What Not Being Able to Communicate Reveals (Guest Starring: Riley)

That's my family's dog, Riley. She is, of course, still at home in America. I miss her terribly, and nothing tugs, no, strums my heartstrings more than this grainy photo that my dad took some time last fall. Trust me when I say that this dog is special. Beautiful, fiercely intelligent, an incredible athlete, and so, so neurotic. For instance, as is well known to many of my friends and family members back home, she absolutely hates the word "fart." Cannot stand it. If you say it in her presence, she will usually jump around and bark indignantly, as if to defend herself against any accusation that she may have let one fly.

But she's not what I had planned to write about. She's merely a cute visual addition to this post in the absence of a more relevant photo.

As I was sitting in class today, the last before our hiihtoloma, I found myself trying to explain (in Finnish, of course) to my classmate why I don't properly speak a language other than English. I told her that I'd had an abysmal German teacher whose primary goal was to feed us German food. I also told her that language learning is, regrettably, not a priority in American schools. Or at least, those are the things that I tried to tell her. I'm fairly certain I succeeded, but, you know, I can't be certain.

But it got me thinking. When one of the most basic tools available to you -- speech -- is utterly blunted, it can really help you to abandon any self-consciousness that you might otherwise feel. When you're focused on the content of your thoughts and on the vocabulary and grammars that you must implement to express even simple concepts, it can be extremely disarming. You're forced to forget your defenses. In your desperation to communicate, any thought of etiquette, what your hair looks like, whether you've just said something stupid -- it all becomes kind of irrelevant. Whatever it is, you simply don't have the mental space to consider it. And, as for saying something stupid, you absolutely will.

This has been a pretty good exercise for me. I'm glad that learning Finnish has disarmed me, at least within the confines of class time.

And, perhaps even better news is that I sort of feel as if I've hit a new peak in terms of learning and understanding Finnish. Tonight we celebrated the upcoming birthdays of Rami's sister and father, and there were a few other family members there. I think I caught at least 50 percent of what was said. Now, is what I perceive as understanding actually misunderstanding? I don't know, but I don't think so. I felt just the tiniest bit competent. It was a pretty amazing feeling -- one that I may not feel again for quite a while yet.

I think Riley would be proud.