A trip to Estonia - Celine

My Comenius trip to Estonia in March 2011

Before I started my trip to Estonia, I had many questions in my head and some mixed feelings. Is my guest family nice? How do the people in Estonia live? Are there a lot of differences? How much will I miss my family and friends? But I was happy that I was allowed to go to Estonia and I knew it would be a good experience for me and my future. I hoped that we will all have fun together.

First I want to say that the trip to Estonia was a great experience in my life and I learned so many things. It was a lot of fun to do things like shopping, talking or visiting special buildings with Estonian and Norwegian kids. All the kids were open-minded and very friendly, but for me, it was a little bit difficult to use English as the language for communication, however we understood each other very well. Now I can speak English a bit better.

For me, the best event was the trip to Tallinn on Monday. It was a little bit exhausting, but very nice. All in all, I liked all the trips and all the kids knew each other better and better.

I learned so much about Estonia. I learned something about history at school, I got to know special Estonian food, for example the chocolate“ Kalev”, I learned a lot about water energy, I noticed that food and sweets are cheaper than in Germany and so on. I learned a lot, but it’s too much to write this down, but I can say that I was very shocked I as I saw all the snow! I hadn’t seen so much snow before .It was so cold, colder than in Germany. This was a big difference! The school in Estonia is different, too. I think the teachers are stricter and I noticed that a lot of Estonian people are very intelligent.

My guest family was very lovely. They helped me all the time with everything and were very open-minded and friendly. They gave me some gifts and cooked yummy food for me. Often we compared Germany and Estonia and they showed or told me, what is traditional for Estonia. I keep in contact with my exchange student Ave-Ly and her sister, too. Now, my student is a friend to me, not “a girl from Estonia”. She and some other kids from Estonia and Norway started crying at the departure. I will never forget this. It was so sad.

All in all, this was a great exchange between Germany, Estonia and Norway. I gained so much experience and learned many expressions from Estonia. I found a lot of new friends, and we are in contact now. All the people there were absolutely lovely and I was sad to leave Estonia, but I missed my family and friends a lot. I think more than the other kids! I advised people do to this, because now I have become a more independent person. To conclude, you can say that Estonia is often similar to Germany and often very different! I want to say thank you to all the people from Comenius 2011!

Celine Maaß