Buying Estonian candy is a necessary part of a trip to Estonia.

Likewise, eating Estonian cake. This was a sea buckthorn cake with cream cheese and chocolate.

We spent the day at Kapsta with my father and his wife.

Made our traditional home-made sushi lunch.

Enjoyed lunch out in the gazebo tent since the weather remains horribly hot.

Went for a walk in the early evening when the temperature had cooled a bit. Still 25 degrees but at least it’s not 29 any more.

My father’s back is in a bad enough shape that he’s probably not going to be taking any more walks in his life.

There are no pea fields this year. Beans and wheat instead.

A hot and rainy day. Had the weather been better, we might have gone to the adventure park in Otepää, like we do must summers. Now we chose indoor climbing instead – or bouldering, to be more precise. “We” here being the next generation (Ingrid, Adrian, and my Estonian friends’ kids) and me. The rest of the older generation were all either working, or not the climbing kind of people. Occasionally I feel a bit weird, being the only mum in a group that’s otherwise mostly teenagers and twenty-somethings and one brave nine-year-old. But I’m young at heart, eh?

The first room had the traditional kind of bouldering wall with colour-coded routes going crossways and sideways. Then we found the other room, which had a series of twenty-odd competition routes. The first couple were easy, the next few were doable, and beyond that they got more and more bizarre. It’s hard to even picture someone climbing some of them.

In the evening we went paddleboarding. Or “SUP riding”, which in Estonian sounds identical to “soup riding”.

There were heavy showers earlier in the day and heavy clouds even now; even some warnings of thunder. Thunder would have forced us to cancel; heavy rain would have been unpleasant. In the end we were lucky to get neither.

We had a safety and technique lecture on the shore, and then we were allowed on the boards and the water. Initially we were all wobbly and stayed on our knees, while swarming in the little bay we started in.

We left the bay and started paddling our way up the Emajõgi river. When we had worked up a little bit of speed, it didn’t take long for us to find our balance and stand up, like the name suggests you’re supposed to. It took longer for the knees and legs to stop shaking slightly from all the balancing that was going on.

The stand-up paddling was OK, but most of us concluded after a while that the standing-up part was rather unnecessary. You get much more leverage and control when you’re closer to the water. Canoes just make sense. Some of us went back to kneeling; many sat cross-legged.

I was all set to be camera-less during this activity, but the life jackets turned out to have a zippered chest pocket which fit my phone, and I had a little waterproof bag that also fit my phone, so I could take photos after all. I struggle to get the exposure right on the phone – in many non-standard lighting situations the photos come out way too dark and I need to adjust them a lot afterwards. But I’m glad I have these.

Took the train to town for shopping. Mohair yarn for the white wool dress; magnetic poster hangers for two photography posters I bought months ago; crimp beads so I can make my own stitch markers; charity shops where I didn’t find any of the things I was looking for.

The trains are on a half-hourly schedule due to summertime engineering works. It’s not as bad as it has been some past summers; at least we get trains. But the trains turn around in Spånga, and if you live further out, it’s replacement buses for you.

It was lunchtime by the time I got back. I stopped at Spånga Konditori for lunch. Ingrid won’t be working there any more after the summer, so we’re going to lose our access to her staff discount. I need to get the most out of it now.

I had a lovely hummus and avocado toast and strawberry lemonade. It was quiet at the café, and Ingrid could come sit with me when there were no customers to serve.

Ingrid’s graduation party.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. A week ago the forecast was promising 28°C and sunshine, which would have had all of us sweating and gasping for air. Now we just had a beautiful summer day, warm rather than hot, sunny but with a bit of a breeze.

I put the camera to the side for a while. A friendly soul picked it up, so now I have photos of me and Ingrid, too!

The “kids’ table” with Ingrid and some of her best friends.

There was cake – from the bakery where Ingrid works, of course.

Ingrid’s baby cousin was incredibly interested in the cakes, to the point where I felt I had to keep watch to make sure Ingrid could actually be the first one to cut a slice.

We had a quiz with 20 questions about Ingrid, and I presented the correct answers with the cake. Ingrid’s boyfriend won; I guess any other outcome would have been slightly concerning.

Congratulations to Ingrid, who graduated from high school today!

Ingrid’s graduation day.

We got to the school yard in good time, we thought, 45 minutes before the actual event, but there was already a big crowd there.

When the graduates came out, the crowd became a sea of signs. We ended up towards the back, so Adrian as the tallest of us got the task of holding up our sign.

Here’s our proud high school graduate!

And here’s us, proud of our high school graduate.

Once more, with feeling:

\

There was some time for friends and family to congratulate and take photos and what not. Then the graduates went back into the school building to change out of their nice dresses and suits and into their coveralls for the studentflak ride.

One last moment of showing off their shiny selves…

… and then the mood switched boom boxes, plastic whistles, and copious sprayed drinks.

The flak trucks for all the graduating classes took off as a convoy towards the city centre, and the rest of us went home. Ingrid came home a few hours later, completely drenched.

We celebrated the end of the school year – today for Adrian, tomorrow for Ingrid – with a dinner at Sushi Sukai. Both of them finish their years with excellent grades.

Sushi Sukai was also excellent, with interesting and delicious food. Everything from crab tacos to spicy fried popcorn shrimp, salmon tartar to tuna tataki.

The studentflak tradition involves a lot of spilled and sprayed beer and other beverages these days. At some point the students realized that this is no good for party clothes, or even ordinary clothes, and now there are special coveralls for wearing on the flak. These aren’t traditional student coveralls (which are actual pieces of clothing) – they’re more like plastic protective gear.

White is boring, of course, so another tradition that has emerges is spray painting the coveralls. Ingrid and her friends had a coverall painting party in our back garden.