Reflection

Tomorrow, our intensive Finnish class will come to an abrupt end. After spending every day together for over a year, my classmates and I will be scattered to the four winds and forced to fend for ourselves.

The most significant thing I've drawn from this experience is an absolutely vast amount of knowledge that I didn't have before. When I began studying Finnish last fall, I knew only a few common phrases, vittu and paska, and a smattering of adjectives like hyvä and kaunis. I can now engage in real conversations with those patient enough, watch movies and television, and understand an admittedly variable amount of what I read in the newspaper. 

I've met people from all over the world, and I've come to love some of them very much. I've been thankful that Finns, at least the ones with which I'm acquainted, want their ulkomaalaiset to learn Finnish well and integrate quickly. The existence of courses like this one makes that process immeasurably easier, and we're all damn lucky. I wouldn't trade this experience for, quite literally, anything. 

We had a final exam on Monday which included listening, reading comprehension, writing, and grammar. I received something close to a perfect score, and it just about made my entire life. A certain amount of the anxiety that's been constantly lingering in my chest and stomach has dissipated as a result. I do know this stuff. I can get better. 

I haven't received the final word on my teacher's opinion on my skill level yet, but she mentioned something about it being around  B1.2. I'm of two minds about this; to me, it sounds entirely too high, but at the same time, I'm overjoyed and perhaps even a tad more confident than before. 

Okay, I'm of three minds about it. I also know that some people achieve a similar result in half as much time, and I wonder if perhaps my emotional state this autumn has been detrimental to my progress. Although I've had countless breakthroughs in the last few months, it seems to me that I've been far more passive than I ought to have been. Then again, one of the best things about being in the A2 - B1 skill range is that words stick in my head far more easily than they used to. With this base level vocabulary, I find that I have more knowledge from which to make educated guesses and from which to form connections.  

I'm leaving for the US on Monday, and I'll be there for about a month. Being there for two very busy weeks in July was perhaps more heartbreaking than it was beneficial. I sort of hate to leave on this high note, however, since it's almost as though I'm just asking for another heartsick few months when I return. The main idea behind this trip is to spend as much time as possible with my loved ones, a thing I wasn't able to accomplish last time. Who knows, though -- maybe I'll be itching to return to Finland. I hope so. 

Oksanen and All Things Indie

Sofi Oksanen came to Lappeenranta last Tuesday. I was lucky enough to have a few free hours in the middle of the day, so two of my classmates and I met at Suomalainen Kirjakauppa to see her.

"Tere, Sofi!" someone called out entreatingly when she arrived. She shuffled guardedly through the crowd and disappeared into the upper level of the shop. The crowd was perceptibly anxious. She returned within a few minutes, and her interview began. She spoke about all sorts of things, like her new book and Soviet propaganda.

Unfortunately, I haven't much to say on Sofi. After the event, I broke down and read a little of Puhdistus in English (Purge), and because I've been increasingly busy prior to the end of my fulltime Finnish course forever and ever, I've barely had any time to read it. Once I sink my teeth into it, I'm told it will be only a few days, if that, before I'm finished. Therefore, all I can say is that the book began in disconcertingly simple prose (which made me wonder about the translator, not about Oskanen herself), but it has expanded to become what I'd call "vivid yet tight". I should probably be reading it now rather than blabbing on the internet, but I've become rather enamored of another Finnish artist.

I was browsing Spotify for music to accompany my studying, and stumbled upon this:

and I nearly choked on the tip of my pen. My interest in folk music was reignited in an instant.

The art school douchebag in me was simultaneously elated and terrified. Who was this hauntinged siren? As it turns out, she's Mirel Wagner, born in Ethiopia, raised in Espoo.

Some of you are probably familiar with the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe. If you are, you probably remember that the poem's speaker sleeps by his love's side in the sepulchre which houses her corpse. I can tell you, though, that this poem was far from the only one he ever wrote concerning something resembling necrophilia.

I say something resembling necrophilia because much of Poe's poetic oeuvre is distinctly asexual. To oversimplify it, he felt that it was poetry's function to provide the reader with an aesthetically pleasing glimpse of death, and that carnality generally obfuscated this purpose.

Mirel Wagner plays with similar themes in her lyrics, but she adds an unapologetic dose of carnality where Poe would have only allowed for corpse-cuddling. Combine it with her minimalist, bluesy folk, and there's something irresistible about her.

And I must admit that there's something unsettling and appealing about Wagner's tale of being visited by the devil in the middle of the night...

To lighten the mood, I also found this lovely electro-pop/noise-pop band called I Was a Teenage Satan Worshipper. I can only assume that he was a kinder, gentler satan than the one with which Mirel Wagner is acquainted.

Overfed

Whether I want it or not, I belong more to the ragtag group of immigrants in my Finnish class than to the larger culture of Lappeenranta. It's not because I have more in common with them - it is almost certain that I have more in common behaviorally with Finns than with the members of my class -   it's a result of the amount of time we spend together. Despite our differences, we've formed a small coalition for the purposes of mastering the grammatical puzzle that is the Finnish language. It's been a pleasant, edifying alliance. I've even made a couple of true friends.

This week, a classmate from Cameroon returned to us after he'd attended a conference in South Africa. When our teacher asked about his trip, he shrugged. "Scary," he said. 

"Why scary?" she asked. 

He went on to describe a situation in which a bus he'd been on was hijacked. He was held at gunpoint by men dressed as police, and all of the things he had with him were stolen. The hijackers drove the bus into the wilderness, threw the key away, and left the passengers to search for it so that they might make their way back to civilization. We listened to this story in horror, understanding to only a limited extent how much worse it could have been. "That's the kind of thing that happens in American movies," someone said. It is, unfortunately, also the kind of thing that happens in South Africa. 

We took a break. When we returned, we each found two pieces of South African candy waiting for us on our desks. The guy had thought to provide us with sugar after he'd been threatened with a gun. There is something almost unfathomable about that. To give in spite of being rightfully preoccupied with yourself is a special brand of generosity. 

One of my favorite classmates is an Ingush woman. She wears a variety of colored headscarves, slips away to pray every day at break time, and speaks Finnish without any hesitancy. Her speech is usually a bit like word salad, but she manages to convey herself well without any of the hindrances usually brought on by fear, shyness, or excessive thought.  

Telling her the details of my own life story is intensely embarrassing. She has spent much of her life in a war zone, living in a state of perpetual fear . What can I say? "I grew up in the country. I was always safe, warm, and well fed. I went to school and sang in a choir. Oh, there was that one time when my parents got divorced." Her experience reminds me that I am a soft, privileged, overnourished human being. Actually, I like to be reminded. It makes me thankful for the life I've led, yes, but it also provides me with a more complete, accurate perspective on what it means to live in the world. 

This Ingush woman seems to elicit a certain amount of sneering (though mostly of a friendly nature, if that's possible) from the Russian members of class. A very quiet, usually kindly Russian classmate once whispered to me, "L speaks terrible Russian. It's because she's from the south, in that part the country. Did you know that she and her husband don't want to find jobs?" I distinctly remember being unable to conceal my indignation. "Well," the Russian woman said after she'd seen the look of disapproval on my face, "none of us really want jobs, do we?" 

In an odd way, I felt a bit like a beloved aunt had just said something terribly catty about another of our relatives. And, as much as I hate to deploy this particular cliche, our class is very much like a family. We didn't choose each other, but we must necessarily accept and care for each other. How else will we survive?