Errata

Just some random stuff I've been meaning to post. I've also been meaning to post about Iceland Day, but I'll cover that later.

My roommate moved in earlier this week as did David roommate. My roommate is Julius (Finnish) who his here to do his Bachelor's in business administration. The reason he came to study in Estonia instead of staying in Finland is because classes here are in English whereas business classes in Finland would generally be in Finnish. David's roommate, Rick (Dutch) is here to do his Master's in industrial engineering. While Julius is young, he has lived on his own for the last year or two, which makes things better. So far we all get along pretty well.

Today I decided to conduct a taste test. There's an Estonian brand of soda called Kelluke that tastes like Sprite, so I wanted to compare the two. Rick helped me out by pouring the drinks into cups without me seeing. Kelluke is sweeter than Sprite and less carbonated. Sprite has a more bitter flavor to it. I couldn't really say which I like better, but Kelluke is cheaper, so I'll keep buying it. Right now I'm drinking a combination of Kelluke and Sprite from what was left over.

Doing laundry here has been surprisingly interesting. To get into the laundry room, I have to use my keycard, but first it has to be activated to keep people from over using it. I can do laundry four times a month, and then I have to reactivate it for the next month. Before getting my card activated, I went to go see where the laundry room was. I found it (in the parking garage), and of course, I couldn't get in, so I went back to the stairwell to re-enter the building, and it wouldn't let me in. I had to leave through the parking garage entrance and walk back to the main entrance. When I went to the housing office, I told them about my problem with getting back into the building, as I didn't want to have to carry my laundry all around the parking garage. As it turns out, activating my card for the laundry room also activates my card for the stairwell entrance. So I can't use that entrance unless I have permission to use the laundry room. I then asked how the four times a month rule works. Simply having the card only let me in four times is of course no good, as that would mean I'd be stuck in the laundry room the whole time, even longer if all the machines were already in use. Working for just four days out of the month also won't work because I might go check the laundry room, see all the machines are in use, and decide to wait until the next day to do laundry. So what they do is keep a record of how often the laundry room has been accessed, and then periodically check to see who's been using it. If I just went in once that day, then they determine that I probably didn't actually do any laundry, and that day doesn't count, but if they see I was in and out throughout the day, then they count that day. Also, while the labels on the washing machines are in English, the dryers are not. One is in Estonian and two are in Swedish.

While I haven't been studying much Estonian lately, I have learned a few new things about the language. After a month of living here, I learned the words for push and pull, lükka and tõmba. Usually these are two of the first words I learn, but I never saw them until I had to go to the migration office, and I haven't seen them again since. Estonians appear to rarely label things. I didn't know the word for exit until I asked somebody, it's väljapääs.

I mentioned before that verbs have two infinitives in Estonian, which one you use depends on the preceding verb. This seemed rather odd, until I realized we do something very similar in English. Generally, infinitives are written with "to" preceding it. However, following certain helping verbs, "to" is omitted. "I need to run" vs. "I must run". Both sentences mean basically the same thing, but the infinitive is different. We never think about it, but I imagine that a foreigner might get confused.

Words such as adverbs and prepositions tend to change meaning based on where they are in the sentence. Generally the meaning is similar, but a good example that could lead to confusing is "ära" which can either mean "don't" or "away". So "Ära lähme" means "Don't go", and "Lähme ära" means "Go away".