As we enter the first day of Advent, Christmas decorations, cooking, and handicraft markets are apearing. We’ve been preparing some songs, with a little choir we made up with some friends from Joelahtme and a nearby village called Kuusalu. They’ve done a little research, and found some good estonian as well as old versions of english Christmas songs. They aranged the words, the music, and here we are, singing with four voices, these very different and pretty tunes. For me who has sang in choirs, and even done a little chrismas caroling when I was younger, with my parents, this was a very nice experience. It felt good to be participating in one of the things estonian people like best : singing. They are pretty good at it if you remember the singing feltival in July (Laulupidu), with 30 000 or so people. It didn’t take that many rehearsals to get to a very pleasant result. We first gave a concert on Saturday 1st of December in church, with a large group of guides which came to listen to us, then on Sunday, we sang in a Cultural center in Mustamae, in Tallinn. There was a pretty setting and they had elves (in estonian “Päkapikud”) do a little show about how they put gifts in the slippers on the first day of advent (and not only for christmas like in France). They also had a pastor tell about the meaning of Advent, and he lighted a candle, which the people of Mustamae, lighted their candles from. If I understood well, all the candles they light for Christmas are lighted by the same flame. A pretty symbol. Our singing was Ok, you can judge from the short extracts in the video, but I prefered our first time in church.