An Autumn Update

Given how bad I am at keeping in touch with my nearest and dearest, perhaps there's a few people wondering what I'm up to here in Estonia. Then again perhaps there's not! But here's an attempt to let the world know what I'm doing either way.

For those who came in late... I took a something of a leap of faith earlier in the year, arranged daily tours for my company, hired a mini bus, printed some brochures and crossed my fingers. To cut a long story short it all worked out pretty well, people paid me to show them different parts of Estonia, and I think I learned a lot so that even more will do the same next year. All in all I see it as a really good expansion of my humble little business and a building block for the future.

I was working six or seven days a week over the summer, and kept myself going with the knowledge that tourism here is a seasonal business and that I would have plenty of time to relax during cooler times. So now that time has come and I am bored already! I have returned the bus, the phone has stopped ringing and I have lots of free time which I am examing ways of wasting.

One thing which I would like to do is improve my Estonian, so I've been thinking about taking some private lessons. Because I'm heading back to Australia I can't complete a full class as I have in the past, so individual lessons are my only option. However I've been amazed to learn that private lessons can be as much as 500 Crowns (A$50 an hour). And to make matters worse that's an academic hour, which is the equivilent of 45 minutes on planet earth. So someone wants to make north of a dollar a minute to help me learn Estonian. This in a country where nurses make about $15,000 a year. I have calculated that a langage teacher could work a standard business week and earn close to $150,000 a year. Now I realise that it's not as straight forward as that, they can't teach people back to back and they dont get all the money themselves etc etc. Still, it's not as though its hard to find someone who speaks both Estonian and Englsih in this country. If I wanted to learn Swahili or Pashtun then I'd happlily fork out 500 Crowns an hour, but I don't. So I am on the hunt for a more cost effective option of studying Eesti Keel. If I fail then I'll be looking for something else to fill in my time, you'll probably be bombarded with more pointless blog posts!

In any case, tell your boss that you are now working academic hours, and that you'll need to be paid 25% more, or work 25% less. Let me know how you get on.