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June 17, 2000
Today we got up really early to travel from Tartu, Estonia to Tallinn, our
final destination before we travel home and the location of the
Estonian-Finnish Song Festival. The song festival is where hundreds of
choirs from all around Europe (and us from the U.S.) get together and sing
songs together and they make a festival out of it with food stands and beer
gardens, kind of like a fair. There were over 10,000 people participating,
that's the biggest choir I've ever sang with! Something that was not
brought to our attention prior to the night before, was that before the
actual festival begins there is a
10 km procession from the center of town to the amphitheatre where the
festival takes place AND that it is tradition for the choirs to all wear
there traditional choir outfits during the procession/walk, which for us
meant guys wearing tuxes and girls wearing long black formal dresses.
Having not known about this prior to the day before, I had not brought any
proper walking shoes, at least not for walking 10 km's! We had the option
not to do the walk, but. . . when in Rome. So I decided to tough it up and
wear my leather Doc Martin sandals, hey, they had gotten me this far without
any blisters. But I was worried about the weather; if it were cold I would
freeze and if it was warm, in that black dress I would be toast. Well, let'
s just say that it wasn't too bad temperature wise, we lucked out, but my
feet and the bottom of my dress were filthy!
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It was a lot of fun we
marched to the beat of a marching band that was a couple of groups ahead of
us and we sang our national anthem the whole way, it was a blast. The whole
town turned out for it, too. We had people taking our pictures and getting
our autographs and cheering for us. It was like of parade! We even had UW
stickers that we'd brought along and we would pass them out to the little
kids, they of course loved it. It was definitely an experience I would
never forget.
Later that night we met up with our home stays. This was the first time on
the whole trip that we had home stays so we were excited to interact with
the people and see how they actually live. I was paired up with 3 other
girls from choir and we stayed with a college student named Mari at her
parent's home in Tallinn. She was great, she spoke very good English, but
her mom could speak a word of English so she just translated the whole time.
It was so nice to be in a home and not a hotel for once. Mare Torm (Mari's
mother) was so hospitable, she had a fancy tea and cookies ready for us when
it was time for bed and we all sat around with our tea and cookies and
chatted about life and traveling and about what life was like for them
before their independence in 1992. It was a great time and so refreshing to
be in a real home with a real family, it was a lot like home, only I couldn'
t understand what was being said. It was a great way to end the trip and
they were so generous to have us into there home for a few days.
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