Flood!! Look out!! two very wet, very floody things are happening today. first it's raining, and i mean really raining, a lot. and the second is this, because of all the rain all the snow is melting, a lot. so there is water everywhere and when there's water on the ground it has only on way to go: Down!! and guess where i live: down. i live in the basement so with all the snow melting-rain pouring goodness going on outside i'm getting flooded. which is not good. i don't know if i ever blogged about this but i had vowed that as soon as we started getting rain instead of snow again i'd go outside and dance in it. well vows are made to be broken so rather than danceing i'm thinking more along the lines of mopping. oh i feel so bad for Noah now, he must have really hated water by the end of his trip. what makes this all so much worse is that despite the fact that i don't move to Tallinn for another three months (that long? awww...) i am already packing, because you know the early bird gets worms or whatever nastiness. so because i was already packing i had all sorts of stuff thrown accross my floor. books, CDs, boxs of only-God-knows-what, and all of it got wet. isn't that nice? it wasn't really as bad as i make it sound though. the biggest damage was that my copy of Romeo and Juliet that i'm reading for school got soaked through. and despite the fact that i'm risking having shakespeare's ghost kill me in my sleep i think i'll say i don't consider that a huge loss, especially since i can just dry it off on the heater.
now i'm thinkin a little bit about Romeo and Juliet and i just want to say my idea of "love" will never be the same again. if the kind of love that Romeo and Juliet have after one night of some nice words and two kisses is true love then i am completely confused. and may i just point out that Juliet is 13? doesn't that freak you out just a teensy bit? no word on Romeo's age yet but i'm sure he's much older. this book just cracks me and i like making fun of it, thats all. "Romeo, Romeo. wherefore art thou Romeo?" "i don't know, i don't know. wherefore am i Juliet?" anyway...yeah. now i know how to get a girlfriend, just tell her shes as fat as the moon. isn't that what Romeo does? whatever, i gotta go now, my brother's friend Lauri is over and they're tearing apart the house, i need to go put them in a cage or something, Cya.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Monday, March 27, 2006
All hail Chris, the amazing translater!!
Move over girls there's a new translater now, ME!! i was going to blog more about english camp but i just decided i don't have the energy, so i'll either do it tommorow or some other time. but now i want to tell you the story of why i, Chris Clark, am the amazing translater. so today, around two hours ago i was down stairs chilling on the couch talking with my mom waiting for my dad to get off the computer so i could blog. and as i was talking with my mom i noticed one of our homeless friends, Andreas, coming up to the door, so we went, said hi, how you doing and all that good stuff until he got to the point. "ma vajan sada krooni" "i need a hundred kroon" and after asking what for, and everything we found out our other friend, Üle, was waiting outside and needed the money to get medicine for her back, which hurt. so my mom went out to talk to her and invite her in and then my challenge began. i instantly became my dad personal translater, translating anything and everything that needed translation. and then my mom came back in with Üle and she resumed speaking in estonian and canceling out the need for translation. mostly. my mom talks really slow in estonian because she thinks her whole sentence out because she doesn't want to get anything wrong. now as a slanged up teenager i know that there's not a huge difference between "i have" and "i got" and between "i do" and "i does" so i don't worry so much about mistakes and therefore talk much faster than my mom. and so after a minute Andreas just said "Chris, tõlgi!" or whatever, meaning, "Chris, translate" which indicated that he prefered my translation.
*aplause*
thank you, thank you. you're far to kind. i already know i'm the best. so then we offered to drive them to the apteek in raekoja plats to get the medicine, to which they graciously accepted. so as we were in the car i translated some more and they told us they needed 150 kroon (did that price jump 50 kroon or am i imagining things?) for the medicine. so we drove to the apteek and we were just about to go in when Andreas held back. now he told me (please note anything said by them is in estonian and i had to translate, making me the best translater) that the prescription was at the place where they were living and we had to go get it, ok, whatever. might have been helpful info before but no problem. so we drove them home and then they decided that they'd just stay home and put a compress on it or something (compliment me for understanding everything) and so we went home having done nothing, hmm, interesting how they really only wanted cash though....suspicious but anyway. i'm done now. i'm gonna go watch "born free". i know nothing about this movie, my grnd introduction to it was "it was really popular during the 70s" which, just as a little hint to all you old geezers, is not a great way to get me interested in anything, anyway Cya!!!
*aplause*
thank you, thank you. you're far to kind. i already know i'm the best. so then we offered to drive them to the apteek in raekoja plats to get the medicine, to which they graciously accepted. so as we were in the car i translated some more and they told us they needed 150 kroon (did that price jump 50 kroon or am i imagining things?) for the medicine. so we drove to the apteek and we were just about to go in when Andreas held back. now he told me (please note anything said by them is in estonian and i had to translate, making me the best translater) that the prescription was at the place where they were living and we had to go get it, ok, whatever. might have been helpful info before but no problem. so we drove them home and then they decided that they'd just stay home and put a compress on it or something (compliment me for understanding everything) and so we went home having done nothing, hmm, interesting how they really only wanted cash though....suspicious but anyway. i'm done now. i'm gonna go watch "born free". i know nothing about this movie, my grnd introduction to it was "it was really popular during the 70s" which, just as a little hint to all you old geezers, is not a great way to get me interested in anything, anyway Cya!!!
Friday, March 24, 2006
Exhaustion never felt so good!! (English Camp is bannanas!!)
not sure i spelled that first word right but who cares, i have excuses. i just got back from English Camp, one of the absolute greatest parts of my year. and i feel bad that i haven't blogged in so long because in the last...2 weeks? only 2? there has been so much to blog about but so little time for it. first of all i have a big fat anouncement to make, and i'm so sorry i didn't anounce this earlier, and i'm sorry i'm not anouncing in a more interesting way (i had it planned as something really big) but here is my big fat anouncement. i am moving. this summer i'm moving from Tartu Estonia to Tallinn Estonia. this is a big deal. my whole life will change. and i have mixed emotions about it. i've known it was a possibility since the begining of december, but for different reasons have only told my most trusted people. the biggest reason is that we weren't sure until we went to finland, then we talked with the big leaders and they decided to send us. the main reason that we're being sent is that a few months ago the wittenbergs, the Tallinn corps officers, moved back to America, leaving the Tallinn corps without real officers. and so for a while our regional commanders, the Tyrells, have been in charge of both the corps and the whole region. now regional commanders and corps officer are both really hard jobs, and despite the fact that i personally think of the Tyrells as some of the greatest officers i've ever met they are only human and it's just too much work, so we are leaving our infant Tartu corps to go take over the Tallinn corps. and then a finnish officer will come take over Tartu, which is another thing i have mixed emotions about. but anyway that is just big fat anouncement i wanted to get out of the way.
now i want to tell you what today is, today is the one year anniversary of my Grandmothers death. this time last year i didn't blog much, and the little i did write was wierd and illogical. so because of what today is please pray for my whole family, especially my mom. i know she really wishes she could be back in america with family today, rather than in Estonia. and it's hard for her so please pray a lot for my mom, Evelyn Clark. i want to tell you a little bit about this time last year, i had just gotten back from english camp and after telling my parents i had had the time of my life i crashed and slept until morning. i woke up next day and found out my mom had gotten a call during the night and her mother, my grandmother, had died. this had come at a horrible time because the next day was the official opening of the Tartu corps, which was going to be a big deal, lots of people coming and all that good stuff. but with this new news my parents had to go to america and it was decided that it was best that i stay alone in estonia for three weeks and try to organize the opening with our friend Kristi's help. and so we did it, my parents left that day or the next, don't remember much, and Tartu corps officially opened, and i stood in for my parents anytime they would have been needed in the meeting. i then spent the next three weeks traveling between tartu and tallinn, living with the wittenbergs in tallinn and staying with küldar here in tartu. it was some of the most excitingly stressful three weeks of my life. and my family went to my grandmother's funeral and mourned her death in america. so anyway that's last years big story.
and now i got back from english camp, didn't get any calls in the night but we're still feeling a little upset. so yeah, pray for us. so now let me tell you about english camp. this was the first english camp i went to with friends, with me i had my friends Liis, Maret, Andrei, Karl-Gustav, and Tonis. plus a new friend named Ats. we got there at around 12:00 monday morning and after settling into our rooms had, what i concidered, a pretty good lunch at 1:00(13:00). the rooms worked out nicely with me, Andrei and Ats sharing a room. it was just one big, very stinky, guy party. so then at 2:00(14:00) we had our first main meeting, got to play some cool games and met all the leaders, some i knew from last year, some were new. it was all good. and we learned our new "english camp cheer" which went like this. Craig, our fearless leader, would point to one half of the room and say "can i get a shout over here!!" to which that half would loudly reply "ENGLISH!!" and then who would point to the other half of the room and say "can i get a shout over here!!" and this side would try to outdo the other in volume yelling "CAMP!!" and after doing that twice would would do a little parody of Gwen Stefani's song "hollaback girl" and say "english camp is bananas, B A ANNA ANNA ANNAS!!" and would then chomp down on a imaginary bannana at the end, which just made me hungry.
and then we went to our small groups after them main meeting and discussed what our great talker guy, Clay, had talked to us about. and i was excited to learn that despite the fact that no one i knew(except on leader) was in my group, i did have as my other group leader the girl friend of my leader from last year, which made my friend Liis (we'd met in english camp last year) very jealous. and then we had a nice 2 hours of free time, played some games, met new people, hung out with people i hadn't seen in a while (group 9 reunited, yay!!) and had all sorts of fun. and then we had dinner and after that we were challenged with "the great game!" which was a really big game. so we split into two groups, groups numbers 1-8 in the gym, and numbers 9-15 went in the main hall. all my friends were in groups 10 and up so i went with my small group (#3) and we kicked some serious butt. the game was that we had to communicate without talking, which for me was wicked hard because i love to talk. we couldn't move our mouths and we couldn't write messages on our mobile phones either, so using our hands my group communicated with the the rest of our group what numbers and letters to pick up and came in 4th the first time but 1st the second so all in all we did pretty good.
and then we switched places, 1-8 into the main hall and 9-15 into the gym and in the main hall we played a much more dificult game, we had 7 people on our team and using our 7 people in a big line we had to communicate, completely in english what a picture in one side of the building looked like so the our artist on the other side could draw it. have you ever played "telephone"? it's the same principle, it was chaos. some how some people ended up with snowmen riding horses in the desert floating in the sky, which wasn't quite right. the only thing we really got wrong in our picture was that we had some cacti the were meant to be windmills, but i mean come on, cacti? windwills? whats the difference? but we definitely didn't win that one, but we had fun anyway. so then after that we went and watched the movie "charlie and the chocolate factory" which was fun and then we played uno and phase ten until we all went up to bed and passed out at around 2:00. and i felt kind of bad because i had wanted to go to the sauna again this year but skipped it. stupid me.
then next morning i woke and bright and early to go to "mornings with matt" and non-mandatory bible study meeting in the morning which the majority of the camps christians go to in the morning. and when i woke up and was getting ready to go i accidently woke up my room mate Ats, who was, and is far is i know still isn't a christian asked me why i was getting up so early. i told him i was sneaking off with the hot redhead to make out in the snow. after we finished laughing at the absurdity of that i told him that i was going to the morning bible study and he asked me what we did there and if he could come, and of course he could so he came. and after singing some songs and a little bible study we went for lunch. me and Ats talked a little bit and he kept saying stuff like "they ask such hard questions here, it makes you think" and i told him that despite popular belief thinking is actually a very good thing. the theme of the camp was "inside out" and we were examining our lives and turning them "inside out", i personally enjoyed it quite a bit. and we then had our second main meeting with the theme of "what is in your mirror?" which was really cool. and after small groups and lunch we had free time! it was a great three hours and fifteen minutes. i played american football for the first time in a year and had my butt kicked by girls. my friend liis made two touchdowns and almost broke her nose, and we were all very proud of her. we then played dodgeball, which wasn't all that great because the balls didn't have as much air as the could have, and i'm not a very good shot anyway so i never got anyone out, except myself. and then for the last hour i played uno with all my friends, which was very enjoyable.
we then had another meeting, themed "what is behind your mask?" which i really liked because i always love to talk about this whole mask idea. we then had small groups and had a good discusion about masks, in the end we decided masks can be a good thing, its all in how you use the mask that makes it good or bad. that was an arguable point but it was were we left it for supper. after eating more nice food there came what i had been dreading all day, the dance. now dancing at english camp is great, and its not some boring dance were you spend the whole time feeling like a loser because you can't find a partner. and if you can't find a partner they find one for you, trust me there. basicly what we do is some guy named something like paul or paulo comes from tallinn and teaches us some dances. which is great because he has ok english but not perfect, and he has to teach us in english so he's going like this "now left, 1-2-7-4, and mens on the inside of circle and right 1-3-6-2" and so on. he's not really as bad as we make fun of him for but he is funny. and i enjoy because you switch partners almost every 30 seconds and so this gives me an excuse to dance with every girl in camp, which how often would it happen that girls would willing dance with me? not often but still, we had fun. that's definitely something i will look forward to next year. so we then went and watched the movie "hitch" which i personally was quite dissapointed by, it gave me no real dating tips (that i didn't already know) and it wasn't all that funny. but we watched it anyway. and then after more uno we again collapsed around 2:00, and i had again skipped the sauna, i'm horrible.
so next day i'm not going to talk about right now because i'm tired, and i'll write more later, so for now, Cya!!
now i want to tell you what today is, today is the one year anniversary of my Grandmothers death. this time last year i didn't blog much, and the little i did write was wierd and illogical. so because of what today is please pray for my whole family, especially my mom. i know she really wishes she could be back in america with family today, rather than in Estonia. and it's hard for her so please pray a lot for my mom, Evelyn Clark. i want to tell you a little bit about this time last year, i had just gotten back from english camp and after telling my parents i had had the time of my life i crashed and slept until morning. i woke up next day and found out my mom had gotten a call during the night and her mother, my grandmother, had died. this had come at a horrible time because the next day was the official opening of the Tartu corps, which was going to be a big deal, lots of people coming and all that good stuff. but with this new news my parents had to go to america and it was decided that it was best that i stay alone in estonia for three weeks and try to organize the opening with our friend Kristi's help. and so we did it, my parents left that day or the next, don't remember much, and Tartu corps officially opened, and i stood in for my parents anytime they would have been needed in the meeting. i then spent the next three weeks traveling between tartu and tallinn, living with the wittenbergs in tallinn and staying with küldar here in tartu. it was some of the most excitingly stressful three weeks of my life. and my family went to my grandmother's funeral and mourned her death in america. so anyway that's last years big story.
and now i got back from english camp, didn't get any calls in the night but we're still feeling a little upset. so yeah, pray for us. so now let me tell you about english camp. this was the first english camp i went to with friends, with me i had my friends Liis, Maret, Andrei, Karl-Gustav, and Tonis. plus a new friend named Ats. we got there at around 12:00 monday morning and after settling into our rooms had, what i concidered, a pretty good lunch at 1:00(13:00). the rooms worked out nicely with me, Andrei and Ats sharing a room. it was just one big, very stinky, guy party. so then at 2:00(14:00) we had our first main meeting, got to play some cool games and met all the leaders, some i knew from last year, some were new. it was all good. and we learned our new "english camp cheer" which went like this. Craig, our fearless leader, would point to one half of the room and say "can i get a shout over here!!" to which that half would loudly reply "ENGLISH!!" and then who would point to the other half of the room and say "can i get a shout over here!!" and this side would try to outdo the other in volume yelling "CAMP!!" and after doing that twice would would do a little parody of Gwen Stefani's song "hollaback girl" and say "english camp is bananas, B A ANNA ANNA ANNAS!!" and would then chomp down on a imaginary bannana at the end, which just made me hungry.
and then we went to our small groups after them main meeting and discussed what our great talker guy, Clay, had talked to us about. and i was excited to learn that despite the fact that no one i knew(except on leader) was in my group, i did have as my other group leader the girl friend of my leader from last year, which made my friend Liis (we'd met in english camp last year) very jealous. and then we had a nice 2 hours of free time, played some games, met new people, hung out with people i hadn't seen in a while (group 9 reunited, yay!!) and had all sorts of fun. and then we had dinner and after that we were challenged with "the great game!" which was a really big game. so we split into two groups, groups numbers 1-8 in the gym, and numbers 9-15 went in the main hall. all my friends were in groups 10 and up so i went with my small group (#3) and we kicked some serious butt. the game was that we had to communicate without talking, which for me was wicked hard because i love to talk. we couldn't move our mouths and we couldn't write messages on our mobile phones either, so using our hands my group communicated with the the rest of our group what numbers and letters to pick up and came in 4th the first time but 1st the second so all in all we did pretty good.
and then we switched places, 1-8 into the main hall and 9-15 into the gym and in the main hall we played a much more dificult game, we had 7 people on our team and using our 7 people in a big line we had to communicate, completely in english what a picture in one side of the building looked like so the our artist on the other side could draw it. have you ever played "telephone"? it's the same principle, it was chaos. some how some people ended up with snowmen riding horses in the desert floating in the sky, which wasn't quite right. the only thing we really got wrong in our picture was that we had some cacti the were meant to be windmills, but i mean come on, cacti? windwills? whats the difference? but we definitely didn't win that one, but we had fun anyway. so then after that we went and watched the movie "charlie and the chocolate factory" which was fun and then we played uno and phase ten until we all went up to bed and passed out at around 2:00. and i felt kind of bad because i had wanted to go to the sauna again this year but skipped it. stupid me.
then next morning i woke and bright and early to go to "mornings with matt" and non-mandatory bible study meeting in the morning which the majority of the camps christians go to in the morning. and when i woke up and was getting ready to go i accidently woke up my room mate Ats, who was, and is far is i know still isn't a christian asked me why i was getting up so early. i told him i was sneaking off with the hot redhead to make out in the snow. after we finished laughing at the absurdity of that i told him that i was going to the morning bible study and he asked me what we did there and if he could come, and of course he could so he came. and after singing some songs and a little bible study we went for lunch. me and Ats talked a little bit and he kept saying stuff like "they ask such hard questions here, it makes you think" and i told him that despite popular belief thinking is actually a very good thing. the theme of the camp was "inside out" and we were examining our lives and turning them "inside out", i personally enjoyed it quite a bit. and we then had our second main meeting with the theme of "what is in your mirror?" which was really cool. and after small groups and lunch we had free time! it was a great three hours and fifteen minutes. i played american football for the first time in a year and had my butt kicked by girls. my friend liis made two touchdowns and almost broke her nose, and we were all very proud of her. we then played dodgeball, which wasn't all that great because the balls didn't have as much air as the could have, and i'm not a very good shot anyway so i never got anyone out, except myself. and then for the last hour i played uno with all my friends, which was very enjoyable.
we then had another meeting, themed "what is behind your mask?" which i really liked because i always love to talk about this whole mask idea. we then had small groups and had a good discusion about masks, in the end we decided masks can be a good thing, its all in how you use the mask that makes it good or bad. that was an arguable point but it was were we left it for supper. after eating more nice food there came what i had been dreading all day, the dance. now dancing at english camp is great, and its not some boring dance were you spend the whole time feeling like a loser because you can't find a partner. and if you can't find a partner they find one for you, trust me there. basicly what we do is some guy named something like paul or paulo comes from tallinn and teaches us some dances. which is great because he has ok english but not perfect, and he has to teach us in english so he's going like this "now left, 1-2-7-4, and mens on the inside of circle and right 1-3-6-2" and so on. he's not really as bad as we make fun of him for but he is funny. and i enjoy because you switch partners almost every 30 seconds and so this gives me an excuse to dance with every girl in camp, which how often would it happen that girls would willing dance with me? not often but still, we had fun. that's definitely something i will look forward to next year. so we then went and watched the movie "hitch" which i personally was quite dissapointed by, it gave me no real dating tips (that i didn't already know) and it wasn't all that funny. but we watched it anyway. and then after more uno we again collapsed around 2:00, and i had again skipped the sauna, i'm horrible.
so next day i'm not going to talk about right now because i'm tired, and i'll write more later, so for now, Cya!!
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
so...do you want to here more?
so anyway, i am now going to finish writing about finland, simply because i like too and also because blogging gives me an excuse to dodge schoolwork. so anyway i left of that i was in finland, babysitting all the time, all that good stuff. one other interesting little highlight of babysitting is i got to be really good friends with little Anyuta Henderson, she kept wanting me to read her books, play games with her, help her with puzzles...all that. and i have to admit one weakness i have, i love little kids, when a cute little three of four year old girl comes and asks me to read her a book it is really hard to say no. i often think that little girls are much more convincing than thier teenage counterparts, but then i get slapped in the face and change my opinion. so that was nice to have a little friend. but anyway wicked fast thursday was upon us, and it was time to head home. so we got back on the evil bus and rode back on another torturing trip back to Helsinki, this trip was better though because i wasn't feeling so sick. but anyway, after a long, long, bus trip we finally arrived in Helisinki, stopping right in front of the the central house corps. i don't know why it's called central house, but just remember that's where i stayed.
so after hauling all our stuff into the elevator and up to the sixth floor, to the old mission team apartment. this place is now aparently a place where people live, but it was free at the time so we stayed there. but before that it had been completely bare. and when it was completely empty it was the holy mission team apartment. i had stayed there so many times, slept on those floors, flirted with girls while walking up those stairs, gotten into fights with Miika in that hallway, the whole place was familiar. and what was even freakier was that i could still spy on my friend Tupei (or however you spell it) because his apartment was directly accross from ours. and once again i was haunted by the ghosts of memories. man i would have given anything to have Anneli and Evelin and everyone else there with me. it's funny because i try to think of who i would want to be there and it's like i want these people, but if they come than these people would have to come too, ad then we would also need him and her. what i really want is the whole mission team back together, i really miss it. but i'll get back to telling you what happened now, when we went in were happy to find some "Reader's Digests" in english for our reading pleasure, and i quickly "digested" all the jokes in them, some of which i'll probably put on here later.
so after settling into the apartment we went out into to Helsinki and went to SubWay, because for (kinda)Estonian nerds like us eating at SubWay is really, really special. so we went and had wonderful subway sandwhiches and left with our stomaches full and hearts happy. because i want to point out to all of you lucky people in america that here in good old estonia we do not have ny of the nice resturants you guys have. no SubWay, no Taco Bell, no Pizza Hut, we have McDonald's but that place sucks in any country. so then we went back home and slept quite comfortably. we spent the whole next day in finland running around, we went to Ikea which was a special treat. we walked into the lobby of a really nice Holiday Inn and got to see a clock that showed what time it was in New York (4 in the morning then) and left finalnd quite happy, despite the fact that while on the way to Ikea we had gotten a phone call about our house being broken into. but then came the boat trip.
Tero, one of the cadet's from the training collgege, gave us a ride to the ferry terminal and we got on the boat at 8:30, and then we left...kind of. the boat was scheduled to leave at 8:30, and then came the first anouncement: "we are sorry to nounce that there is a delay for such and such a reson until so and so a time" not good. so we finally did leave at 9:30, an hour late. so we started going and got ready for the three hour trip, and then the noises started. when it's the middle of winter and your in the middle of the baltic sea there is a lot, and i mean a lot, of ice. so much ice in fact that the whole sea would be frozen solid were it not for the nice ice breaker boats that work so hard trying to break up the ice without sinking. so as you can imagine even with the ice broken up there was stil a heck of a lot to rub up against the side of the boat, quite enough to make it sound like we were about to be smashed into pieces. it was quite a freaky trip, at one time the boat came to a complete stop on the water and when i went up on top i couldn't see land anywhere, which is always freaky becuase usually for about at least one out of the three hours on board you can see some land. but did start again eventually, but we had huge delays. how huge you ask? we were supposed to get to tallin around 11:30 pm, we arrived around 2:00 pm. it was bad, that was one of the worst boat trips i've ever taken.
so anyway the next day we woke up in Tallinn, it was nice saturday morning and my dad went down to tartu with my sister to check out the robberie while me and my mom stayed in tallinn. we had a very niced relaxed day, watched movies, blogged, read E-mails, laid around. all in all a pretty good day. and it became even better because to give the day a nice good ending we invited my friends Anneli and Elis up to the apartment we were staying at for some tea and had a good time just chatting with them. i mean seriously, what on earth could be more enjoyable then chatting up girls? so then after a good night's sleep we woke up, went downstair's and while my mom led church at the tallinn corps i babysat peter, which was, as always, a fun little adventure. and after that we kiddnapped Anneli and Elis again and forced them to eat pizza with us, because we're so mean we force people to eat pizza. and then i went down to the corps with them and helped them pick up the corps, and then we just hung out and listened to music and all that goodness. there was one great song, by that wierd band aqua that does "barbie girl". i believe the sone was called "tarzan" it was really interesting: "tarzan is handsome, tarzan is strong. tarzan is cute and his hair is long!!" i just liked the bit were tarzan said "hey cheetah, get bannana, hey moneky, get funky!!" because any time you throw the word "funky" into a song it is instantly cool. and i of course had fun mocking the song making up two alternative versions. #1 "tarzan is freaky, tarzan is wrong. tarzan is wierd and he wears a thong" which made me laugh. and then #2 was "peter is hadsome, peter is strong. he's really is cute and his hair is blond" which is so true.
so anyway that ended my grand adventure, and i returned to tartu, assesed the damage of the robbery, and returned to normal life, but now i gotta go, so see you all later!!
p.s. i've only gotten one E-mail, i am waiting. i want at least to people to send me E-mails, don't send me a picture if you don't want but just send me something!! blablablabla!!
so after hauling all our stuff into the elevator and up to the sixth floor, to the old mission team apartment. this place is now aparently a place where people live, but it was free at the time so we stayed there. but before that it had been completely bare. and when it was completely empty it was the holy mission team apartment. i had stayed there so many times, slept on those floors, flirted with girls while walking up those stairs, gotten into fights with Miika in that hallway, the whole place was familiar. and what was even freakier was that i could still spy on my friend Tupei (or however you spell it) because his apartment was directly accross from ours. and once again i was haunted by the ghosts of memories. man i would have given anything to have Anneli and Evelin and everyone else there with me. it's funny because i try to think of who i would want to be there and it's like i want these people, but if they come than these people would have to come too, ad then we would also need him and her. what i really want is the whole mission team back together, i really miss it. but i'll get back to telling you what happened now, when we went in were happy to find some "Reader's Digests" in english for our reading pleasure, and i quickly "digested" all the jokes in them, some of which i'll probably put on here later.
so after settling into the apartment we went out into to Helsinki and went to SubWay, because for (kinda)Estonian nerds like us eating at SubWay is really, really special. so we went and had wonderful subway sandwhiches and left with our stomaches full and hearts happy. because i want to point out to all of you lucky people in america that here in good old estonia we do not have ny of the nice resturants you guys have. no SubWay, no Taco Bell, no Pizza Hut, we have McDonald's but that place sucks in any country. so then we went back home and slept quite comfortably. we spent the whole next day in finland running around, we went to Ikea which was a special treat. we walked into the lobby of a really nice Holiday Inn and got to see a clock that showed what time it was in New York (4 in the morning then) and left finalnd quite happy, despite the fact that while on the way to Ikea we had gotten a phone call about our house being broken into. but then came the boat trip.
Tero, one of the cadet's from the training collgege, gave us a ride to the ferry terminal and we got on the boat at 8:30, and then we left...kind of. the boat was scheduled to leave at 8:30, and then came the first anouncement: "we are sorry to nounce that there is a delay for such and such a reson until so and so a time" not good. so we finally did leave at 9:30, an hour late. so we started going and got ready for the three hour trip, and then the noises started. when it's the middle of winter and your in the middle of the baltic sea there is a lot, and i mean a lot, of ice. so much ice in fact that the whole sea would be frozen solid were it not for the nice ice breaker boats that work so hard trying to break up the ice without sinking. so as you can imagine even with the ice broken up there was stil a heck of a lot to rub up against the side of the boat, quite enough to make it sound like we were about to be smashed into pieces. it was quite a freaky trip, at one time the boat came to a complete stop on the water and when i went up on top i couldn't see land anywhere, which is always freaky becuase usually for about at least one out of the three hours on board you can see some land. but did start again eventually, but we had huge delays. how huge you ask? we were supposed to get to tallin around 11:30 pm, we arrived around 2:00 pm. it was bad, that was one of the worst boat trips i've ever taken.
so anyway the next day we woke up in Tallinn, it was nice saturday morning and my dad went down to tartu with my sister to check out the robberie while me and my mom stayed in tallinn. we had a very niced relaxed day, watched movies, blogged, read E-mails, laid around. all in all a pretty good day. and it became even better because to give the day a nice good ending we invited my friends Anneli and Elis up to the apartment we were staying at for some tea and had a good time just chatting with them. i mean seriously, what on earth could be more enjoyable then chatting up girls? so then after a good night's sleep we woke up, went downstair's and while my mom led church at the tallinn corps i babysat peter, which was, as always, a fun little adventure. and after that we kiddnapped Anneli and Elis again and forced them to eat pizza with us, because we're so mean we force people to eat pizza. and then i went down to the corps with them and helped them pick up the corps, and then we just hung out and listened to music and all that goodness. there was one great song, by that wierd band aqua that does "barbie girl". i believe the sone was called "tarzan" it was really interesting: "tarzan is handsome, tarzan is strong. tarzan is cute and his hair is long!!" i just liked the bit were tarzan said "hey cheetah, get bannana, hey moneky, get funky!!" because any time you throw the word "funky" into a song it is instantly cool. and i of course had fun mocking the song making up two alternative versions. #1 "tarzan is freaky, tarzan is wrong. tarzan is wierd and he wears a thong" which made me laugh. and then #2 was "peter is hadsome, peter is strong. he's really is cute and his hair is blond" which is so true.
so anyway that ended my grand adventure, and i returned to tartu, assesed the damage of the robbery, and returned to normal life, but now i gotta go, so see you all later!!
p.s. i've only gotten one E-mail, i am waiting. i want at least to people to send me E-mails, don't send me a picture if you don't want but just send me something!! blablablabla!!
Monday, March 13, 2006
so where was i...? was that at all interesting?
i am hoping that was at least slightly interesting simply because if it wasn't no one will ever read my blog again and everyone will hate me!! ahhh!! not really, it's just that i'm gonna blog about the same type of stuff now, so let's zoom forward few days to, say, today. today is monday, the 13th of march, and i woke up feeling like crap. i had gotten home last night at roughly midnight, and then spent a rough hour taking a tired inventory of my room, saying "this is gone, this is still here, that's gone, that's still here..." a fun little crap i do every time i get robbed. and when i did this i found something most tragic, something that makes me very sad, the N64 controller that was stolen was no ordinary controller, it had "sentimental value". what does that mean? around a year ago (i think) when i was in america at my cousin Adam's house he gave me a wicked cool black N64 controller, and through pure luck and good planning it has survived three other robberies, it was my "magic" controller, no matter how hard it tried to get stolen i loved it too much. but because i loved it so much it was also the controller i always used and was therefore plugged into the N64 at the time it was stolen, and now it is no more. i've been meaning to send an E-mail to my cousin anyway but nw i have a reason, i can tell him about his magic controller he gave me.
but anyway, let me tell you about today. today at ten we went to a pawn-shop type store where we have been told people buy and sell stolen things, to see if they might have our stuff. now of course my mom can't understand why this place isn't shut down if it's known for this, but i say the reasons are so obvious i don't feel like typing them (lies, everything is a lie). but anyway we went to this shop called "tuhat asja" which seems to mean "thousand things" but i'm not sure, it looks more like "thousand thing" but that doesn't work with my logic. so anyway this store was supposed to open at ten, so we went at the obvious time, ten. with us went our friend Ermo for help with translation. so my dad, Ermo and i waited, and waited, and waited. we waited until ten thirty and the shop still didn't open. it was funny to, because in that half our while we standed in the freezing cold we saw four people come and try to go to this store. first there was this guy who reminded me of a rather ugly teenage gorilla, he came first and looked at the store and noticed me staring at him and then walked on, ten minutes later he came back, saw us still there and decided to try the door anyway, it was, as we already knew, locked. so he turned on his heel and left. next came a guy who reminded me of some kind of giant rat, and his eyes really bugged me. he went up, tried the door and quickly walked of. next came two guys together, and they didn't remind me of any nasty animal but but they kept whispering and staring at us, and after trying the door quickly left. and so after waiting a whole half hour after the store should have opened we left.
but of course i am not defeated so easily, me and my dad returned a little before 12 and saw the door open, inviting us. i quickly walked in and eyed all the store had to offer. crap mobile phones, no thanks. stolen cameras, maybe some other day (not). nintendo 64, uh-uh, or wait, did i say nintendo 64? as i looked around the store i noticed, hidden under some rubber thing, a nintendo 64. and this was not just any nintendo 64, this was a pokemon N64!! i almost cracked up when i saw that. i checked it out obviously not mine, from the pikachu on the front to the europen power plug on the back i knew sucker wasn't mine, but just seeing a N64 kinda bugged me. i must admit i was quite upset to see that the N64 and some other game system i didn't recognize were being used to hold a pile of books. i always have quite a bit of respect for game systems, no matter how old and nerdy. but anyway after a quick survey of the store and talking to the owner we saw that nothing of ours was there. quite sad really.
and now another quite upsetting thing is that a boy we know from our youth group told a girl from our youth group he knows who did it, but he won't tell who. i just want to say, in the most respectful nice way possible, you're a frickin' jerk boy. if you're a little 8 year old then you say things like "i know who broke the vase but i'm not gonna tell you!!" but if you're a teenager then you need to grow up. either shut up or blab what you know, i don't care which just do it. but it's not fair to say "i know but ain't telling you!!" that's just retarded, and i resent it. i just hate this whole thing because i'm not good at this type of crap, my parents are good at the whole "responding with grace thing" but deep inside i still would love to see some heads smashed. but i am good at the whole "letting other people take over" thing so i'm just letting my parents deal with everything, and i don't care. but anyway, that's all upsetting, tommorow or later tonight i'll write something better, but now i'm supposed to be babysitting so i gotta go.
but anyway, let me tell you about today. today at ten we went to a pawn-shop type store where we have been told people buy and sell stolen things, to see if they might have our stuff. now of course my mom can't understand why this place isn't shut down if it's known for this, but i say the reasons are so obvious i don't feel like typing them (lies, everything is a lie). but anyway we went to this shop called "tuhat asja" which seems to mean "thousand things" but i'm not sure, it looks more like "thousand thing" but that doesn't work with my logic. so anyway this store was supposed to open at ten, so we went at the obvious time, ten. with us went our friend Ermo for help with translation. so my dad, Ermo and i waited, and waited, and waited. we waited until ten thirty and the shop still didn't open. it was funny to, because in that half our while we standed in the freezing cold we saw four people come and try to go to this store. first there was this guy who reminded me of a rather ugly teenage gorilla, he came first and looked at the store and noticed me staring at him and then walked on, ten minutes later he came back, saw us still there and decided to try the door anyway, it was, as we already knew, locked. so he turned on his heel and left. next came a guy who reminded me of some kind of giant rat, and his eyes really bugged me. he went up, tried the door and quickly walked of. next came two guys together, and they didn't remind me of any nasty animal but but they kept whispering and staring at us, and after trying the door quickly left. and so after waiting a whole half hour after the store should have opened we left.
but of course i am not defeated so easily, me and my dad returned a little before 12 and saw the door open, inviting us. i quickly walked in and eyed all the store had to offer. crap mobile phones, no thanks. stolen cameras, maybe some other day (not). nintendo 64, uh-uh, or wait, did i say nintendo 64? as i looked around the store i noticed, hidden under some rubber thing, a nintendo 64. and this was not just any nintendo 64, this was a pokemon N64!! i almost cracked up when i saw that. i checked it out obviously not mine, from the pikachu on the front to the europen power plug on the back i knew sucker wasn't mine, but just seeing a N64 kinda bugged me. i must admit i was quite upset to see that the N64 and some other game system i didn't recognize were being used to hold a pile of books. i always have quite a bit of respect for game systems, no matter how old and nerdy. but anyway after a quick survey of the store and talking to the owner we saw that nothing of ours was there. quite sad really.
and now another quite upsetting thing is that a boy we know from our youth group told a girl from our youth group he knows who did it, but he won't tell who. i just want to say, in the most respectful nice way possible, you're a frickin' jerk boy. if you're a little 8 year old then you say things like "i know who broke the vase but i'm not gonna tell you!!" but if you're a teenager then you need to grow up. either shut up or blab what you know, i don't care which just do it. but it's not fair to say "i know but ain't telling you!!" that's just retarded, and i resent it. i just hate this whole thing because i'm not good at this type of crap, my parents are good at the whole "responding with grace thing" but deep inside i still would love to see some heads smashed. but i am good at the whole "letting other people take over" thing so i'm just letting my parents deal with everything, and i don't care. but anyway, that's all upsetting, tommorow or later tonight i'll write something better, but now i'm supposed to be babysitting so i gotta go.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
so anyway, something interesting to write about now.
now i am just going to tell you more about my time in finland and just whats going on in my life. but first i want to say one thing, you guys all stink. you guys all are the one blog reader(s) to not rule them all!! i asked over a week ao for E-mails with your name, where you're from and a picture of yourself, and i would then pick the one blog reader to rule them all. well i knew my blog wasn't that interesting but come on, i was hoping for more E-mails, i mean, like, at least, maybe, ONE!!! i feel quite personally insulted by the fact that no one E-mailed me, that makes me the on blog reader to rule them all, but i guess i already am, because i, of course, have read every single post, even the deleted and edited ones. so anyway, i am now asking you once again, the adress is chrisjohnclark@juno.com, just E-mail me your name, where you are currently living (just the state/country will do), and if possible a pretty, pretty picture of yourself. and then you will win the honor of being the on blog reader to rule them all, if i pick you. if for some reason i get 500 hundred E-mails (never gonna happen) then i will pick whomever i know best, but if i only get a few (most likely) then i will figure how i pick who i pick later. so send those E-mails, send 'em to chrisjohnclark@juno.com, GO NOW!!!
but anyway now you want to know more about my life. or maybe you don't, but i'm writing about it anyway. so anyway last week, monday, i went to finand. i first drove up to tallinn, and then the adventures started. for some strange reason, literally just after getting into tallinn, while waiting for a red light the in the car , the car did something really stupid, it stopped working. let me explain a little bit that that this is not surprising, our car is a bucket of bolts, it sucks, it's crap. i'm surprised it's still alive as much as it is, it should be dead. but somehow it survives, if anything is a miracle that is. so you get the idea, crap car, not surprising it stopped. but anyway so the car stops at this red light and for a minute we sit there, my dad keeps messing with it, we're all praying it'll start, we have a big truck behind us, all that fun. so finally a few minutes later the truck driver comes out and asks what's going on and, because my whole family is like freaked out i became the translater and quickly said "anna andeks, auto on, uhh.."(hesitating looking for the right word)"...auto on, nagu, surnud!" or in english "sorry, the car is..uh...the car is, like, dead!" so feeling very proud of informing him that the car was dead i was very surprised when a minute later the car started again for no aparent reason. so for a minute the car worked great, we went forward for a a hundred or so yards and then the car stopped again and my dad coasted to the side of the road and just couldn't start it again. so he jumped out of the car and ran to a gas station to get some gas just in case the problem was we were out of gas, which he said of course wasn't the problem. it was the problem, ten minutes later the car was working fine again.
so anyway after that fun little thing we drove over to the boat terminal and with five minutes to spare we got our tickets and jumped on the boat. the boat trip was really freaky for one reason. the whole time i kept seeing ghosts. no, this has nothing to do with the fact i was stilling feeling sick at the time. and no, i don't mean "ghost busters" or "BOO" type ghosts. i mean memories. we were on a viking line boat that i had been on many times before with my friends on the mission team. i had sung kareoke with my friends in the kareoke bar here...we had taken over the dance floor in the dancing bar and danced a mssion team dance here...i had defended my good friend Evelin when some drunk guy had hit on her in the bar here...so many memories. as i walked the boat the whole place seemed so empty, so dirty. the whole trip i just moved from place to place sitting and being bored. the whole trip i really missed my friends. because, no offense to my family but, traveling with a family compared to traveling with my best friends on earth is a big difference, and traveling with my family sucks.
but anyway after getting to finland the training principle, Peeter (yes i'm on first name terms with the training principle, i rule!!), came and brought us to our hotel were we stayed for the night, which was pretty fancy for me, i felt very special staying in this hotel and getting to watch cabel TV, all these things that people take for granted are very, very special for me. and then then early next morning after a quick breakfast we ran (we had to run, we were late) to the bus and got on the demonic bus that we would be on for the next four hours. the whole bus trip i slept and and listened to music, two of my all time favorite things, but still the trip was torture, i was stuck in the back with Christian Kalme, the most spoiled brat in all of Estonia, who wouldn't quit bugging me. first he wanted my mp3 player, then he wanted me to give him some candy and couldn't believe i didn't have any, and then he wanted me to do this and that and the other thing, to which i promptly replied: NO, GO AWAY!! which he did eventually. so as we traveled through finland on the demon bus, picking up more and more salvationists, most of whom i knew from mission team trips, i once again felt the pans of missing my friends. so then after a long time traveling we did the most amazing thing, we stopped!! there was a nice rest area were we stopped and chilled, and i got to eat for the first time in two days, i had three bites of donut, which when feeling sick usually isn't a good choice for most humans, but once again that fact that donuts make me feel good when i'm sick made me think i'm not human. and then i saw it, walking through the store i saw a little thingy with books on it, i paused and looked at the covers and read the names. and then i freaked out. sitting next to each were two books from series i would love to read. they had two books from the Ranma 1/2 anime series and one book from the Inuyasha anime series, both that i've wanted to read for a while. and so, with my heart beating rapidly in my chest i reached out and picked up Ranma 1/2, opened the cover and...finnish, no, not finish, finnish!! the whole stinking thing was in finnish!! so quite annoyed by the anime pleasured being denied me i put down Ranma 1/2 and picked up Inuyasha, opened roughly to the middle of the book and saw a really cool picture, Inuyasha with his big sword out, fighting some one and yelling something to Kagome, i looked to read it and...it said something like this "hei, nyt bla bla shikon no tama bla bla bla, bla bla, bla BLA!!!" the smelly crap was in finnish!! so in extreme annoyance i walked out.
so after i was safely back in he bus and having Evanescence sing away my worries i contemplated the sad fact that even Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2 were in finnish, it really does suck. the idea of reading about a half human, half dog demon, and reading about people who whenever they get water spilled on them turn into something funky, really appealed to me. even more than Fruits Basket where people turn into animals when hugged (i didn't know that happened so often until i watched this with some buds in Tartu). so anyway i finally arrived in the place where we were going, somewhere in the vicinity of Pori, and did the basic get the room keys, put the bags in the rooms, say hi to every one and then finally ate lunch. after that i reported to daycare with the kids and commenced work. it was fairly simple. basic translation between Russian, Finnish, Estonian and English, which because it was all those languages i barely know it was extrordinarily basic, it was basically telling the Russian boy, Anton, a good loud "NYET!!" every time he would hit one of the other kids, and telling the Finnish ladies every time an English speaking kid needed to go to the toilet, because of course i know the all important way of asking how to go to the bathroom in any language, just point to your butt and make farting noises. no, not really. but i did know how to tell them which kids needed the toilet.
so anyway that was the next few days, eating, watching brats, and sleeping. but there were a few highlights. one nice thing that happened was i played frisbee with my friend Yuri, the Helsinki multi-cultural corps(main language:Russian) officer, because his corps has a "ultimate frisbee" team. you know ultimate frisbee right? thats the sport where they combine american football with frisbee. well this corps actually has a ultimate frisbee team that is pretty good, so Yuri taught me how to chuck a frisbee like an expert, so look out now if i'm ever mad at you and have a frisbee handy i'll kick yo butt. and another interesting thing that happened was one of our Brazillian friends came up and leaned over my mom and in his deep voice said "YOUR FAMILY IS.." "AHHH!!" said my mom, who for some strange reason always gets freaked out by when some one sneaks up behind her and, especially if it's someone with a deep kinda freaky voice(no offense). so he just informed us that our family was the best known to him because he reads my parents blog. now i don't know if he reads my blog, but whatever. we had fun joking about it later though, joking about what something scary he might have said. my favorite was "your family is the eternl enemy of my family, i am sworn to hunt you down and kill you" which for some reason makes me laugh but anyway.
but the biggest, most interesting thing that happened was this. for the first time in forever i was ot the oly perso there who was over 15 and under 20, and as an added bonus, it was a girl! and as a super plus, she was American!! the Henderson family, who are Russian/American (don't ask) had gotten a helper to come from America, because since they have five kids, all under ten, it is helpful to, well, have help!! so she was there and was in childcare with me most of the time helping take care of the kids. we didn't talk much but i am now very exited that there is another american young person in estonia who is newer than me!! i love it when other people are new because then i look smart, but the truth is i can never look smart so i defeat the purpose anyway. but anyway, that was the basics of the week, i hve a heck of a lot more to write about but i'm tired now, so i'm going, bye!!
but anyway now you want to know more about my life. or maybe you don't, but i'm writing about it anyway. so anyway last week, monday, i went to finand. i first drove up to tallinn, and then the adventures started. for some strange reason, literally just after getting into tallinn, while waiting for a red light the in the car , the car did something really stupid, it stopped working. let me explain a little bit that that this is not surprising, our car is a bucket of bolts, it sucks, it's crap. i'm surprised it's still alive as much as it is, it should be dead. but somehow it survives, if anything is a miracle that is. so you get the idea, crap car, not surprising it stopped. but anyway so the car stops at this red light and for a minute we sit there, my dad keeps messing with it, we're all praying it'll start, we have a big truck behind us, all that fun. so finally a few minutes later the truck driver comes out and asks what's going on and, because my whole family is like freaked out i became the translater and quickly said "anna andeks, auto on, uhh.."(hesitating looking for the right word)"...auto on, nagu, surnud!" or in english "sorry, the car is..uh...the car is, like, dead!" so feeling very proud of informing him that the car was dead i was very surprised when a minute later the car started again for no aparent reason. so for a minute the car worked great, we went forward for a a hundred or so yards and then the car stopped again and my dad coasted to the side of the road and just couldn't start it again. so he jumped out of the car and ran to a gas station to get some gas just in case the problem was we were out of gas, which he said of course wasn't the problem. it was the problem, ten minutes later the car was working fine again.
so anyway after that fun little thing we drove over to the boat terminal and with five minutes to spare we got our tickets and jumped on the boat. the boat trip was really freaky for one reason. the whole time i kept seeing ghosts. no, this has nothing to do with the fact i was stilling feeling sick at the time. and no, i don't mean "ghost busters" or "BOO" type ghosts. i mean memories. we were on a viking line boat that i had been on many times before with my friends on the mission team. i had sung kareoke with my friends in the kareoke bar here...we had taken over the dance floor in the dancing bar and danced a mssion team dance here...i had defended my good friend Evelin when some drunk guy had hit on her in the bar here...so many memories. as i walked the boat the whole place seemed so empty, so dirty. the whole trip i just moved from place to place sitting and being bored. the whole trip i really missed my friends. because, no offense to my family but, traveling with a family compared to traveling with my best friends on earth is a big difference, and traveling with my family sucks.
but anyway after getting to finland the training principle, Peeter (yes i'm on first name terms with the training principle, i rule!!), came and brought us to our hotel were we stayed for the night, which was pretty fancy for me, i felt very special staying in this hotel and getting to watch cabel TV, all these things that people take for granted are very, very special for me. and then then early next morning after a quick breakfast we ran (we had to run, we were late) to the bus and got on the demonic bus that we would be on for the next four hours. the whole bus trip i slept and and listened to music, two of my all time favorite things, but still the trip was torture, i was stuck in the back with Christian Kalme, the most spoiled brat in all of Estonia, who wouldn't quit bugging me. first he wanted my mp3 player, then he wanted me to give him some candy and couldn't believe i didn't have any, and then he wanted me to do this and that and the other thing, to which i promptly replied: NO, GO AWAY!! which he did eventually. so as we traveled through finland on the demon bus, picking up more and more salvationists, most of whom i knew from mission team trips, i once again felt the pans of missing my friends. so then after a long time traveling we did the most amazing thing, we stopped!! there was a nice rest area were we stopped and chilled, and i got to eat for the first time in two days, i had three bites of donut, which when feeling sick usually isn't a good choice for most humans, but once again that fact that donuts make me feel good when i'm sick made me think i'm not human. and then i saw it, walking through the store i saw a little thingy with books on it, i paused and looked at the covers and read the names. and then i freaked out. sitting next to each were two books from series i would love to read. they had two books from the Ranma 1/2 anime series and one book from the Inuyasha anime series, both that i've wanted to read for a while. and so, with my heart beating rapidly in my chest i reached out and picked up Ranma 1/2, opened the cover and...finnish, no, not finish, finnish!! the whole stinking thing was in finnish!! so quite annoyed by the anime pleasured being denied me i put down Ranma 1/2 and picked up Inuyasha, opened roughly to the middle of the book and saw a really cool picture, Inuyasha with his big sword out, fighting some one and yelling something to Kagome, i looked to read it and...it said something like this "hei, nyt bla bla shikon no tama bla bla bla, bla bla, bla BLA!!!" the smelly crap was in finnish!! so in extreme annoyance i walked out.
so after i was safely back in he bus and having Evanescence sing away my worries i contemplated the sad fact that even Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2 were in finnish, it really does suck. the idea of reading about a half human, half dog demon, and reading about people who whenever they get water spilled on them turn into something funky, really appealed to me. even more than Fruits Basket where people turn into animals when hugged (i didn't know that happened so often until i watched this with some buds in Tartu). so anyway i finally arrived in the place where we were going, somewhere in the vicinity of Pori, and did the basic get the room keys, put the bags in the rooms, say hi to every one and then finally ate lunch. after that i reported to daycare with the kids and commenced work. it was fairly simple. basic translation between Russian, Finnish, Estonian and English, which because it was all those languages i barely know it was extrordinarily basic, it was basically telling the Russian boy, Anton, a good loud "NYET!!" every time he would hit one of the other kids, and telling the Finnish ladies every time an English speaking kid needed to go to the toilet, because of course i know the all important way of asking how to go to the bathroom in any language, just point to your butt and make farting noises. no, not really. but i did know how to tell them which kids needed the toilet.
so anyway that was the next few days, eating, watching brats, and sleeping. but there were a few highlights. one nice thing that happened was i played frisbee with my friend Yuri, the Helsinki multi-cultural corps(main language:Russian) officer, because his corps has a "ultimate frisbee" team. you know ultimate frisbee right? thats the sport where they combine american football with frisbee. well this corps actually has a ultimate frisbee team that is pretty good, so Yuri taught me how to chuck a frisbee like an expert, so look out now if i'm ever mad at you and have a frisbee handy i'll kick yo butt. and another interesting thing that happened was one of our Brazillian friends came up and leaned over my mom and in his deep voice said "YOUR FAMILY IS.." "AHHH!!" said my mom, who for some strange reason always gets freaked out by when some one sneaks up behind her and, especially if it's someone with a deep kinda freaky voice(no offense). so he just informed us that our family was the best known to him because he reads my parents blog. now i don't know if he reads my blog, but whatever. we had fun joking about it later though, joking about what something scary he might have said. my favorite was "your family is the eternl enemy of my family, i am sworn to hunt you down and kill you" which for some reason makes me laugh but anyway.
but the biggest, most interesting thing that happened was this. for the first time in forever i was ot the oly perso there who was over 15 and under 20, and as an added bonus, it was a girl! and as a super plus, she was American!! the Henderson family, who are Russian/American (don't ask) had gotten a helper to come from America, because since they have five kids, all under ten, it is helpful to, well, have help!! so she was there and was in childcare with me most of the time helping take care of the kids. we didn't talk much but i am now very exited that there is another american young person in estonia who is newer than me!! i love it when other people are new because then i look smart, but the truth is i can never look smart so i defeat the purpose anyway. but anyway, that was the basics of the week, i hve a heck of a lot more to write about but i'm tired now, so i'm going, bye!!
Saturday, March 11, 2006
fun in finland...kinda...roberies tend to screw that up...
hey, i just got back from a nice week in finland only to find something wonderful had happened in my absence, some idiots decided to rob my house. i say idiots because it was a pretty crappily done job. i mean come on, if you wanna rob me do it right. the total amount of damage from my room: the family video camera, my nintendo 64, one controller, one game, and my brand new wireless X-box controller. i just want to point out that since this is my forth time being robbed in two years my games are well hidden when i leave the country for a week, so to rob my room is stupidity, it was sheer dumb luck that my nintendo 64, the video camera, and my new controller were on my desk at the time. but let me back up a little, this is the chronicles of chris, i must chronicle. so anyway on friday afternoon i was in finland with my family taking a bus from helsinki to some wierd place so we could go to Ikea, which is actually quite a nice treat for us, when we got a call frm the guy who had been house sitting for us that our house had been broken into. i just want to make clear that this was our friend küldar, and we trust him to watch our house when we are away, he does it a lot. he had gone out for a few hours in the morning and aparently someone had been watching the house or something because when he came back some one had broken in. not much was stolen (compared to last time) and it was a pretty junky job. they smashed in our basement window, not my window, thank god, and came in, got what they wanted from my room, went upstairs and took the computer, and then they left. i still aven't been to the house but from what i've heard that is what happened. at the moment i am on our last remaning computer, property of the tartu corps (which we're in charge of so for the most part ours), in Tallinn, Estonia, rather than home in Tartu, Estonia.
so anyway now that i've told you the basics of what happened i want to tell you of the utter stupidity of my robber friends, i always feel a little bit like even though the robber gets the the stuff, the robbed can get the last laugh, if they have a sense of humor. thank god i do. so here is my last laugh, i am going to capitalize it to show how much i am enjoying it. THE WIRELESS -X-BOX CONTROLLER THAT WAS STOLEN WAS MISSING THE RECIEVER, WHICH IS STILL CONNECTED TO MY X-BOX, SO THEREFORE, YOU SUCK, I ROCK!! YOU STOLE USELESS PLASTIC!!! and THE WONDERFUL LAPTOP YOU STOLE HAS A SMASHED IN SCREEN AND RUNS SLOWER THAN A SNAIL, SO UNLESS YOU FEEL LIKE FIXING UP THE SOFTWARE AND EITHER REPAIRING THE SCREEN OR HOOKING IT UP TO A MONITOR YOU MADE THE INTELIGENT CHOICE OF STEALING USELESS, PLASTIC, CRAP!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! there is my grand last laugh. i am actually enjoying this a little bit too much, i think i may have snapped in the head. but whatever, i just want to point out that this isn't bugging me as much as it did last time. i hope you idiots who broke in are reading this because you guys suck, i fart in your general direction!! oops, now i'm stealing from monty python, whatever.
so anyway i am done insulting those really, horribly stupid, completely brainless, messed up idiots. now i want to tell you what really bugs us about this robbery. it was done by someone who knew the house, knew what we had, and for the most part knew where to find it (but i outsmarted you freaks!!). we think it was some of our youth from our youth group. yowch!! that's a hit below the belt, that's not right. i am seriously hoping it was not some wierdo who we know, not one of the people who we brought into our house and fed. it can't be them, it sincerly hope not. i prefer to be robbed by random people, not people who i know, not people who i joked around with. not people who i tried to be thier friend, hope not, pray not. but anyway, it doesn't matter, life goes on, i'm gonna go check my E-mail now becuase i haven't done that in like over a week, so anyway i'll write more later, i want to write more about finland, i'm thinking of writing "the adventures of the 16 year old babysitter" because that'll be fun, but for now i must say, goodbye.
so anyway now that i've told you the basics of what happened i want to tell you of the utter stupidity of my robber friends, i always feel a little bit like even though the robber gets the the stuff, the robbed can get the last laugh, if they have a sense of humor. thank god i do. so here is my last laugh, i am going to capitalize it to show how much i am enjoying it. THE WIRELESS -X-BOX CONTROLLER THAT WAS STOLEN WAS MISSING THE RECIEVER, WHICH IS STILL CONNECTED TO MY X-BOX, SO THEREFORE, YOU SUCK, I ROCK!! YOU STOLE USELESS PLASTIC!!! and THE WONDERFUL LAPTOP YOU STOLE HAS A SMASHED IN SCREEN AND RUNS SLOWER THAN A SNAIL, SO UNLESS YOU FEEL LIKE FIXING UP THE SOFTWARE AND EITHER REPAIRING THE SCREEN OR HOOKING IT UP TO A MONITOR YOU MADE THE INTELIGENT CHOICE OF STEALING USELESS, PLASTIC, CRAP!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! there is my grand last laugh. i am actually enjoying this a little bit too much, i think i may have snapped in the head. but whatever, i just want to point out that this isn't bugging me as much as it did last time. i hope you idiots who broke in are reading this because you guys suck, i fart in your general direction!! oops, now i'm stealing from monty python, whatever.
so anyway i am done insulting those really, horribly stupid, completely brainless, messed up idiots. now i want to tell you what really bugs us about this robbery. it was done by someone who knew the house, knew what we had, and for the most part knew where to find it (but i outsmarted you freaks!!). we think it was some of our youth from our youth group. yowch!! that's a hit below the belt, that's not right. i am seriously hoping it was not some wierdo who we know, not one of the people who we brought into our house and fed. it can't be them, it sincerly hope not. i prefer to be robbed by random people, not people who i know, not people who i joked around with. not people who i tried to be thier friend, hope not, pray not. but anyway, it doesn't matter, life goes on, i'm gonna go check my E-mail now becuase i haven't done that in like over a week, so anyway i'll write more later, i want to write more about finland, i'm thinking of writing "the adventures of the 16 year old babysitter" because that'll be fun, but for now i must say, goodbye.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Ooooh, crap!! I feel like...(you guessed it) crap! Oh, and happy anniversary!!
if you're sick and you know it complain all day!! do you like my added verse to "if you're happy and you know it"? i am feeling, if possible, worse than i did yesterday. i am very, very, very angry!! i wanted to go to Rakvere to go to Anton's birthday!! but if i went now it would kind of suck because i'd be coughing and snotting all over the place, no fun, none at all. so i am extremely upset about that, but i do have two consolations. 1. tommorow is my brothers birthday and i'll get to be here for that, and 2. today is the anniversary of my blog!! so as a special present i'm giving you a hot picture of me in summer!!, just because it's not summer now doesn't mean i can't remember how good summer is. this is a picture of me after my "Extreme MakeOver". which was not at all as impressive as it sounds. it was basicly haveing Anneli tell the haircut people how to cut my hair, instead of me stumbling over the Estonian, and then i bought some nasty hair gel and it took three girls (no joke, three!!) to do my hair. my hair is very stubborn, that's why i never comb it. and i also had Anneli pick out my wardrobe (i would normally never wear that shirt unless it was a special occasion, i always wear T-shirts) and then we ran around tartu and took pictures of everything. so anyway that's the story of that picture, and by the way i'm sitting on the side of the statue of the kissing students in Tartu town ahll square, just in case you were wondering. so anyway i want to do something special for my blog anniversary, and here it is. i'm going to take a census, i want to know who you are if you read my blog. and what will be your motivation for doing this? that you love me? no!! because i am going to pick, out of all f you, the one blog reader TO RULE THEM ALL!!! and i am going to put your name and picture on my blog and tell the whole world you're great. do you like that idea? if you do send your name, State/province/country where you live, and if possible a picture of yourself to chrisjohnclark@juno.com and you may just be THE ONE BLOG READER, TO RULE THEM ALL!!! so anyway do you want to hear soething funny that happened? no? then go away, i didn't like you anyway. wednesday was the first day of lent and i decided that i wanted to give up something special, something that i would really feel the loss of. no, i didn't give up video games, i don't enjoy them as much as what i gave up, and no, i didn't give up computer, or else you would not be reading this. i decided to give up...sweets!! lately i've been pigging out on candy and cookies a lot more than i should, there's a lot of times when some candies or cookies disappeared and winded up in my stomach. so i decided that for lent i would not eat candy or cookies. so i decided that on wednesday morning, but then i ent and checked the mail, we had two, not one but two package slips!! telling us to go to the post office and pick up two packages!! yay!! that's always a cause for much excitement. so my dad went and picked up the packages, one was for mr. Christopher Clark, which i guess must mean me, and the other was was for Chris, Elizabeth and Peter. so i got my package and for thirty bliss filled seconds i thought it would be something good, until i looked more closely. "College of the Atlantic. Life changing. World changing." NOOOOOOOO!!!!! i got all excited over a college info packet? CURSE YOU COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC!!! and i was so happy too...but there was still one more package. this one was much more promising, it was bigger, and as all americans know, bigger means better. so we opened this up and (remember what i gave up for lent) it was full of american candy and treats. the sweet, sweet irony. so we have this big package of delicous stuff and i can't have any!! and by the time lent is over it may all be gone, because where as i gave up sweets my mom and sister were wimps and only gave up chocolate. so that's all for now, now i must go, good bye!!
Thursday, March 02, 2006
I don't like naming my posts, it makes me think, and thinking hurts my head...
so anyway, today is thrsday, it's the second of march, and i'm going somewhere cool tommorow. tommorow i am going to Rakvere (just another town in Estonia, what makes this one cool is that in it's name there's the word "blood" "vere") for my friend Anton's birthday. which should be pretty cool because i'm going to get some good language excercise because he is one of those cool people that speak English, Estonian and Russian, and therefore i'm pretty sure there will be people from every language group represented. but i'm pretty sure i'l be the only native English speaker, so i'll represent all of us English speakers to the best of my abilities. but anyway that should be wicked cool. for his present i'm going to make him a CD of cool rap/hip hop songs, mostly christian, so if you can think of any cool christian rappers let me know, i've already thought of the best 2 though (TobyMac and John Reuben).
but anyway i just want to write a quick thing that i learned from watching the simpsons this morning. do you know that the simpsons is a actually a great show for getting your mind thinking about spiritual things? well it is. in the episode today the simpson family got brainwashed by some cult, all except for Marge, the mother/wife. who then went and got reverend Lovejoy together with grouskeeper willy, the crazy scot, and went and unbrainwashed the whole family. but how they unbrainwashed homer, the dad/husband, was very interesting to me. part of this cult was that you couldn't drink alchohol, and so to unbrainwash homer they gave him beer. but at first his brainwashed mind resisted. "no, don't give into temptation!!" said his mind, "mmmm beer, drink it!" said his stomach, "these are really comforatable shoes" said his feet. and as i was watching this i was going, "ain't that the truth". do you know the feeling of being pulled in a million and one dirctions all at once? your mind says one thing, your stomach another, your feet say something completely different! and then you have your nose, hands, knees, and everything else all saying do this, that and the other thing. plus you've got the the little angels and devils on your shoulder. saying "join the darkside, we've got cookies and the majority of famous and good looking people!!" and the angel going "the darkside is full of lies, serve God, who loves you and cares about you" and the devil replies with temptation "we have the pleasures of the world...sex...drugs...alchohol...join us!!" and it keeps going back and forth like that. so anyway i actually don't think i had a point besides the fact that i can relate to Homer Simpson, now i must take my leave of you...goodbye!
but anyway i just want to write a quick thing that i learned from watching the simpsons this morning. do you know that the simpsons is a actually a great show for getting your mind thinking about spiritual things? well it is. in the episode today the simpson family got brainwashed by some cult, all except for Marge, the mother/wife. who then went and got reverend Lovejoy together with grouskeeper willy, the crazy scot, and went and unbrainwashed the whole family. but how they unbrainwashed homer, the dad/husband, was very interesting to me. part of this cult was that you couldn't drink alchohol, and so to unbrainwash homer they gave him beer. but at first his brainwashed mind resisted. "no, don't give into temptation!!" said his mind, "mmmm beer, drink it!" said his stomach, "these are really comforatable shoes" said his feet. and as i was watching this i was going, "ain't that the truth". do you know the feeling of being pulled in a million and one dirctions all at once? your mind says one thing, your stomach another, your feet say something completely different! and then you have your nose, hands, knees, and everything else all saying do this, that and the other thing. plus you've got the the little angels and devils on your shoulder. saying "join the darkside, we've got cookies and the majority of famous and good looking people!!" and the angel going "the darkside is full of lies, serve God, who loves you and cares about you" and the devil replies with temptation "we have the pleasures of the world...sex...drugs...alchohol...join us!!" and it keeps going back and forth like that. so anyway i actually don't think i had a point besides the fact that i can relate to Homer Simpson, now i must take my leave of you...goodbye!
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Sledding!! (Plus "The Chronicles Of Chris:The Soundtrack")
hey everyone, guess what i did last night. i went sledding!! it was super cool!! it was some sort of big sledding day so our childrens group went sledding and i was invited!! so we went to this big cool place that was like a giant hole in the ground and sled, and sled, and sled some more!! and i swear that is the bumpiest hill on earth!! i was bouncing up and down like crazy!! it was great!! what was really crazy was that we had a nice brand new sled and maret, our wonderful (sarcastic remark) translater, rode it down the hill. no problem normally but imagine sledding in a giant bowl, there's people comeing in from every side, and so of crashes are very common, and so she decided that for her great first run she would smash into a little kid and total our sled, plus make the poor little kid cry, evil girl she is. so we had all sorts of fun with our new broken sled, the whole front had a piece torn out of it and so it always turned slightly to the right (towards the trees) and no one was willing to ride it, except me of course. i don't blame them for not wanting to lose it, the front was all ripped up and shred, so if you fell forward your might end getting an extreme make over. but that just made it all the more fun for me. so two crashes and flying over the jump some kids had built on the hill i had half a slide under my butt and i was still going, but eventually gave up, i mean half a sled just isn't very fun! so that's the story of maret's first run, but my first run was better. i was on a cool green sled and was holding on for dear life as i shot down the hill, until i hit a bump and started to lose control, so rather then bail out i did the obvious thing, i used my left hand as a brake to try to steer, but that didn't help much. wanna know why it didn't help much? because as soon as my hand hit the ground i dislocated my pinky finger (ugh...nasty!!) and so in a split second i decided that keeping control of the sled wasn't very important anymore, so i died the obvious thing to do when you dislocate something, i grabbed it and snapped it back in place (ugh...nastier!!) only to smash into some chick who was coming down in the opposite direction, it was fun. so after a very "extreme" (said andrei) time sledding we packed up and went home home.
so now i'm back home and i'm thinking of making something i've been wanting to make for a very long time, Chris:The Music Soundtrack. i'm thinking i need to get together some songs that really seem almost to talk about my life, just because it's a cool idea. but as i was thinkg about this i noticed all the songs are so depressing! it really sucks but most of the songs that i really relate to are depressing, it's almost funny if you know me well, because i'm never really sad, not for long anyway. but anyway it's funny some of the songs, there's linkin park's "numb" for all the times i have a fight with my parents, trapt's "headstrong" for all those times i feel like i wanna rebel against something. and also good charlotte's "lifestyles of the rich and the famous" because it completely summarizes my view of celebrities (snobs). and also "(i hate) everything about you" by three days grace partly because i think it sounds so cool and partly because it's my song for all you mean girls who are so friendly yet so mean, so easy to befriend yet so hard to be friends with, and so close yet so far, far away. so anyway someday i'm going to make that, so i guess i should advertise it somehow...hmm, i got it!! Chris:The Soundtrack, Check it out today! Not coming to a store near you. Warning: may be dangerous to your mental and physical health.
so anyway not much more to say i just want to point out that all you people are girls. i know i should consider it a blessing to have so many girls interested in my life but i'm not. maybe 2 years ago but not now. and Kristi, believe me, i'm doing everything i can to find guys for the salvation army in estonia but face it, what do we have compared to drugs, alchohol and sex? i mean we have eternal life and a loving god but...(oh, the irony) and can i ask all of you not to comment on my blog anonymously and not leave a name, if you want to comment anonymously do it like this:
"Anonymous said...
Chris you rock! i find you handsome and atractive, will you marry me?
love,
cuckoo crazy non-existent chick"
because then i know who you are. because i have one huge weakness, i am enormously curious about everything. if there's is something i don't know i drive myself crazy until i find out. so please don't drive me crazy, tell me who you are!! i agree with anonymous that it is not good for me to spend every second with my family, because thats a sure way to go insane, and i should go out and explore the world, and i would if it wasn't for all this CURSED SNOW!!! just wait for april...april april april...i need april!!! and believe me, the last thing i need is to be more busy, that's the other reason i don't get out much, partly because of snow and partly because i have work to do (school work, corps/church work, house work, babysitting work, work work...etc.), so anyway i think i'm done now, Bye!!
so now i'm back home and i'm thinking of making something i've been wanting to make for a very long time, Chris:The Music Soundtrack. i'm thinking i need to get together some songs that really seem almost to talk about my life, just because it's a cool idea. but as i was thinkg about this i noticed all the songs are so depressing! it really sucks but most of the songs that i really relate to are depressing, it's almost funny if you know me well, because i'm never really sad, not for long anyway. but anyway it's funny some of the songs, there's linkin park's "numb" for all the times i have a fight with my parents, trapt's "headstrong" for all those times i feel like i wanna rebel against something. and also good charlotte's "lifestyles of the rich and the famous" because it completely summarizes my view of celebrities (snobs). and also "(i hate) everything about you" by three days grace partly because i think it sounds so cool and partly because it's my song for all you mean girls who are so friendly yet so mean, so easy to befriend yet so hard to be friends with, and so close yet so far, far away. so anyway someday i'm going to make that, so i guess i should advertise it somehow...hmm, i got it!! Chris:The Soundtrack, Check it out today! Not coming to a store near you. Warning: may be dangerous to your mental and physical health.
so anyway not much more to say i just want to point out that all you people are girls. i know i should consider it a blessing to have so many girls interested in my life but i'm not. maybe 2 years ago but not now. and Kristi, believe me, i'm doing everything i can to find guys for the salvation army in estonia but face it, what do we have compared to drugs, alchohol and sex? i mean we have eternal life and a loving god but...(oh, the irony) and can i ask all of you not to comment on my blog anonymously and not leave a name, if you want to comment anonymously do it like this:
"Anonymous said...
Chris you rock! i find you handsome and atractive, will you marry me?
love,
cuckoo crazy non-existent chick"
because then i know who you are. because i have one huge weakness, i am enormously curious about everything. if there's is something i don't know i drive myself crazy until i find out. so please don't drive me crazy, tell me who you are!! i agree with anonymous that it is not good for me to spend every second with my family, because thats a sure way to go insane, and i should go out and explore the world, and i would if it wasn't for all this CURSED SNOW!!! just wait for april...april april april...i need april!!! and believe me, the last thing i need is to be more busy, that's the other reason i don't get out much, partly because of snow and partly because i have work to do (school work, corps/church work, house work, babysitting work, work work...etc.), so anyway i think i'm done now, Bye!!
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