School days cool days

I just finished my Finnish homework. We did make it into a beginning Finnish class at the university on Tuesday evenings. Our first class last week went very fast and our instructor spoke mostly Finnish so we had to intuit a lot. Of the thirty or so people we have in the class there are more than a dozen nationalities and sixteen different languages spoken. With the speed of the class I don't think we'll get much of a chance to get to know the others which is unfortunate, since they must all have interesting stories as to what brought them to Helsinki. Things I learned - there's a language in Switzerland called retoromanian which I had never heard of, and the Finnish word for Russia is Venäjä. People were using it thoughout the class and I couldn't decipher the meaning until I turned to the woman behind me who is Venäläinen to ask. There are so many times where I wonder about the derivation of a given word as the roots are so different. We both definitely now have a much more empathetic sense of how isolating it is for people who don't speak the language where they live - you miss the subtleties and humor that native speakers just take for granted, and must communicate on the most mundane levels. Being barred from media is frustrating, though we've got the internet of course, but we miss our Sunday papers. We aren't encountering any hostilities at all though, and the Finns are very adaptable linguistically. It's impressive. That and our fellow students who speak four languages and are learning a fifth with us.

We are in our adjustment phase as we deal with more paperwork and try to settle into this interim routine, but we move to our apartment next week and retrieve our things from the container so that should help us feel more settled. And the Z should be here tomorrow! I'll take its picture soon. It's the sense of being on vacation that is wearing off now - that and the very cool fall weather. I can't wait to get some other clothes out of storage.

I was getting a bit concerned that the aforementioned and pictured here Totally Black (cue Superfly theme song here) licorice ice cream bar was just available in the summer, since I couldn't find them lately, but I found one at a bigger market down by the harbor tonight. I braved gale force winds on the walk over - not really - but it's a harbinger of things to come right here on this northerly coast. We're acclimating day by day.