All dressed up for Halloween
As promised, here are some pictures of mine and J’s Halloween costumes. I’ll go first, although you won’t recognize who I’m supposed to be unless you’re familiar with Nordic children’s literature.
If you do happen to know Muumi (the Moomins)and his group of friends, then hopefully you can tell that I was dressed up as Little My (Väike My in Estonian and Pikku Myy in Finnish).
And then there was J.
He decided pretty quickly that he wanted to be a zombie, and he wanted to use real blood in his costume (and of course I mean pig’s blood, NOT human). It was surprisingly difficult to find, and although he was finally able to locate some– begging a free bag from the butchers at the central market– he realized that it might not be safe to put on his face. So, relax– that stuff all over his face is NOT real blood (he used it to create the brownish stains on his shirt). Creating fake blood took some problem-solving skills, since every single fake blood recipe we found on the internet called for food coloring. Guess what they don’t carry in Rimi, our neighborhood grocery store? That’s right. So there I was in the store on Halloween, trying to think of a substitute, something else that could dye things red. I ended up grabbing the reddest thing I could think of– marinated beets.
Blood-making station
The “recipe” J ended up using borrowed components from a few different ones we’d read on the net. He started with dark syrup and beet juice, but it was too pink, so I suggested cocoa powder to help get a browner tone. A little bit of cornstarch was thrown in as thickener, and voila– gross, sticky, convincing, and totally edible (albeit funny-tasting) fake blood.
Julie & Julia
We finally made it to see “Julie & Julia” last week. Of course I had been reading about it for months and was so excited to see it; J knew nothing about the film and therefore had no expectations whatsoever. I did, however, show him a few brief clips of the real Julia Child on YouTube so that he’d know what the real woman was like.
I liked it, but overall I have to agree with what I’ve read in countless reviews– the Julia parts were much stronger than the Julie parts. Julia was accompanied by a lovely, romantic French backdrop, and was herself very compelling– a woman with a strong personality trying to find herself. The Julie parts sort of made me feel… uncomfortable. It was clear that she didn’t like her job or her friends, and I wasn’t sure whether she even liked herself. And I didn’t like her apparent motivation for starting a blog– she seemed to be jealous of the attention her friend’s blog was getting, and she wanted some attention too. She didn’t seem to do it because she thought it would be fun or somehow fulfilling for her, regardless of whether people read it or not. (I haven’t read her blog or her book, so there probably were other motivating factors. I’m just going off what I got from the film). I found the character of her husband much more likable that Julie herself, and in the scene where they argue and she yells at him, “Stop looking on the bright side all the time!” I thought seriously, who says that? Maybe it’s because I myself tend to be an optimist, but I thought she was being quite unfair. And bratty. Also, I thought the movie could have used a more realistic representation of the amount of weight she and her husband must have put on after eating that way for a year 
.
But Julia was fun. I need to learn to be more like her in the kitchen. Maybe not to use quite so much butter, but to follow her advice to NEVER apologize for your cooking. I like that. One Julia scene that particularly struck me (that has nothing to do with food) was right after her sister arrived and the three of them were sitting in the cafe together. Julia and her sister were talking loudly, laughing at nothing in particular, being decidedly un-French but not caring at all, and Julia’s husband sat across the table, regarding them fondly, not a party to their sisterly jokes but still engaged in the conversation, rather than trying to quiet them down. Julia’s husband Paul was portrayed as a good guy throughout the whole film, but that moment in particular made me think, “What a good man.” It reminded me of how lucky I am to have a man who is the same way– he allows me and my sister to be sisters, no matter how loud and ridiculous we might be. I felt it was a scene that clearly yet subtly portrayed the relationships between the characters, and it left me feeling warm and fuzzy about the characters in the Julia half of the film– too bad the same can’t be said for the Julie contingent.
This is what it’s like being me
So. I did two incredibly spazzy things tonight, both of them involving food. First of all I was organizing my closet, clearing out the summer clothes (sob) to make room for the sweaters. I found a box of chocolates I had forgotten about, and some of the individually wrapped squares were left. I ate one– the wrapper said “Vigor” and it was dark chocolate and with coffee. It was good. Only after I had eaten it did I check out the description on the box, which read “Vigor: 1 bar = 3 cups of coffee.” Umm. Oops. I generally avoid coffee after 5 pm because caffeine can sometimes keep me awake, so the equivalent of 3 cups at 8 pm could mean this is going to be a long night. Damn.
The second thing occurred when I was grabbing stuff from the fridge to make my lunch for tomorrow. As I grabbed something from the top shelf, I managed to knock over a half-filled container of tomato sauce left over from making pizzas yesterday, which bounced down to the floor, leaving disturbing splatters in its wake. Fantastic. And believe me, this stuff happens to me all the time– sometimes I think I have spatial perception problems because I accidentally knock against things so often. Luckily J had a sense of humor about it and even asked to stage a photo with me holding his giant Finnish army knife.
Scary, eh?
But anyway, that’s a little taste of the story of my life: oblivious and clumsy since 1983.
Laulupidu/Song Festival
Hi. I am finally back to normal life, ready to start writing about those things I promised to write about, oh, about two weeks ago. Thanks to all those who continued to stop by while I was gone!
Some of pictures I featured in my last post were from the Song and Dance Festival I mentioned in an earlier post. I participated in the Song Festival– which was held during the first weekend in July– singing in the ranks of the mixed choir I joined about a year and a half ago. My choir made up just a tiny portion of the full mixed choir, which numbered almost 9,000 singers, and that number was just a part of the massed choirs, which numbered over 25,000 singers (including children’s choirs, boys’ choirs, men’s choirs, women’s choirs, etc.). So… yes. I stood before an audience and sang as just one of 25,000 voices, all under the control of a masterful conductor, taking part in a tradition that is such an essential part of Estonia’s history. It’s kind of hard to even describe what it’s like. It’s huge, and wonderful, and moving.
That’s the stage, a giant arch with steps underneath it… imagine it PACKED full of people!
And speaking of moving… as you can imagine, getting 25,000 people from one place to another is a logistical nightmare. I’m not gonna lie– the Laulupidu experience involves a lot of being squished together with other people, as well as a lot of standing and just waiting for something to happen. Sometimes we had hours of time to kill, sometimes we had to rush through the crowds to get to the proper place at the proper time, sometimes we had to stand through three and a half hours straight of rehearsal. I was starving after that last one. There was free food offered for the performers in the festival– soup, bread, and kohukesed– but after that one rehearsal I think all 9,000 mixed choir singers had the same idea, and the lines for free soup were unfathomably long. So my friend and I decided to partake in some 
grilled meat šašlokk, which was ubiquitous at the festival. Every second stand you walked past was grilling some meat, so I think the smell of it will forever bring up memories of the Song Festival for me.
I didn’t get a picture of my skewer of grilled pork chunks, but it was served with greasy potatoes and sub-par ketchup (watery and sweet, blech). In general, eating during those festival days was sporadic and took place whenever it could. I carried snacks with me like pirukad, apples, and some yummy PowerBar product my sister had brought from the States (it was like a chocolate peanut butter candy bar!) (it may have been this one). One day I shared this snack of pelmeni with my sister.
For some people, this was the main snack of choice:
…but I mostly stayed away from it during the festival (at least right before I had to sing). I wanted to stay lucid and stable, and besides, there’s no way to get to a bathroom when you’re crammed on the stage with thousands of other people.
Many of the singers enthusiastically waved the national tricolor…
While the massive audience watched and listened (and check out that sky! Estonia has the most picturesque sky sometimes.)
By Sunday evening, the end of the weekend and of the festival, I was drained. My feet hurt and I was ready for a hot sauna and as much sleep as I could possibly get. But, lest this post sound somehow negative– it was so, so worth it. Going to all those choir rehearsals through the cold, dark winter was worth it to stand up there with 25,000 fellow singers, not needing to glance at my song book at all, just being carried away by the feeling of the music and the movements of the conductor’s hands. And all the people! While that was one of the more frustrating parts, it’s also the most wonderful part. On Sunday there was a total of 100,000 people at the festival grounds, including the performers. Only about 1.3 million people even live in Estonia– think about it! Those are incredible numbers. This festival means so much to so many people, to this country as a whole, and I am so grateful that I got to take part in it.
The start of the Estonian summer
The weather has been glorious the last few days. Just overwhelmingly warm and lovely.
Estonian celebrated the start of summer on the 23rd of June (even though summer technically started on the 21st). This year for Midsummer’s Eve we went to the Estonian Open Air Museum, a lovely space by the water that includes many old farmsteads, windmills, and other structures. There was music, folk dancing, and of course a few bonfires.
I don’t have any pix highlighting the nature in that area, but many of the trees in the background are birch trees, which are my favorite trees ever (and very common in Estonia). 
There was also a staged meeting of the characters from Estonian folklore Koit (Dawn) and Hämarik (Dusk), the keepers of the sunlight, who usually do their jobs at opposite ends of the day but for one period each year Koit (the boy) and Hämarik (the girl) meet at midnight and share a kiss. They’re happy because their love is eternally new and fresh.
Koit and Hämarik rowing off together, carrying the light of the sun
