TalTech New Year’s Stories: Do not see problems, see solutions

Kristi Kiilman from Estonia.
Teacher of Estonian language for PhD students

Published in

TalTech Blog

3 min readDec 30, 2020

The time around New Year’s is perfect to reflect about the events of previous year, set goals and resolutions for the next, and simply enjoy some free time with a good food in a good company. Here is how TalTech international researchers and employees are doing it.

Typical Christmas in Estonia

“Being with family, cooking a lot, watching Christmas movies, going for a walk, eating a lot. It is a big family holiday but for many people it means driving around Estonia and visiting relatives.”

My typical Christmas

“As a typical Estonian — Christmas movies, good food and sauna. I celebrate with my family, sleep long, watch classical movies like Home Alone and Shrek, 101 Dalmatians Dogs. Then nap and have dinner, listening to some Christmas music/ concert.”

Christmas to remember

“Maybe my first Christmas in Finland. It was 3 years ago and it was special because I was very surprised to see so relaxed and slow Christmas. People just enjoy being together without any plans.
They have their own Christmas movies, some kind of Lumiukko (“The Snowman”), which was extremely sad. Then some Santa Claus TV show, where children write letters to Santa.
Finns take it even more relaxed and easy. Cooking a lot. More than in Estonia. Being lazy. More than in Estonia. Eating huge amounts of laatiko. They have no blood sausage, pumpkin salad or jelly meat — typical Christmas meals in Estonia. They prefer apples to mandarins. And they take the day very lazy. I was a bit surprised to see this slow way to celebrate. And I thought that Estonians take it easy. Check out the Finns!”

Your 2020

“In a way, the best year because I worked as a mentor teacher in Tartu University for the first year and taught refugees and people who have no other language skills.
But in another way — totally depressive. No traveling, sitting at home, all life and lessons went to computer, no cultural events. I learned to appreciate things I took for granted — warm room, good food, long walks, good health, ability to work from home, new computer skills.”