From the bay of Finland to the middle of a continent

This will be my last post for possibly 5 days. I am leaving tomorrow on the train to Moscow and then from Moscow I will be boarding the Trans-Siberian Railroad! saying that just sounds adventurous and fun! it's not exactly fast-paced adventure though, considering that i will be on a train for pretty much 3 days in a row, arriving in Tomsk on Saturday evening. At that point i will be 12 hours ahead of CST in the states!
So Tallinn is such a gorgeous city! Even though yesterday it rained ALL day and was freezing cold, it couldn't take away the fact that Tallinn has been here for centuries, accumulating vastly different styles of architechture and urban planning in various sections of the city. In Tallinn, the changes are fairly abrupt, you can cross a street from Old Town with its cobblestone streets and ancient buildings, to Soviet era constructions and then again to modern commercial business districts and it can be really disorienting sometimes. The views from church towers are also great because you can look out over the city and then the water starts and stretches, and yet somehow you can tell that there is an end to it, even if you can't see Helsinki.
Today i spent a majority of my time with Ron and Judy Warpole, two missionaries here in Tallinn. They are crazy fun people and Ron is SO proud of their home just outside the city. it was built in the soviet era and from the outside is typical of that time...looks like a cement block and basically, that's what it is. BUT, they have remodeled the entire interior of their side of the duplex and it is really gorgeous. both are artistic and you can tell when you walk into their house. Then Anna, the girl that let me use her internet on Sunday, came and we all went out to eat. We had a great time laughing at the English descriptions on the menu which never fail to be entertaining when trying to describe local dishes in a language that doesn't really have the words they need. "barbeque prune sauce" was the most interesting today =)
After we ate, i went with Anna to her basketball practice and then right after that to a game between 2 of the professional teams here in Estonia. basketball might be bigger than soccer in the baltic states in a few years, and is definitely more popular in certain communities.
Well, that's about all for now. I will hopefully be able to post late Saturday or Sunday sometime.
Til then,