Ma olen alati jännis olnud...

…soovimisega. Istud näiteks tühi sünnipäevakaart ees ja mõtled – nii tahaks midagi hästi personaalset soovida, ma ju tunnen seda inimest väga hästi ja isegi tean, mida võiks soovida… ja lõpuks on mu kaardil ikka jälle Palju õnne! No heal juhul luban kallistusi ka. Või siis meie rahamatmise hetk Palamusel – soovige kõik midagi! Mida ma siis soovisin? Armastust ika armastust. Misasi see veel on? Tegelikult on mu ümber kogu aeg nii palju armastust, et arvatavasti on mu armastuse soovimise soovid alati täide läinud. Ei pea ju olema keeruline see soovimine. Nii tore on järjekordse köögiakna aurutamise ajal avastada, et kellegi väiksed käed on eelmise aurutamise ajal sulle kirjutanud Merry Christmas! Küllap vist polegi eriti tähtis, mida täpselt soovida – oluline on, et tuleks südamest ja läheks südamesse. Seega – kallid-armsad sõbrakesed, soovin teile HEAD UUT! Et liigutaks, raputaks, paneks nutma ja naerma, viiks taevasse ja põrgusse! Kas siis koos minuga või minuta… 

Minu aasta 13...

...ei hellitanud mind ikka üldse mitte. Minu kõrgele vanusele vilistades sundis ta mind näiteks lennukist välja hüppama ja seda mitte maa peal vaid kilomeetri kõrguselt. Siis moosis ära mu parimad sõbrantsid ning sõidutas meid jalgratastel Emumäeni ja tagasi, jättes niimoodi kustumatu jälje meie teatud kehaosadele. Lennutas mu Istanbuli, andis silmarõõmuks toreda türgi mehe, lubas sõrmeotsteni ära armuda ning seejärel tõmbas kumminöörina lennukil Eestisse tagasi. Viis esimest korda Kärde baari ja korraldas hetkega šokiteraapiaseansi meesstrippari näol. Ning kui ma juba lootsin, et ehk aasta viimastel päevadel saab ometi ekstreemsustest rahu, aeti mind silma pilgutamata Ahju (loe: ööklubi Tartus, lahtiseletatult AinultHeadInimesed). Õnneks oli prii sõit ja prii pilet, niiet – miks siis ka mitte, ükskord peab ju ikka olema see esimene kord ööklubis ära käia, muidu pole midagi oma lastelastele hiljem rääkida. Oleks ma aga teadnud, et mind ootab ees tutipidu, oleks hoopis kinno viimasele seansile läinud. Muusikal iseenesest polnud vigagi, kuigi ma esimese tunnikese pehmel diivanil bacardi padja peal pikutasin, sain hiljem kohapeal ikka näppu visata ka. Alguses oligi muusika enam-vähem talutava helitugevusega, hiljem keerati märkamatult nii kümneminutiliste intervallidega detsibelle aina juurde, et ka kõige kaugemates tugitoolides pikutajatel aju käbikeha kurku potsataks. Tantsuplatsile ei hakanud me seekord üldse trügimagi, sest kohalik eeskava koosnes vist küll prooviesinemisele tulnud pool-naisehakatistest, kel kõigil kohustuslik tutikleit seljas, mida siis tuimalt puupakkude kombel peaaegu rütmi järgi tammudes saab iga kahekümne sekundi tagant allapoole sikutada. Igatahes oli mul lootusetult vales kohas olemise tunne peal ning seda mitte ainult teksade pärast. Aga nüüd ma vähemalt tean, misasi on ööklubi ning et minul sinna küll asja ei ole. Tagasisõit koju oli omaette ekstreemralli ’tunne-oma-maakonda’ stiilis, mis lõppes sumbuti pakiruumi viskamisega ning küllap võib minu sõrmejälgi auto sisemiselt ukselingilt veel aastakümneid hiljem tuvastada. Käsipidurist me siinkohal ei räägi… Ja aastat 13 on veel täitsa mitu päeva järel…

Comenius infection...

I have been asked many times – why on Earth did you take another Comenius project? Didn’t you learn anything from your previous two? Do you really want to spend countless number of sleepless nights wondering how the hell are you going to complete all the tasks needed? Or ponder endlessly around the question of who’s going to do what, ending up doing most of the things yourself anyway... Do you? Honestly? Yes, I do. I have the button of unstoppable thoughts inside my head and it’s turned ON. I haven’t been able to find the OFF button... In all the craziness and endless lack of time, there is something about all this Comenius stuff what I need. For myself. And that’s PEOPLE. Comenius people.

It’s so heartwarmingly amazing to observe how complete strangers meet each other for the first time, how they change, get molded and twisted for the purpose of fulfilling project tasks. How all their differences and prejudices, which could be seen as monkey wrench in the works, one minute start to act as building blocks of the yet unknown puzzle. And this moment you feel that you could do anything. Together.

There is no better reward for the hard work than meeting new people. The unimaginable amount of energy they give, new feelings they awake, new thoughts they generate. I have always believed that Comenius people are somehow a bit weirder than normal teachers. Not strangled by rules and stranded by prejudices. Because they are. You don’t really expect that a Norwegian man would be among the first ones on the dance floor... or Polish girls so damn joyful even without Bolinka... or otherwise modest Spaniards sharing their thoughts about something so emotionally that you can almost understand them although they speak in Spanish which is Chinese for you... or find out that behind reserved look and behaviour there’s a person who can feel the places talking to her just like you yourself... or to your ultimate surprise find out that someone else is having as quirky sense of humour as yourself... or look inside dark brown eyes and see your own yearning for human touch and kindness... or feel the warmth in someones voice then she promises to make you a cup of coffee with her own little hands... or hear the real appreciation if someone says that he thinks you are a bit crazy... or see the tears filling the sweet one’s eyes then saying farewell... or feel the sadness in the face of someone whom you probably never ever meet again... It makes me intoxicated, being among my new distant friends. This is my reason for doing Comenius.  And it’s probably good that we need to spend number or weeks far away from each other, otherwise I would need to be institutionalized. After digesting all these feelings and energies I promise to behave next time we meet. At least first few days...

Istanbul - mystery between two worlds

In order to spare my dear foreign friends from Google translate torture – although I was laughing my head off while reading what translator had made up from my story, but then again I new what I had written… - I will try to tell my story about Istanbul in a worldly recognized language. So here it comes.

All my previous trips to so called warm southern countries have turned out to be complete disaster. I remember then my colleagues sent me to Spain in November hoping to get back tanned chocolate-Raine… Yeah right, the week in Spain passed in warm winter coat and boots. Turkey didn't turn out that bad because the weather was actually warm! Although other people were walking around in warm sweaters or jackets or coats, I was only wearing a T-shirt and sometimes even that was too much… People gave me looks, maybe wondering who’s that fool… Anyway, I should be used to travelling around by now and talk about my trips quite calmly but a fool as I am I’m still wondering and paying attention to details and I'm completely surprised about every new place, taking photos like crazy. I just love to get emotional, don’t I?

Right before landing in Istanbul we had a bit of an unexpected experience – our plane took back off a second before touchdown… My children (who had their first flight ever) looked at me puzzled but soon we just enjoyed our extra round tour above Istanbul :) Afterwards we had another experience with passport control queue which seemed endless together with people of around thirty different nationalities – my first encounter with women wearing burkas (high heels twinkling down below…). Too bad my camera needed to stay in the bottom of my bag. Thanks to this crowd we managed to get out of the airport almost an hour and a half later and our dear friends were already desperately searching for Lohusuu School’s phone number in internet ready to add us in Interpol’s search list…

The key word for my Turkey trip was definitely MUSIC.  Never before have I heard such a cacophony of sounds. Male voices endlessly yearning, instruments sound like out of key, shrilling sound of the kanun and creepishly crying violin… Only percussions offered some sense into this chaos of sounds, smoothing and binding everything together into the rhythm of the soul. So, I turned off my ears and listened with my heart. And danced. Already in the first evening (although being up for almost 38 hours straight) we managed to try the Turkish dance. Thanks my dear ones for teaching me one of your dances. I will never forget it!

I wasn’t ready for this trip. I wasn’t ready for the metropolitan lights or endless street noise, or hearing drum beat under my hotel windows two o’clock at night, or seeing hundreds of brightly shining dark brown eyes looking at me, or for nothing at all in that matter… Our first encounter with Istanbul was when we decided to go and look for the money exchange. Man in the hotel lobby said: money change everywhere, go this way. First man in the street: go that way, five minutes; another man: go this way, ten minutes… So we went, for…. hour and a half… but we finally did it – we found the main street and the place. This taught us our first lesson about Turkish time – minutes are at least twice as  long as Estonian ones :) But we were happy!

Another quite confusing thing is Turkish language. As a linguist I’m always trying to learn at least some of the important phrases in local language. But… having no clue how to read, as letters are spelled differently according to some specific Turkish rules of which I have no idea whatsoever… I only managed to remember few of them. Mainly thanks to my dear new friend Belgin who wasn’t giving up on me :)

In my head

One thousand and one little men

Are playing unknown melody

On strangely sounding chimes

Tamam tamam tamam

Okay okay

I’m trying to remember

Günaydin ja teşekkürler

Bir, iki, üç, dört beş...

Oh my, this symphony

Has a bit too complicated libreto...

The main aim of our trip was to meet our Turkish project partners, so in the morning we started to move towards Çatalca which in all the Istanbul’s endlessness was one-hour-ride away. Red schoolhouse reminded me of buildings at home, so without having the name Tayfun written above the main entrance it would have easily been any of the Estonian schoolhouses. Only people were different – smiling and shining and cheerful and of course these dark eyes... uhhh!!! We had a priceless opportunity to visit lessons and as I moved towards my 9B class accompanied by English teacher Latif, I had no idea what kind of emotional experience awaits for me. I will never forget these 45 minutes in front of this class! Such a warm children, such funny questions and how they reacted to my singing and dancing... Oh my, let me go back! I’m getting too emotional again, right? 

Another key word for our Istanbul trip was food. During our stay at school we had a special lunch made for us and I have to say – I’ve never tasted such a great amount of sooooo tasty things in my whole life. I tried everything, whatever the name was. It started to remind our last visit to Romania... but fortunately we could stop before eating too much :) Anyway, it seemed like whatever kind of meat or in whatever form it was cooked, it was still called kebap. Very confusing. I still don’t know, which one of them is the REAL kebap. But nevermind, as long as it tastes good, it doesn’t matter what’s it called. The only thing I never get used to during my trips is the fact that nobody ever drinks milk. I’m the dedicated milk-drinker because I usually consume at least 1 liter of milk every day, so I was kinda excited when my colleagues spotted a bottle on the table, which looked like it could be milk inside it. Of course it wasn’t. It was Ayran, some kind of salty yoghurt which tasted like... I better not say... So, next time I bring milk with me. In vodka bottles :)

In my trips I usually find places which resonate with me in the same universe. It’s not as complicated as it sounds – if you just listen and feel, you can find out that some places talk to you, you touch a stone and you feel its story... well, this time it happened to me in İnceğiz caves. I can’t even try to explain this overwhelming feeling I received when touching the walls of the caves. As I was looking at my own shadow on the wall, I realized how insignificant and tiny I am, just like a butterfly wing – present during a fraction of time, then gone and forgotten forever… 

to be continued...