EVS in Estonia

We came back to France a few days ago from Estonia. The come back trip was ok, we even have a nice surprise in Copenhague’s airport where we stopped : Irja one of our Joelahtme friends was here, coming back from Japan. It was as if Estonia wanted to say goodbye to us for the last time…

Here we are now in family, me in the Alps and Jonathan in California. It is so strange to listen to all these people speaking french around us, we have the impression to hear the thoughts of all.

We already miss Estonia, but we also are happy to see France, our families, and friends again.

We would like to thank you all, our colleagues, our estonian friends that welcomed us so well during this year, our volunteers friends, our families and french friends who supported us and followed our adventures, our meetings through this blog… Thanks to all of you : GRAND MERCI, SUUR AITÄH, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! We wish you all the best for the new year to come.

We will remember from this experience only good memories, so don’t hesitate, just do what we have done, do an EVS and go to Estonia!

As we are finishing to fix our luggage, to head back to France, Silja, our dear friend which has helped us discover so much about estonian culture, from dances to singing in a choir, wanted to thank us for the work we did for the Reserve and for helping the community and taking part in local events. She wrote an article, in which she mentions at some points of our work, the Cd-Rom, and also some of the good times we’ve had together.
We were very touched by this and though the Estonian television had talked about our project this autumn, to be in the local newspaper, read by most people in the surrounding villages, made us feel nice.

During a meal, organized for the end of the year, by the city council, the Mayor (which we met for the first time today), thanked us briefly, for what we did. This followed a concert which had been given in church, so you can see him on the left hand side of the picture (bellow) accompanied by singers.

It was time for us to say goodbye, at least for some time, to Margus, Silja, Merle and Meelis, not always easy when we have spent so many good times together this year, but we promised to come back to estonia as quick as we could.

As soon as we had arrived from our trip to Latvia and Lithuania, we went to see the Nutcracker, or “Pahklipureja” as they call it here, a ballet composed by Tchaikovski which is very popular around Christmas time.

We had been wanting to go to the Estonia Opera house for quite a while, but it was also the opportunity to accompany Lee, our portugese volunteer friend, which was spending her last evening in Tallinn, before going back home.

The audience was mostly composed of children, which were dressed up as if for a wedding, with suits ties, skirts and makeup at only ten years old or so, a generation (or cultural) shock for us. The show was fantastic, even though there was a problem at the very start, the rest went smoothly and the magic of the dancing made us forget the time.

We loved it as it helped us get into the Christmas spirit, but for me it had also a special meaning, for it reminded me of a childhood memory when my grandparents took me to see this same ballet when I was very young…

(click on the picture above for a short musical extract)

At last ! After months of work, to try and get to a perfect result, here is the CD-Rom we made for the Rebala Heritage Reserve. About half way through our volunteering project, we had the idea to create a good promotion tool, which would add interactive content to the museum, and, through educational games help children better understand what the exibit is about.

With the help of our two colleagues, as well as Mari, which worked with us this summer, we worked on interactive maps of the reserve, short movie clips, animations, a virtual visit of the church, 360° panoramas, games, and wrote everything in three languages : english, french and estonian.

We tried to include as well useful information such as opening hours, contacts, detailed information about archeological findings in the reserve, as well as its missions so as to satisfy the curiosity of visitors, families, specialists and tourism professionals which would want to know more about the Rebala Heritage Reserve.

It was finally sent to the printer, and edited at a limited number at first. We hope that it will be a success and that the reserve will be able to sell it in its shop or in other museums, so as to promote its territory. It is a tool which would have cost a fortune if it had been done by a private company, but as volunteers we were happy to contribute, with this personal initiative, and to be able to apply something lernt in university.

Yes, we have finished our voluntary project. It’s usually a sad moment, but for some reason, it isn’t really the case for us. We’ve had wonderful times here in Estonia and we did what we had / and wanted to do in our project. We are also staying until the 19th of December, which gives us time to enjoy a little more of Estonia, travel to the neighbouring baltic countries (coming soon) and realize this is the end. As we said, maybe we will get to come back one day and work this time in Tallinn. Who knows ?
For now however, we have been doing departure parties with our different friends. For our estonian ones from Joelahtme, and the people we’ve met, from the city council, or our estonian teacher in Loo, we did a french buffet dinner party, at MArgits new house. an intimate family type party, where we nicely discussed and watched slideshows of pictures we took and tested a swing we built that evening in Margits living room.

On Friday, we rented a private Sauna in a restaurant, in Tallinn old town. There was a very large room to eat and sit in, and then a shower and sauna room where we could all relax and continue talking. A great time we had, with volunteers we knew and new ones which have arrived more recently. Some were also ex-volunteers which came back to Tallinn and are now working there. There were people from all countries : georgia, ukrain, poland, germany, spanish, portugese, french… more people from other countries joined us later in the evening. How unique and pleasant it was to be with people like us, but from all over ! We ate well, and enjoyed being together. A good way for us to say goodbye, even if we will see some of the volunteers again before we leave.

Last thursday, we were asked, by the association VITA, which we had been to previously in Narva Joesuu, to come back once more, this time in Sillamae. Now, this town has an interesting history, for it was a secret city during the soviet occupation and was not on any map. The reason was that there was some research being done, as well as phospore extracted, for military nuclear uses. No need to say that today, the city still wears the marks of soviet occupation, with block buildings, concrete everywhere, a strong proportion of russian speakers, very similar to Narva. So, for us, it was as if we were taking a trip to Russia. We were welcomed in the school as princes, and everybody, from teachers, students, the principal, all treated us as if we were some important guest. This impressed us a lot, for never in France would we have received such a welcome ! Students were saying “bonjour !” clearly, everybody knew two french people, maybe the first, were coming. We were shown around the school, and cookies, coffee, everything was done to make us feel at home. We were helped by Ilona, which was our translator from english to russian. We were suprised to meet Yelena also, the girl who had stayed at the door to say goodbye in Narva Joesuu. She told Amélie how she had impressed her and motivated her in her studies, and thanked us for our presentation which gave hope and ideas for the future. We were both very touched (especially Amélie) by this, and the gift she had made for us.
We then did our presentation, with no Powerpoint this time. Everything we said was translated into russian, which was interesting, for the small jokes we made would be understood moments later, once they were put into russian.
We then had a talk with the french teacher, and a small group of students, who want to organize a youth exchange with a french school, and study Napoleon during their trip to France. They asked for our help to find places to visit and also a school which they could do this exchange… Not easy, but we will do what we can to help.

We were then accompanied back to the bus, by a group of students, which we enjoyed talking with, and were back to Joelahtme in the evening. Wow, what a day, what a warm welcome, it is things like this which make us feel useful, even after we finished our project in Rebala.

Recently, we’ve been giving a couple of presentations about our experience as volunteers in Estonia. We went back to the highschool where we had learnt estonian and given a tourism course, and spoke with some young people in their lastg year of highschool about volunteering. It was more to give them ideas rather than to convince them to stop their studies to volunteer, but planting these ideas early, can be useful for them one day. If they want to take a break or want to feel useful, or even try working in a domain which they’ve wanted to try, they can turn to the EVS program, or talk about it to their friends. Actually, that’s how most of the volunteers we’ve met got the information about this opportunity, including us !

We also went in a local school, in the nearby village of kostivere, a few minutes by bicycle (a little more riding in the snow). They were having a “citizen day” where they talked about being a citizen and what could be done to change things. We told about what we did here in Estonia, but we had them work in small groups, to discuss what they could do themselves to find solutions to problems near them. the answers were pretty good, especially one group which said they wanted to find a solution to bring more young people to a place where they can meet. They had the room and even some money already, but nobody was coming… we all tried to see what they could do about it. At least it got them thinking about it. Volunteering was proposed as only one of the aspects of being an “active” citizen, as opposed to a regular citizen. Being “active” is not about saving the world right now, but make little changes which make everybody’s life better.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything, since the first snows… it’s getting towards the end of our project, so we’ve been finishing thing. Actually, this is one project which we started mid october, just before the snow. I don’t think we’ll be able to finish it now, but here is what we did.
Some of the crosses in Joelahtme cimetary are getting pretty old, and were made in forged metal, a real art-work. regularly, some of them disapear, broken, ruined by time or men. This is why the reserve wanted us to keep a trace of the crosses that were there, so as to have a list at least, which they could start protecting.
We therefore started a catalog, with pictures of each cross, and mesured the length and width of each one. The hardest part is reading a cimetary map. It’s very detailed, but it’s hard to see if the one you are in front of is 27b or 38c, especially in estonian cimetaries where they have trees and grass growing. there are no strait gravelled alleys the idea here is to bury people in a pleasant, natural setting. I think that’s much prettier, a bit like in these irish countryside cimetaries, with the silhouette of the crosses overlooking the sea…
Didn’t want to get into a long dissertation on cimetaries, but here is a short movie clip, to show what was our work, with a gospel-blues music taken from the film “O’Brother where art thou”.
Enjoy !

Last week, we were called by the National Agency to come and give a presentation of our experience in volunteering to some young people in Narva Joesuu, a small town on the coast, on the banks of the Narva river, which serves as a border with Russia.
It was a long way by bus to get there, about four hours. Though Estonia is not that big, it stopped in every single village along the road. We had to get up before 6am and got home somewhere around 9pm, but it was really worth it. We were welcomed by two very nice people, a couple which was giving this two day training to about 20 russian speaking youngsters.
We then took a walk with Marika, from the National Agency, on the beach nearby. The sun was out, there was hardly any wind, the trees still had their autumn colors and the beach, unlike many in Estonia, was long and sandy. It was perfect for a stroll by the sea. We headed back to the center, just in time for lunch, where we started talking with some of the young people. They were from Kohtla Jarve, a mining city nearby. They were in search of ideas for their lives and had just finished High school. Studying was not necessarily their wish, one said he was thinking of signing up for the army. When we started talking about this volunteering program, we could see they were interested. After a little game together, Marika did her presentation (in russian) and we followed (in english) telling about how we found our project and how it has been living as volunteers for the past 8 months. They seemed pretty alert and interested (though they had not slept much we were told) and asked some more personal questions at the end of our presentation. They were all quite sweet and gave us a drawing they had done and some balloons. It was all they had, but they insisted in thanking us and one girl accompanied us to the door and waved goodbye. It felt good to have been there. We hope it can be an inspiration for them.

With a small group of people from our church friends and a musician family from Kuusalu, a few miles away, we practised some songs and played some tunes in a hospital, which was more like a retirement home with medical care. Though our audience was not very big, it was good for us to come sing and play music to them, for it brought a little entertainment in their dull looking day. Some were halfway asleep, others had sparkling eyes, but all clapped and thanked us warmly for coming to see them. I played some Irish tunes which was something they hadn’t heard much before, and when they announced that we had come from FRance, they were suprised and a lady even thanked us with a cute “Merci” at the end…

Last Monday, at 8PM, on the national television chanel (ETV) they projected the show which they had recorded last august It was presented by this charismatic speaker (yes, the one with the moustach, the hat and two figers pointing for an unknown reason to the sky!). Though the Osoon show in itself is quite good to learn about what is happening concerning the environment, culture or style of life in Estonia, the speaker, at least from the very little we understand does not really talk or present the different reports, but goes on about philosophical questions. This time, he did the whole show with his cat, walking in the forest with it on a leash, patting it and saying that “cat” was named “chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat” in French (said in a very estonian way).
Otherwise, we loved what they showed of us and the reserve. Mirjam, the journalist, managed to sum up the main ideas of what we said in a day in just 10 minutes. Just enough for us to try and put it on our blog. I’m saying “try” because the quality is really bad, for we were filming our own TV, and we don’t receive very well. Anyway, until we receive the copy of the show on DVD, which we hope we’ll get. This is what we have.

Last Saturday, it was one of the most beautiful day we’ve had this fall. The perfect day for a wedding. We had rehersed some songs with Silja and Kaiman, our estonian friends, and were to sing “In this Heart” by Sinead O’Connor, with 4 different voices. The result was not so bad, you’ll be able to hear it on the video…

I had already played a tune on my Irish Tin Whistle for a wedding in August, but Amélie hadn’t been there and this was her first time. It was a pretty wedding, as they usually are, but though people were glad, they were not over-happy as you could expect, the estonian flegm I guess.

We really loved being part of the ceremony, and to be asked to play was an honnor.

Last week, we helped organizing an picture exhibition on the first floor above the museum. It was a photography contest and the pictures had been taken by some students in architecture. The general theme of the exhibit was the local heritage in the reserve of Rebala.

For this purpose, we cut some little white pannels where we glued the pictures and we hung them on the ceiling with some wooden bands (that we painted in black before) and some iron wire. We also cut some little pieces of cardboard to write the name of the picture on it.

The final look of it is quite good, especially with the lights and the special atmosphere of the room.

At the end of the week, we helped to prepare the “vernissage” (opening) of the exhibition, all the students were there and we could attend the prize-giving.

After having had both our families over, here came our friends ! We had them here for 2 weeks and did lots of great activities with them and had lots of fun. They could also meet with the other volunteers (even with Pascal, a french volunteer from hungary we had met in our pre-departure training) and we spent good evenings all together. Not always easy for them to understand the english speaking with different accents from all over the world, but it was part of the discovery awaiting them. It felt nice to have some young people our age to have fun with and they stayed long enough to see quite a bit of Estonia, though their favorite activity was sleeping. We still found time to go swim at Jagala falls, go to a spa in Tallinn, discover the city through a different point of view, with the “funky bike tour”, and finally go on a 4 day road trip, but that’ll be another article…

Hello,
Finally a little time to write.
Last week, my parents came ! yes, as faithful readers of this blog they wanted to see how things were for real here in Joelahtme. As parents, they wanted to see their son after 5 months away. The four days they spent were simply marvelous, very full, but we had a great time all together and it was as if we were back at home again for a short while.
Apart from being happy that they came, I am forever grateful for the delicious smelly cheese they brought from France at the market. They stink heavenly in our refrigerator and the thing which we missed the most about food in Estonia is now present at the end of each meal. Thank you !

In this video, you’ll see a little bit of the great times we had together. And the song is called “Ode to my family”…
To my parents : “Thanks again for coming !”

The day after the pilgrimage, took place as every sunday the mass at the Jõelähtme church. But it was a more festive ceremony than usual because 3 women of the church were celebrating their 50 years of confirmation. At this occasion the church was pretty well decorated with colourful flowers and rubans and people sang very nice prays a capella.

As usually, we haven’t so much understood the topic of the pastor’s speach, but we still have laughed a lot with Madeleine (the pastor’s daughter) trying to sing the only estonian words that we knew.

After the mass, a big party was organized for inaugurating the new swing some people of the community had been built behind the church. Everybody was here : children and adults, even a baby with his father who seemed to have a lot of fun, and some grandmothers who stayed almost 2 hours on the swing. Another good excuse to make a party, to meet each other and have nice time together.

Concerning the music in the video, it is from Genticorum, a group from Québec we discovered during the Viljandi festival. Emily one of our friend from the village offered us their cd, the song is called “cascou” (in french) and that exactly the feeling that we had when we went up to 90/110 degrees with the swing !

Last Saturday, only just come back from St Petersburg, we participated in a event going on in our reserve : a pilgrimage between the Jõelähtme church and the Saha chapel, about 10 kilometers.

It was really funny to see all these people crossing the highway with a big cross, the police even had to stop the traffic for a while.

The good mood was here as usual and it was nice to take the time to chat with our friends from the village whom we hadn’t seen for a while. The walk was ponctuated with dances, songs and comments about the sacred places we were passing by.

Once arrived in the chapel, Margus the pastor gave a nice ceremony during which Jonathan played his irish tin whistle. The place were intimate and everybody seemed happy to be together.

We finally came back by bus to the Jõelähtme church and shared a very nice soup, and some blueberry juice with some delicious cakes.

You might have noticed that articles have been a little late recently, that’s partly because summer is a busy time here, but also because we’ve been having family over. Amelie’s parents were there for ten days, with Amelie’s sister and her boyfriend. We spent some good times together in an appartment they had rented in the old town. a perfect location to walk around, as well as go discover places like Tartu which we did on a day trip, guided by Alar, an estonian friend. They brought with them some good products from france and we were able to feel ourselves back at home, with family and food and wonderful weather. What could we ask more ?
Margit took us around Lahemaa in her car (yes, we managed to fit 7 of us in her car !) and Margus showed everyone around the church. It felt nice to know they could share with us places, people, which we had been telling them about.
We finished the trip together, by going to St Petersburg with Amelie’s parents. but you’ll be able to read about that better in an other article.

A few weeks ago,the estonian national TV chanel (ETV) came to interview us for a show called OZONE, apparently known by people around here as an environmental show. They came with the idea of showing the reserve and present its missions, but also show the work done by volunteers (us) and how this EVS programme was a good opportunity for organisation to work on such environmental and heritage protection projects. When you see how few projects there are in estonia on environment and heritage protection, compared with the richeness of the land in natural beauties and the importance of saving estonian heritage, We hope this show will help convince some organisations to think about EVS as a solution and add new projects in that field in the european database.

Although we were a little deceived by the fact that they were not interested in us telling them a few words in estonian (which we were really eager to do) we had a great time showing the team in their TV truck all the assets of our reserve, re-act some of our work, such as stone-wall-building, restoring bronze age tombs… It wasn’t always easy, especially under the hot sun which was shining that day, but we ended the day pretty contented of the good promotion we had done about the EVS and the reserve.

We hope to be able to put at least some extracts of the show on the blog (for those who unfortuneately do not receive estonian TV) but that’ll be sometime in mid-september we think.

Just after the Viljandi Folk Music Festival, we met with six other people , two trainers (Piret which we had had before and Margus, a sportive but nice trainer) and four other volunteers (Thomas from France, Simon from Germany, Lee from Portugal and Louice from Sweeden), with whom we spent 5 days for our mid-term training, halfway through our volunteering.

Our training took place in Kopra Talu, a great setting in a wooden ancient farmhouse, surrounded by forests and near a small pond. The activities were quite nice, a little too much philosophical discussions but it was still important to think about our experience here in Estonia.

The volunteers and trainers team was very friendly and we had a great time all together.

We really enjoyed the good food from the place, made a nice barbecue with original but delicious sausages (half wild pig meat, half goat meat). We went to the sauna, as usual, but this time with a refreshing swim in the pound just after.

So, we were not bored at all, we even made an excursion in an estonian national park called Soomaa all together, but an other article will talk more about that later.