Friday is cry day

Today we very sadly left Parnu, our new second home. It was really tough saying goodbye to Kuuli, especially, because she's become such a good friend. I hope we get to cross paths soon again. We left 10 minutes early, much to Russ's surprise, traveling with 7 women. (OK, apparently I've been spelling Kulli's name wrong all week, too. Forgive me!) We got to Camp Gideon about 11:30 or so, and I've been corrected many times about its location...it's on the Gulf of Finland. It's actually only about 50 or 60 miles to Finland (or I may be wrong again, it could be kilometers, I'm all confused). The setting at camp is beautiful, but some of the buildings need a lot of work. That's why we keep coming back! We had lunch there...food of questionable origin and content. We're not allowed to say some words anymore because of the connotation with lunch there! Some of us did stick our toes into the water on the beach, and it was much colder than the Gulf of Riga at Parnu. I'm not sure why...I'll have to look into that when I get back and have time. Feel free to offer answers, then I won't have to do any work! :) While driving across the entire country in one day, we saw several storks, but always individually, not in a flock, and I expected them to be by water, I don't know why. Apparently, all babies come from Estonia originally, and Marilene says babies are small because storks are not really as big as the cartoon ones. We saw several moose crossing signs, but didn't see a moose. At one 'rest stop', the bathrooms were labelled rather questionably, with only triangles pointing different directions. Imagine 8 people staring at one door, then another, then the first, then the other...for several minutes. I'm not sure who the first brave one was, or maybe they just waited for someone else to come out! On the drive, I saw one very old windmill without its wings, but saw several newer windmills, like I've seen in California. And I swear I saw two fish crossing signs! Nobody believes me, though...We got to Tallinn around 3:30, checked into the hotel, unpacked the rental vans, ran to the store for chocolate and coffee, almost ended up on a ferry to Finland by mistake, almost got the rental car towed by mistake, went the wrong way on a one way street by mistake (no traffic coming, thank goodness)...when you have absolutely no clue or context to a language, driving can be difficult! I haven't had problems until today, because we've not spent any time in a big city. Oh, well! We turned the vans in in one piece, and full of gas! Three of us got separated from the rest of the group, and couldn't find them, and they never showed up at the place we arranged to eat dinner, but we had a great meal, and I hear them now, they've found their way back to the hotel. I'm sure they had an adventure! Tomorrow is tourist day! We'll go to Old Town and shop and stuff and I don't know what else. I'd like to visit the radio tower (I don't know what the actual name of it is) but it's where Estonia achieved its independence from the Soviet Union. Fascinating story from what I've heard, but I'll share it with you when I know more firsthand, so I don't get any facts misconstrued or unremembered. Missy's new name is Longlegs, and she and Zippy tend to end up well ahead of the rest of the group when we're walking. All week long, we've been referring to Artur at Camp Gideon, who was supposed to meet us today. All week long, Vicki thought we were saying "our tour" and just leaving off the word 'guide'...she didn't realize that was his name. We had a great laugh at that one. Vicki did, however, get very tired of her children in the van, with cries of "Are we there yet?" and "She's touching me!". We were disciplined appropriately. And then separated. Marty has been trying to read all the labels of the food we buy, and every label seems to say the same thing. In her words, "unpronoucable word, unpronoucable word". Reminds me of Tom's way of reading the Bible..."hard word, hard word". OK, so, I found out that there are TWO restaurants with the same name with 5 or 6 blocks of each other on the same street, and the other group was waiting politely at the other one, wondering why we never showed up, but not eating because they didn't want to be rude. Aren't they thoughtful? OUR meal was WONDERFUL!! Our starving lost children are safely home and eating bread crumbs left over at the hotel. :) Alright, back to the team. We had a wonderful tour of Rakvere accidentally on the way to Camp Gideon, thanks to Russ's copilot holding the map upside down. But it was a beautiful detour! We got to see a castle. Again, don't know how much computer time we'll get, so more later...?

Sheryl Bob