relationships between the Russians and Estonians in Tallinn. About 45% of the population is Russian, yet it doesn't seem like there is any integration at all. Each group sticks to their own. Samantha, a woman that showed us around and who is African but speaks Russian fluently, told us when she asks for directions she asks in English rather than Russian because if the other person is Estonian they might give her the wrong directions.
Anyway overall, this first week to my trip was fantastic. I hope to return to Stockholm someday since we were there for such a short time!
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