Hello!!

My name is Douglas Wells and I am from Nebraska.

 From here you can find out

NEW! I wrote a book about my experiences on Hiiumaa Island. You can read the short review, just follow link: "In Search of the Elusive Peace Corps Moment ~ Destination: Estonia"

 Nebraska is here.
I was on Hiiumaa Island for four wonderful years (1992-1996) It was my first experience abroad and an introduction to Estonian (sorry, Hiiumaa) culture.  I came to the island as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). At that time, Russian troops were still occupying the island. Usually, Peace Corps Volunteers are only at post for two years, but Hiiumaa was soooo beautiful and we had a lot of cooool projects, so the big bosses let me stay. I love Hiiumaa!! Island paradise! Yeah!! After four years,  I went to the mainland capital of Tallinn to work as a UN Volunteer. My post was at the Estonian Tourist Board. Now, I have finished a stint in Washington at the beautiful Estonian Embassy. What a cool job! I was lucky to get it. Especially since the demand for Estonian language skills is pretty weak here in the states!

Do you what the Peace Corps is? Peace Corps volunteers have to work REALLY HARD, the Volunteer's life is DIFFICULT! PCV's work in Estonia as small business advisors, NGO advisors, english teachers and basically do whatever their community needs the most. There are scores of official catagories for the 6,000 volunteers in 80 some countries but every volunteer has his own unique job description. PCV's learn the local language, so I studied Estonian. What a nightmare!! Estonian is the craziest damn language in the world. Wanna know how I think it was invented? Click here!!

PCV's can't own weapons and can't drive cars. For example, I DIDN'T drive THIS car, honest! They also tell us to watch out for the local girls. Also, inflicting grevious bodily harm on a host country national, no matter how much he deserves it, is right out!

 But hey, PCV life is interesting also. Hiiumaa is such a cool, unspoiled, beautiful island! In the winter you can drive cars 17 mile over the ice to the mainland. Yes, sometimes they fall through. My wife's family lost their car!!! It is really not so scary, there is snow on top of the ice so you can't look down and see fish swimming around or anything like that! That was a disappointment. Sometimes people steal metal. One time I couldn't call home for three days and then found out that some idiot had whacked a big piece out the copper cable to the mainland so they could sell it! The thieves' careers often end when they try the same trick with a live electric wire or try to melt down old artillery shells. BOOOOM!

Hiiumaa people are kinda strange. The make so many jokes, and jokes about jokes, that I don't know when they are telling the truth! There is a saying that if you believe only half of what a Hiiumaan tells you, you still only have a quarter of the truth! Think about that for a while! This preoccupation with jokes probably explains why they have the habit of never meeting a deadline or being on time for a meeting. However, this is changing like so many other things on the island. Hiiumaa 92-96 was not only a place, but a time. I can visit, but never really go back and experience those days.

I like to play guitar, sing, surf the Internet, eat chocolate and drink "Vana Tallinn", the thick, sweet Estonian liquor. Oh, and I like to hunt around in the forest with my metal detector looking for chunks of shrapnel and weapons left over from World War Two. I even have a pet bomb in the forest. I had to leave it there with the other bullets and stuff because U.S. customs probably wouldn't have let me bring them back!! It was fun to scaree tourists with, though.
 

I met this reallllly beautiful girl on Hiiumaa who stole my heart. At first, she wasn't much impressed with my Estonian language or the fact I was an American. She ran me around for a good six months!! She had a Russian boyfriend but eventually dumped him for me. Another Cold War victory!! The folks in Hiiumaa (and my wife's mother) made it a real fairy-tale wedding. We got married in Pühalepa Church, the oldest church on Hiiumaa (13th century), which hadn't seen a proper wedding since the Soviet occupation. The reception was in a biiiig Baltic German manor house called Suuremõisa.

I think the church smiled that day!

I have a lot of friends in Hiiumaa who helped me through a lot of hard times. I think I learned more from them than they did from me. Leaving was real hard but life is like that. As one last joke, because I was always complaining about the lack of signs, the folks in Hiiumaa dedicated a big rock in my honor..
The Douglas Stone(The guy in the middle is the Governor of Hiiumaa)

E-mail for Douglas