We wake to a beautiful day for our trip to a Kurgja Farmhouse Museum.
After a bus ride through the countryside beyond Pärnu, we arrive to greetings from our wonderful guide Naite, a Ukrainian woman who speaks English very well as her fifth language. The farm is lovely, with dozens of well-preserved buildings, a small museum detailing the life and work of Carl R. Jakobson and the National Awakening in Estonia, wonderful flowers, groves of birch trees, and nesting storks!
Everyone gets to help make rich black Estonian bread with an elderly baker woman, taste both everyday and special bread, and hear the story of the pig-shaped loaf saved by Estonian farming families for the first day that the animals returned to the fields. Naite gives us 8 loaves to take with us :)
We also learn how to make twisted yarn bracelets and hairties, as well as whittling animal toys from trees found on the farm.
Back to Pärnu for our lunch and AYS rehearsal, followed by free time – visits to the grocery store to find interesting things, walks to the beach, rest in the hotel room, etc. – until dinner and the evening concert.
The evening concert was great, as they have all been! All 3 Belgian choirs performed together tonight, the Estonian young women’s choir did some nice pieces with interesting movement, and the French choir performed a powerful, moving opera about a government plan in the 1800s to gather up all the orphans and children in poverty to “educate and train” them.
We had an impromptu rehearsal outside, working on the songs for our Open Sing duty tomorrow with the different OS conductors as they walked by. Singing through the streets on the way to our beds :)
Tomorrow, our evening VIP (very important performance) in the Concert Hall!!
Sounds like a lot of stuff to do in one day ^______^
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