Statue controversies continue

In case you were curious about the continuing relationship between the countries and peoples of Estonia and Russia that I mentioned in a previous post (9/23/06: In the News: Controversy is everywhere), read this New York Times article about the statue in question:

Tallinn Journal

Debate Renewed: Did Moscow Free Estonia or Occupy It?

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: January 25, 2007

The issue over a monument’s fate has become part of Estonia’s unfinished effort not only to sever the legacy of its Soviet past but to break free of Russia’s influence today.

Töö

Töö is a lovely Estonian word which has a phonetic representation that somehow perfectly reflects its semantic meaning of "work." Some of you wonder if I really do any töö between taking pictures of the snow and socializing. For those that are interested in this other side of my life, the one that leads to international travel and intercultural dialogues -- the one that I find fascinating, challenging, intriguing, and sometimes controversial, I share with you the following links for you to navigate and test your Estonian skills:

University of Tartu Newspaper article about internationalization and English language support for faculty and staff (in Estonian)

The crux of my 8-5 (yeah, right!) and spring course offerings at UT

Any brilliant ideas, comments, suggestions, or ready-made curricula/syllabi/lesson plans are welcomed!

Snowstruck

Come visit me in my Tartu digs! I couldn't resist snapping a few bajillion pictures to capture the snow-striking walk through town and to the university the other day. Join me on my beautiful and sparkling trek to the office by clicking on the narrated Picasa picture album below.

Snowy Tartu in January

Snow Angels

We've finally recovered from the dreadfully warm and rainy winter with several inches of accumulation this weekend... Winter is finally here with wintry white sparkles everywhere. Woo-hoo! It inspired my first snow angel of the season yesterday afternoon. This snow appears like it is here to stay, and I couldn't be happier! Perhaps there is hope for my cross-country skiing dreams after all, and, also worth mentioning are things like snowfall... snowflakes... snowballs and snow fights... snowmen... and those really lovely snow angels.

Homage to a Tech Guru

My entire life has been transformed in the last 48 hours... I suppose our lives are continually changing and transforming, but this shift, however small it may seem, feels rather significant... By the amazing and mysterious powers of technology and the patience of a special tech guru, I now have a home phone. Set up through something abbreviated in an oblique acronym like SIP, the phone works via my Internet connection, but the number that rings looks like one located within the United States. To those of you already initiated to such spectacular feats of the virtual world, this progress may seem like very old news. However, it is a wonderful sensation for this wanderer to know that friends and family can now use their free cell phone minutes calling way over here to me in Estonia. I can't explain why it is so revolutionary when it seems so old-fashioned to have a traditional phone. Somehow, it just feels different to hear a phone ring and pick up a real receiver to say hi. It's a fantastic feeling to know that I can be reached (rather than always reaching out) -- the world really seems that much smaller and cozier.

**A million thanks to the brilliant tech guru Uli, who made this whole phone transformation possible!

**If you'd like to give me a jingle on this new number, shoot me an email when you get a chance and I'll gladly share the details.

2007 foretold in a shadow

Õnnelikku Uut Aastat! or Joyful New Year, as they say!

In Estonia, it is actually bad form to wish someone Happy New Year when more than seven days of the year have passed. Apparently, on the seventh day, the new year is already old news. Lucky for me, as an American, I can quite blissfully and ignorantly go on wishing everyone a Wonderful 2007 well into this new year.

As many of you know, I am not a huge fan of New Year's Eve celebrations in general... I'd rather take the time to brood a bit about the passing year and the upcoming one, to reflect a bit before jumping forward into the still undisturbed freshness of a new year. It's a kind of annual cleansing, I suppose, and a ritual I enjoy observing at the beginning of each year.

This year, I saw out the passing of the old year in the midst of a crowd of people but also in great company and superb celebration. Not much quiet time for reflection, but I did participate in an Estonian tradition, looking forward into 2007 by interpreting shadows forecast on the wall...

New Year's Future Telling, Estonian-Style


Process:
1) Purchase metal pieces shaped like horseshoes and a metal ladle from the store
2) On New Year's Eve, place one of the pieces in the ladle and melt it over a hot flame.
3) Once melted, throw the metal very quickly into a bowl of cold water. The metal will form a strange shape (see below).
4) Hold strange metal shape up to the light and interpret the shadow that is cast on to the wall. The shape of the shadow will tell you something about your fortune for the next year.

So, my metal ended up looking something like a motorcycle... Vroom! Vroom! I figure this means that my next year will include some sort of significant journey on my bike (or is this a bit of subjective interpretation and wishful thinking?).

Last year I was obsessed with New Year's resolutions and this year I still haven't taken the time to sit down and set them out in my head. I guess perhaps I'll go with the Estonian tradition on this one and say that the new year is already old news... I'll save the lofty resolutions for another time and perhaps take my time, enjoying life, and living out some realistic goals instead!

Happy New Year 2007! May it be more than you ever dreamed... and, however it turn out, may you count every moment as a blessing to be savored and celebrated!

Jõule Highlights

Everyone knows that there is no place like home for the holidays, but, unfortunately, I wasn't able to go home this year. So, I gathered a few fellow vagabonds -- friends old and new -- and we infused the season with cheer (or rather stuffed it with abundant amounts of tasty homemade morsels). Here are a few of the highlights or our Jõule (Christmas) celebrations!


Gathering on Christmas Eve, we were lucky to have in our midst a world-renowned German MPP (Master Potato Peeler), Hape.

Traveling all the way from Finland, we also had master Chef Jen, pictured right, preparing scrumptious dishes of her home tradition -- cranberry bread, special kind of scalloped potato with sardines that I forget the name of, almond paste coffee bread, meatballs (and the chef is vegetarian... imagine that!) to name a few of the tasty items.

We also had a dancing Russian, Nastya, who prepared her potato salad and blini with much flare and then persuaded us all to join her in a hilarious game of charades/pictionary.


Caroline, a carrot-peeling Nebraskan (who also makes a mean batch of maraschino cherry cookies, by the way) brought many smiles and cheer to our bunch.


Finally, we were lucky to have two elves with us to prepare the salad and add to our lovely Christmas mix. Britta added some traditional German Christmas butter cookies to our table and Marika, the Estonian-Russian in our company, celebrated her first Christmas with our international crowd.


We celebrated both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and filled our time with festivity:

Feasting on fabulous dishes... Trimming the tree with popcorn and cranberries... Playing games... Enjoying hot mulled wine... Laughing...
Watching movies... Sharing stories... Singing... Exchanging Presents...

Jõule 2006

Celebrating Birthdays...
(Hape birthday, Hape! ~ December 25 and Happy Birthday, Jen! ~December 26)
































In the end, a very cozy and beautiful Christmas... I hope yours was as beautiful!

HÄID JÕULE, EVERYONE!

The Identity Question

It seems that every time I move to a new place there is a moment when culture shock taps me on the shoulder, catching me by surprise. Somehow, I keep assuming that, as a result of traveling so much and encountering so much "other," that I will reach a point where I am no longer affected. Last year in Romania, the question of identity consumed me. Perhaps because it was a transitional year between graduate school and the ever-looming "life" to follow or perhaps because it is normal to reconsider who you are and where you are going now and then, I felt as if the questions had an inescapable grip on me and demanded some serious brooding if not concrete answering:

Who am I? Am I like these ones or those ones? Where am I? Where am I going? What in the world am I doing? Do I want to be doing it? Do I like doing it? Who are these people with whom I've surrounded myself? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Ah, yes! These are the contemplative questions that reach me during culture shock and that beg me to stop and mull them over a bit in the new year... Estonia is no different.


My attitude towards travel and learning about language and culture (personally, not as a language teacher -- although that is undoubtedly affected) has really changed since my first explorations. I can remember the enthusiasm I had about learning about Slovakia, Slovak culture, and studying the language (este rozpravam po slovensky bez velkych problemov!). My first taste of being in a new place and exploring a tiny village and its life as well as my own place within it was fascinating and my attitude towards engaging it was incredibly intense and directed. Since living and traveling in a few other places, my dedicated spirit towards learning less-commonly spoken languages has waned. It's a question of time and it's a true question of investment. I would like to learn all things Estonian, including the fascinating language, but I am not exactly sure if the return on the investment is worth it. Beyond this short epoch of my life, does speaking and knowing Estonian make sense? Not that I shouldn't aim towards understanding and participating in the host culture, but, here in Tartu, I can do that pretty fully with English. It's a tough question. One that raises guilt in my consciousness. After all, I am a language teacher. Should I enjoy learning language just for the sake of doing so? Isn't it crass of me to try to quantify an outcome?

Hmmmm... I have been taking an Estonian class and have made some progress. I have tried to make Estonian friends, but this isn't easy in a culture that is largely quiet and a bit reticent until you are a known quantity. My circle of friends is more international than Estonian, but I excuse this with understanding that many Estonians have many more social obligations than I do at this moment and knowing that, together with these other international explorers, we can act as co-motivators in discovering and learning about this really interesting "Nordic Baltic country."

As proof of shifting identity, I offer pictures from our office Christmas party here in Tartu. The theme of this year's party was sailing, and I went in costume with two other women from my office (pictured above and also below with a sailor we also picked up from the office!). We wore Estonian national costumes and went as "Ranna-piiga," or the young women who await sailors when they come back to port. Somehow symbolic of my acceptance at work and in this place, I felt at home dressed up in this traditional garb for the evening. Perhaps if the wool skirt fits...?


I gave a presentation this week on culture, identity, and language teaching that got me thinking about shifting identities of language learners (and aimless wanderers like me). The literature seems to offer some real pearls of wisdom relating to this topic. I realize it is probably nerdy to use in-text quotations in a personal blog, but I guess I can embrace this geekiness as part of who I am!

“We cannot fully understand one culture in absence of contact with other cultures” (Savignon and Sysoyev, 2002: 510)

“The intentional acquisition of a new linguistic identity can result in a huge shift of the language learner’s understanding and interpretation of the world around him” (Marx, 2002: 264).

Identity is a project and a projection of self in constant fluctuation (van Lier, 2004).

“Cultural contact implies that we perceive aspects, behaviors, values, and so on that are different than our own cultural background and thus provoke a rethinking of existing cultural categories” (Finkbeiner and Koplin, 2002: 4).

The notion presupposes that when language learners speak, they are not only exchanging information with the target language speakers but they are constantly organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the social world. Thus an investment in the target language is also an investment in a learner’s own social identity, an identity which is constantly changing across time and space (Norton Peirce, 1995: 17-18).

Finkbeiner, C., & Koplin, C. (2002). A cooperative approach for facilitating intercultural
education. Reading Online, 6. Available online:
http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=finkbeiner/index.

Marx, N. (2002). Never quite a ‘native speaker’: Accent and identity in the L2 – and the L1.
The Canadian Modern Language Review, 59, 264-281.

Norton Peirce, B. (1995). Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL
Quarterly, 29, 9-31.

Savignon, S. J., & Sysoyev, P. V. (2002). Sociocultural strategies for a dialogue of cultures.
The Modern Language Journal, 86, 508-524.

van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning. A sociocultural perspective. Boston: Kluwer.