This weekend was nice and peaceful, as it should be. I dragged myself out of bed at noon and I walked over to the mall with Arielle. I needed a dustpan and I hadn't found one at the small market next to my dorm, but I figured the department store in the mall would have one. I found the dustpan and then we headed downstairs to the grocery store. I like the market next to the dorm, but it has a small selection, so we wanted to check out what this one had. While paying, I experienced something that I'm pretty confused about and really want to ask an Estonian about. I was paying with cash and a few coins, so I tried to hand it to the cashier. She scolded at me in Estonian and gestured to the small plastic dish on the counter. I'm not sure if this is something I'm supposed do all the time or if she just personally likes being able to count out the change on the dish. It just feels rude to me to put money down on the counter.
I forgot how much I hate waking up for classes. I don't mind going to classes at all and I enjoy the fact many classes here are seminar based, but I still want to throw my phone across the rooms when my alarm goes off in the morning. I can't even claim to be waking up that early, my earliest class is at ten fifteen. I have had a lecture from each of my courses except one, which is going to be doubled this week since she was out of town for a conference. I was pretty surprised she was able to do this when I saw the class added in on my online calendar. I can't imagine a CofC professor doing that. I can't help but wonder if she was somehow able to check if people registered in the class had a class after our first one because if not how was she sure the second class was not going to conflict with another class for someone? The lose class times is something I'm finding kind of odd. For example, a lot of classes say they end at even times like 14:00, but in reality they almost always get out at 13:45. It's like this time has been built in just in case class goes over. The seminar class Shay and I have together is an interesting case. As I said be before, we watch a movie on Monday classes and discuss it and other articles on the Tuesday class. Last Monday, the professor expressed that due to time lengths, the class might run over. Fair enough, but since the class is from 16:15-18:00, I don't think I was anticipating the class running over more than fifteen minutes. Today we got out about an hour late. What if people have classes after that class? My friend has a French class at 18:00, so would she have to drop out of the class because the class always goes late? Very, very different.
So far I like all of my classes and I'm very interested in the topics. There are various topics I've never explored that are specific to Europe and Estonia, so I'm looking forward to learning more. My Estonian culture class is pretty awesome. We just watch movies, go to museums, and at the end of the semester we have to relate what we learned to our normal studies. Interesting and pretty easy, sounds good to me! I like my European Union class because I know so little about the EU and it's history. My European Media systems class is interesting, but we only meet about six times during the semester. We have to write an essay comparing a European country's media systems to our home country. I'm looking forward to learning the similarities and differences of a European country and the United States.
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