NORMAL LIFE: Studying Finnish...Again!

With the sky getting darker earlier and earlier each evening, you can feel that Winter is returning to Finland once again. So it felt natural when, today, I sat in my first evening Finnish class of the winter term. I'm in Level 3 out of a possible five levels with the University of Helsinki and tonight's class was certainly an eye-opener.

In my recent study of Consumer Ethnocentrism in 21st Century Finland form my Masters Degree (which I submitted to my University last week), I claimed that there was yet to be evidence of Finnish society becoming multicultural. In my lesson tonight, I was godsmacked - there was a wealthy to do man from Africa, an Egyptian, several philipinos, a chinaman and a nun - from Poland - in a snow-white habit with blue ribbons very much like that worn by Mother Theresa.

As far as the Finnish lesson was concerned, our tutor is a well-spoken women in her late 50's with just one rule: No Speaking In English! Instead, we have to converse AT ALL TIMES in Finnish. We will be learning konditionaali, monikko, imperatiivi, passiivi and possessisuffiksi during this course. Already, I'm like, what?!