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ESL & The Peace Corps

- By Mike Dunphy -

Part 2: Training

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After three days there, we all boarded planes to our respective countries. All the volunteers for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania flew to a beach town called Jurmala, about an hour from Riga. Jurmala had once been a hot spot for Soviet Generals on vacation. Now, many of the old houses were left to rot and disappear into memory. The conference lasted four days and I remember thinking it was ridiculous trying to stuff reams of policy into a couple hundred people nursing serious jetlags and cinematic hangovers. At the same time, we were all pumped full of adrenalin and it didn’t take us long to make friends as well as enemies. The days consisted of seminars after lectures but the nights were wine, women and song.

A few days later, we all exchanged e-mail addresses and a lot of promises we'd never keep and parted ways to our respective countries. We were taken northeast, over the border to our training site in the city of Tartu.

Tartu is Estonia’s second largest city and has the country’s chief University. It also has the distinction of being burnt to the ground five times in its history. It modern times, it was simply blown up. It’s a wonder it still exists at all. But there was enough of it left to make a very pleasant training and living environment.

The first thing we had to do upon arrival was meet our host families. Everyone was obviously nervous about this. Gossip and rumors were flying every which way. We were all expecting the worst.

I was led to meet this tall, slender, pointy and elfish woman. She was obviously going to be my host mom. She appeared friendly and polite but she only knew about ten words in English. The ride home was quite uncomfortable as you can imagine. We just smiled nervously at each other and grunted occasionally. It was one of the most cathartic moments of my life when the car pulled in the driveway of a beautiful, modern, five-story home. It was bigger than anything I’d ever lived in. She took me to a newly-built room full of skylights. They also gave me a private bathroom.

Sweet.

 

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