Where you lay your head at night. Where your family is. Where you grew up. Where most of your friends are. Where you work. Where you love to be. Where you feel at home…

The concept of home is ever-fleeting, especially for those of us who may have several homes, or even no exact place to call our own. What makes it even more confusing is that home means different things to different people.

It’s taken 23 years.

[twenty three years… just breathe that in a bit]

It’s taken me 23 years to ‘get’ a dog. I’ve wanted one since I can remember. In fact, every single birthday wish I remember making in my childhood went like this: …

Time travel is an unreliable form of transportation. When we look at our pasts, we don’t experience them exactly as we do while remembering them now, from the comfort of the present. But today I wanted to time travel back to 2010 anyway, in light of my birthday having just passed, in order to see what I could piece together from that time.

When asking people what their language-related goals are, you might get replies such as the following:
“I want to understand what’s going on around me. I want to be fluent. I want to use the language at work.
I want to be able to speak the language with my children and in-laws.”

My perspective on the exercise is the following: if you spend time thinking about what you want, great. But understanding what it takes to get there is a little different. This makes up the difference between “it would be nice to…” and “I’m willing to do [blank] to get [blank]” …

The first time I picked up a Finnish book, I decided I would read the whole first page. It was 2009, I knew about a dozen Finnish words, and the only ones I understood from that page were ‘on’ (is) and ‘yö’ (night). And on it went from there! It’s easy to get boggled down in the glass half empty mind-set…