Yesterday was a very exciting day...And so far today has been too!

Now when i saw "exciting" i don't necesarily mean that in a positve way. Getting abducted by aliens with a taste for human flesh would be exciting too. Butvyesterday was (for the most part) exciting in a positive way. Let me sum it up in a few words. Chores. Kirill. Walking. Shopping. Walking. Anneli's hair. Walking. Broke in Guitar land. Walking. Austrians? Walking. Prayer room. Fire alarm. Sleep. Sound exciting? Well, if that sounds exciting wait until i actually tell you about it. Anyway, Saturday (yesterday) morning my mom decided that (just like every Saturday) the house was a pig sty and she wanted us down on our hands and knees licking the toilet and floor clean. So in mid-lick after a bunch of cleaning my phone started ringing. So i picked up my phone and was shocked to see that it was Kirill calling. "Hey Chris, i'm in Tallinn again. Are you busy today? Lets go out and walk!" Again!?! No!! He did this a few weeks ago too. At least i was awake this time. So i told him i'd meet him in a few hours and we'd be able to go out and chill. So after a few hours of making our house sparkle like a very sparkly thing i went to the corps. Just to note, just now i spent awhile away from this post dealing with today's excitement about which i will blog about at the end of this post.

Anyway, so i went to the corps and me and Kirill gave ourselves a mission. This mission had two objectives. The mission was to shop 'til we drop, the objectives were a replacement for the chain my Salvation Army dogtag normally hangs on around my neck, the other thing i wanted was a wire to plug my MP3 player into the corps sound system so i can rock everyone out anytime with having to stick my head phones on a mic (Which sounds horrible). So we set out in search of these two items. Jaama turg...no. Though we did enjoy checking out the soviet era military stuff. Then we headed towards Viru Keskus and on the way visited Anneli at work, and she wasn't busy for once! All she had was 15 Finns with 15 beers. Easy. So we sat and talked for a while, and one thing we discussed was her cool hair. Her hair is always cool, but as you can see from this picture her hair was even cooler yesterday. And since i've been wanting to take a picture of her in her work outfit forever i was quite happy to get this picture of her with a very nice smile. How come everytime i take a picture of anyone else they look great but when people take pictures of me i look like i crawled out of a sewer? Probably because i did crawl out of a sewer. But whatever.

Back to the story. After a few minutes she got some new customers so we had to clear off so she could be all good and waitressy. So Kirill and i went to Viru Keskus and checked every shop we could find that might sell a chain and/or a wire to hook me up. But sadly no one sold anything good. Which meant that i endured all the shame for nothing. When i say i endured shame i have to point something out. Apparently the people who make jewelry assume that only girls (and very pink loving girly-girls at that) have any interest in it. So the sight of this tall, dark and handsome...okay, tall and dark guy walking into all these stores full of girls seemed to be the funniest thing on earth. When i showed the broken chain almost everybody thought i wanted to replace mny girlfriend's broken jewelry. No one suspected i was looking for myself. One horrible thing was having to walk through the "beauty" department at Kaubamaja. That place is not beautiful. Full of pictures of computer generated super women that make real women feel insecure and full of more diferent smells than i even knew existed. This is where Kirill proved his true loyalty to me. He almost gagged walking through the heavily perfumed air. I'm used to it from all the time i spend with girls who seem to have bought half the shop and are wearing it all. The effect of which is disgusting.

But eventually we left the dark dungeons of "beuaty" and moved on to do what we really wanted. We gave up on finding anything worth buying so we decided to go where we knew we'd find things worth drooling over. We went to the music store. Kirill has an electric guitar and i have an acoustic so i went and drooled over the black Encore guitar that will be mine as soon as i collect enough money. Which probably won't be for a long time. (please not that at this point in my post i got interupted again with today's excitement) Why it probably won't be for a long time you will know soon enough. And he drooled over the acoustics. It was fun. I found out they had the guitar i want for in the color i want for the best price in the store! The guy let me play with it a little so that i'd fall i love with it. The people at the store were great, talking me through all the guitar stuff. So finally when it was time to go i decided to buy a nice flexible nylon pic (my current pic is hard and doesn't make a good sound) for 5 Krooni and a little pic holder to stick on my guitar for 20 Krooni. When i went to pay with my card he said i couldn't buy something so cheap with my card, and would have to get cash (Note:25 Krooni is like 2 dollars). So i walked down to Hansapank and popped my card into the machine to check how much money i have. I was optimistic. I knew for sure i had to have at least 100 Krooni, if not double that. So when the screen popped up saying that i only had 20.90 Krooni i was schocked! I was broke! I couldn't even afford the few things i'd wanted! Which i guess makes it a blessing in disguise i never found anything or i would have tried to pay with a bad card. So that's why it will take forever to buy a guitar. I'm flat out broke!

Anyway, after figuring out how very, very broke i am we headed back to the corps for my prayer room shift and for Kirill to catch a train to Narva. But on the way we got stopped by Arnold Swarzenegger!! Well, we did get stopped by Austrians, but none of them had a scary accent that made you want to run away. They asked how to get to the center of town (they'd been walking away) and asked if i knew of any cheaps resturants or any cool clubs. I helped them with all 3. I walked them into town, i brought them to a good resturant and i showed them the club that all my friends say is great. They thanked me and it was all very nice. They didn't pay me though, which is something Kirill kept joking about. Because if i'd charged 500 Krooni each i could go buy that guitar! And a pic too! But i don't charge for helping lost people, so i left just as broke as i had been. Next i went to the prayer room and Kirill went to the train. It was very exciting. We had new candles in the prayer room. And i wanted to light a bunch because the prayer room ended today. But after a little while i had heard a strange noise...a bell ringing...non-stop...a fire alarm! Aparently the smoke detecter was right above where i had the candles. But because no fire truck pulled up and because the bell ringing was much deeper in the building than i was i just turned up my music and ignored it for the next hour. It was very exciting, though i'd still like to know why no firemen came to save me...

Then i went to sleep. And now today's excitement has been quite simple. A pipe from our neighbor's apartment broke and so whenever he washes his hands we get a shower. It's very exciting. So all the times i've been interupted i've been up translating. There's not really a lot of translation needed. Water. Leak. Fix. Simple stuff. Anyway, i gotta go now, my sister wants to do some computer stuff, Cya!