HOW I LEARNED FRENCH BY IMMERSION ONLY

I'm reading a novel in French, when suddenly I come across the word cadavre. I know the word, which baffles me a bit in a sense - I mean, 'a corpse'? Where the heck did I learn that? To go back to the context where the word sounds the most familiar, my mind starts forming a word pair: cadavre... brulée. Cadavre brulée.

A burned corpse. Right. Slaying dragons in a video game in French for a year finally paid off.

Three years ago I didn't speak a word in French - well, that's a lie really. I had a beginner's course of French at the age of 16 (i.e. ten years ago), after which I was able to say merci, bonjour and s'il vous plaît. There we had it. All of my French. Then I met a guy who spoke French as his first language and everything was pretty much downhill from there.

So I moved to Québec, the only French-speaking province of Canada, with my vocabulary of merci, bonjour and s'il vous plaît. Again, a lie. I had another beginner's course in French just before crossing the ocean, after which I had added things like Je m'appelle Melissa and au revoir to my vocabulary.

These five phrases were pretty much all I had when I landed on Canada's French-speaking soil, ready to find a job and settle down. As history tells, all that ended well and I managed to work for the world-famous video game company Activision for a year. I went from Bonjour, je m'appelle Melissa to effortlessly reading the book you see on the cover of this post (Pays sans Chapeau by Dany Lafarrière) without ever studying French. How?

1. I PLAYED MY VIDEO GAMES IN FRENCH

As you can guess, someone working for Activision might enjoy playing video games. That's where I started. Whether it was an enormous open-world RPG or Spore, I switched the language to French. Obviously at first I had no idea what was going on, what's my quest, where am I supposed to go. But believe me, after you're told Tu vas mourir! ("You will die!") in the beginning of a battle enough many times, something will click. You start seeing the structure Tu vas in other places, like Tu vas aller là, "You will go there", and little by little you notice how making these links with different contexts in the game will reveal you what it means. After passing many enough STOP signs on the streets of Québec, screaming ARRÊT with capital letters, it wasn't that hard for me to guess what my enemies in the game wanted me to do when shouting Arrêtez! C'est assez! ("Stop! That's enough!")

Video games are pretty straight forward, in the end. They tell you to click a button, talk to a character, pick up an item. Seeing these instructive sentences in a familiar, repetitive context can help you build your vocabulary really fast: there are only so many things the game would like you to do when putting a sugar roll in front of you and telling you to press X to manger. After pressing X, you hear munching, and the sugar roll is gone. Could manger possibly mean "to eat"?

Don't enjoy video games? Try the same with something similar you like - you could start by switching your Facebook in French, or any other familiar website you frequently use. My phone was on French settings for my whole year in Québec, and I swear to god I will never forget the phrase Batterie faible, thanks to my wonderful, ancient phone who reminded me of that every five minutes after it went under a certain battery power percentage. Fun times.

2. I COPIED LOCAL PEOPLE

Every morning I came to work and sat down on my desk, my colleagues would tell me Bon matin! Now, matin is to this day one of the words I hate the most, but when you hear it every morning, you answer to it every morning, you get used to it. Eventually it becomes automatic.

Every lunch break I went to get take out to bring back to the office. The discussions with cashiers are always pretty much the same:

Cashier: Bonjour! Ça va?

Me: Bonjour! Oui, vous? Je vais prendre _________, s'il vous plaît.

Cashier: Manger ici ou pour emporter?

Me: Pour emporter.

... And so on. When you repeat this discussion with a slight variety every day for a year, in the end ordering food in French is the simplest thing. I listened to my colleagues a lot in these situations, trying to see what kind of questions they'd be asked, and what kind of answers they'd give to these questions. Then I went on and repeated the same thing. The same happened when charging my monthly bus card: I learned the phrase, repeated it once a month, and finally the 12th time was actually fairly effortless.

Locals know what they're doing - listen to them and see how they go, and every time you'll learn a new phrase or two. If you have native-speaking friends to help you, you're in good hands: there was this one time when after ordering my sushi the cashier suddenly said something I had never heard before. My colleague saw my desperate face and translated: "She's complimenting your earrings!" There we had it: boucles d'oreilles. Earrings.

3. I READ A BOOK WITH A NATIVE SPEAKER

That's only one of the hundred things I did with Alex to learn more words, but damn it's efficient. We bought me a fairly simple book, and I'd then read it out loud with my native-speaking spouse, stopping at every word I didn't know. He'd tell me the translation to every unfamiliar word, and correct my pronunciation when needed. The things I learned! By repeating, repeating and repeating the same words, getting corrected ten times over the same mispronounced phrase... By staying stubborn and learning from my mistakes I eventually read my first book entirely in French.

Reading a book isn't the only way, of course, and most definitely not the only occasion where I'd harras my French-speaking friends over unfamiliar words: signs I'd see on the street, phrases I'd hear them use often (C'est tellement drôle, "that's so funny" and an impressive cavalcade of swear words are forever burned in my spine), I took every occasion to ask what's going on around me.

Read, ask, repeat: the best possible way to learn a language on the go when school books are out of the question and your boss keeps sending you emails only in French. 

Now, there are a few things we need to recognise in the process of learning a language by immersion only:

First of all, you might not learn how to write. That's the case with me. Remember that boucles d'oreilles a few rows back? Yeah, I had no idea how to write that, I used Google Translate. I know the word like the back of my hand, it's "boucl dorei", but no one has ever asked me to write it down. I can't successfully conjugate verbs in future or past tense on paper, because they all sound pretty much the same. I don't always remember where the accents are when written, unless I can hear it from the word, like in the case of passé composé, where I hear the e and the end of the verb and know it needs an accent to be pronounced: mangé, sauté, aimé.

Secondly, learning a language by immersion brutally beats up any other language you speak while immersing. Want a proof? Check out these terrible inverted sentence structures in this post. Check out how I accidentally used the word "these" in my previous sentence - why? Because that's how it works in French! French is now forever imprinted in my head with such a strong bond that the moment I hear someone speak French on the streets of Dublin, everything I ever knew about English sails away, and I might accidentally answer to my English-speaking friend in French.

BUT: No matter how unstructured, chaotic, messy and tiring experience it might be, I would never give up learning French by immersion for learning it at school. I might not write well, I might not sound like your typical French-speaking girl after learning it with a bunch of guys, but damn right I'm not afraid to speak it. I didn't learn it perfectly, but there's more to it now than merci, bonjour and experct knowledge of passé composé. There's a real life aspect to it.

And about that cadavre brulée.You know that dessert, crème brulée? It's obviously burned from the top, burned "cream", crème. But burned what? Well, cadavre sounds like that death spell from Harry Potter, avada KEDAVRA. Kedavra, cadavre, my mind told me there's a link between these words. Since the spell is about death, it must be--

.... And that, folks, is how my polyglot mind works.

Have you learned a language by immersion? Any tips or tricks to add to my list? I was thinking of filming a small video of myself speaking in French to demonstrate how I sound. Would you like to see it? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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HIS STORY: THE CANADIAN BEHIND THE SCENES

During my blog's history I have been going on and on about myself: my experiences as an immigrant in Canada and as a part of a multicultural couple. But how about the other side of the coin? How does all this work out for the Canadian underdog, the boyfriend - or "un chum" as they say here in Québec? I asked Alex to write me a guest post about his experiences as the receiving side of this multicultural chaos.

~ * ~

Hey, this is Alex. Melissa asked me two things lately. The first thing was to start using her name. So that’s one down right off the bat. The second thing was to write a post for her blog to tell my side of the story. That’s the harder part.

What is it like to have a foreign girlfriend who came to your country to spend your last year of university with you before you both leave for a third country?
At first, it feels absolutely awesome. After all, this girl moved all across the world to your unknown city in your boring country (Melissa arrived before Trudeau made Canada great again), just to spend her time with you, just to wait for you to be ready to leave. Sure there are other reasons, but she chose that specific place on the planet for you. That’s love. It feels good, I felt like a winner.

Under Pressure
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it sours afterwards, but other feelings start taking over. One in particular is pressure and stress. Sure she came for you, but now you have the pressure of making it worth her while, especially after the horror that was the application for the visa. She is not going to spend her whole year on the sofa playing Skyrim, but finding a job in Québec when your French is less than stellar is no easy task. At first I tried to entertain her by playing the tour guide on my days off. But there are only so many things to do in Québec. Plus, she might tire of hearing me speak of Champlain and the British conquest of Canada. Everyday that she said she was bored, everyday that she didn’t think she could find a job, it was on me, or so I felt. I started regretting not choosing Montréal for my studies, hell, I even found myself wishing I was an Ontarian (blasphemy!) just so she could find a job and make friends more easily. And then came that day when she got a call for an interview and nailed the conversation on the phone (in French). And just like that, the pressure left because Melissa can get a job in this French speaking city that won’t raise the finger to integrate its immigrants.

Alex in Suomelinna, Helsinki, Finland

What it is like to speak English at home all the time while living in a French speaking city?
Technically, it is very easy in the sense that speaking English is not a problem for me, it comes quite naturally albeit certain mistakes I might do once in a while. It’s when I have to go back to French that it becomes confusing as I think and even dream in English most of the time. It somehow feels less natural, a little bit wrong as well. I sort of feel like a kid doing something and being super excited and nervous at the thought of getting caught. I have been working in retail and it has happened that I got lost in my train of thoughts and answered to them in English before realizing where I am and putting my brain back in francophone mode. That is what speaking a secondary language all the time does, it makes you get confused when you go out. It also makes me have a very practical relationship with languages, French has lost a bit of its romantic aspect.

Lost in translation
Speaking English in Québec city can be really confusing, but it is still much easier for me than for Melissa as I can switch back to French, even if I have to think about it. I may not have to do it anymore as she understands almost everything, but at first I had to translate absolutely everything. I felt like it was my responsibility to help integrate. So I did my best. I did not mind doing it but if I have to be really honest, I have to admit that it was extremely tiring. It demanded I constantly talk a little over everyone, and that I make sure that I remember everything they say almost word by word.

It somehow felt like I had two brains and that they had to both work at the same time, one listening and transmitting the information to the second one who would then repeat it in English. It took me a lot of energy. The worst part was that I could not really take part in the conversations either as I was too busy repeating everything to formulate a thought of my own. I am happy I did it, as it made Melissa know what was going on and I know how it is to be awkwardly sitting in room filled with people speaking a language you don’t speak, but I now have a much better understanding of the reason why translators have to go through so much more than just language classes. Translation is a completely different way of functioning.

Cultural differences
Melissa already mentioned it: there are quite a few differences between our two countries, even if we are both hockey-loving alcohol-drinking nations from the north. But our roots are extremely different, we are French, English, Native American, American and none of that at the same time. This has caused fights that were only caused by either one or both not understanding the other one, fights that were caused by simple confusions during our relationship. These fights are often solved by the sentence ‘oh, I see now’. But most of the time, I do not really think about those differences, I feel like they are extremely minor, at least their effects on our values and beliefs are minor. I don’t think she agrees with me on that one, but we currently live in my country, so there are a lot of things that she notices, confuse her, bother her, that I won’t think about. Perhaps my vision of this will change once we are living in Dublin, but currently I don’t think cultural differences are an issue, at least not to me.

Québecsplaining and introspection

The Finnish family on a visit in Québec

One thing you don’t always realize as a local is the way minorities are treated. There is a stereotype that Québeckers are super warm and welcoming, and I believed it. But I was sorely disappointed. A lot of my friends made huge efforts to speak in English when she was there so she would understand (and so I wouldn’t have to translate everything) and I was super thankful for them. But then there was all the others, the one who would make a point of not speaking English. The ones who wouldn’t try, the ones who would harass her with the question ‘How’s your French?’. I found myself constantly having to do so much Québecsplaining (I came up with that just there and I’m so proud of it), trying to either excuse the behaviour of everyone, that constant threat that a lot of Québeckers feel for the status of English, and the fact that her English being so damn good was actually a nuisance as most people would just assume she is an English Canadian who never made the effort to learn French (to be fair, there is a lot of them).

Living with someone with a culture that is just slightly different from yours forces you to reflect on a lot of cultural traits of your nation that you never would have thought about questioning. I do question our parliamentarian monarchy as a broken undemocratic system, and other big cultural traits like that, but I would never have thought of questioning the love that we have for our particular brand of French. Nothing makes you realize how ridiculous or weird something is like being asked to explain why you do it. How many times has my answer been ‘uh bah bah uh… I dunno’ when Melissa asked me ‘why does it work like that?’ when trying to teach her French.

You know what they say, travels make you know yourself more. Having a partner from abroad asking questions about your weird habits does the same. I could go into specifics and mention that we have a completely different food culture, from what we eat, to when to how often. But that’s just anecdotes. I feel like what having a partner from abroad does is give you the gift of introspection and self-critique. It gave me a window to Québec’s attitude towards immigrants, towards minorities. I had always been willing to welcome everyone who would want to call themselves Québécois, and I was convinced that was a trait shared by most of us. It’s not. And it’s a damn shame.

The miracle of a waterproof map in Venice, Italy

Nevertheless, it’s not all bad. Like said, a lot of things we do I never would have thought of questioning, because they seem natural to me and they are good. We may not always be welcoming of immigrants, but we are nice and helpful to each other, and once you are accepted, we are likeable. For instance, there was one time when I asked a neighbour if he would lend me his shovel for a couple minutes so I could get my car out of the parking lot. He lent it to me and I did what I had to do. Then I gave it back to him and he said he’d wait to be sure I actually get out. Melissa was amazed. First of all, I just casually asked him to help, he said yes, but even more, he waited because he cared. Melissa asked me why he would do something like that, why he would care about me as we do not know each other. The question baffled me as it never occurred to me that you could not do this naturally. Another time, her parents were there and we were in a restaurant, and they asked me where we learn to be so polite. I just couldn’t answer. It felt like it was just natural, why would we not help if we can and why would we not be polite if we don’t have a reason to be angry? As the late René Lévesque said on the night he became Premier, ‘We are not a small people, maybe we are something like a great people!’

Having a foreign girlfriend living in your country is a lot of things. It is stress and pressure, desire to make her love your city. It is also a lot of efforts, it changes your relation to your language, and causes confusing moments and many weird looks. It makes you question yourself and your culture, makes you see all of your wrong-doings, and it can make you feel like an outsider in your own city - but it can also make you see the nice things about it. Above all, at the end of the day, she still has proven to you how much you mean to her: she went through the personal hell and took a gap-year by choosing to come to live with you. Our relationship is far from a regular one. It faces problems most won’t ever have to face, but that doesn’t mean anything. Our relationship has survived things that would have broken most, and it just goes to show how deep and sincere it is.

MULTICULTURAL RELATIONSHIP: PROS AND CONS?

When it comes to questions about my life as an expat, the international state of my romantic life is surely to arouse the most curiosity. I decided to raise the curtain a little and write a post about my life as a part of a multicultural couple. How does it work? Does it work at all? Do we constantly fight about things related to our cultural differences? How does it feel to love in a language that's not your own?

The key attribute to success in living with someone who doesn't possess the same cultural background as you is to acknowledge the fact that it is indeed the case: we are different in a way that cannot be possible for a Finnish or a Canadian couple. Our struggles are different: where a Finnish couple might fight over who does the dishes, we're fighting over with what we're doing the dishes, since my quebecois partner prefers a washcloth, and I want my brushes. We both think the other's option is unhygienic.

Come to terms with these differences. I'll start with a real-life example from yesterday: Alex has started in a new job in retail close to our home, and he had told me his shift would finish at 5. So at 20 to 6 I started to get a little confused and tried to call, but he didn't answer. I was hungry and wanted dinner. When he finally arrived home, I proceeded to ask:

"And where have you been?"
"At work? I told you my shift finishes at 5?"
"It's 15 to 6?"
"Well the shop closes at 5 but of course we have to clean up the shop before we leave!"
"So why isn't that included in your shift schedule on a daily basis? That's how it works in Finland. The shop closes at 5, so they extend my shift to 5:15."
"But they can't know how long it will take to clean up the shop."
"Well can't they estimate?"

This went on for a while until we realised the discussion has faced a dead end. I didn't realise that this is how they roll in Canada. Alex of course didn't know that I was unaware of this. So when these fights happen, someone has to raise the white flag and request a time-out, since none of us is right.

There are pros and cons in a duo of two nationalities, as one would expect. I came up with 3 biggest differences compared to a couple of the same nationality, and my way to deal with these differences.

The Difference: Our cultures and habits are not the same.

As demonstrated above, we often encounter situations that feel a little absurd for a Finnish or Canadian couple. We want to do different things, we want to do same things with a different method, we need different things, we speak differently, we intepret words differently, we eat differently. The list could go on.

I came across one of the most common differences up to date just a few weeks from becoming a couple: I call it the Maybe-question. Finns are very straightforward and direct to a point where it becomes impolite in Canadian culture. I say yes and I mean yes. If something is wrong, I'll say it straight away, and if something pisses me off, I'll open my mouth and speak up. I don't play word games. However, in my partner's culture this is much more common, and sometimes it's hard for me to understand what they actually want. I might ask if Alex would like to eat mushroom pasta for dinner, and I get "maybe..." as an answer. This confused me at first, but with almost 2 years' experience I know now that "maybe" often means yes - depending on the tone, of course. No-Maybe sounds different.

We use words in a different way: our languages have been developing in different surroundings, and thus they stress and have words for separate things. I often amuse (and frighten) quebeckers by telling them Finnish doesn't have a word for "please". Meanwhile all that "ça va?" sounds unnecessary and pretentious to my ear - but my opinion on this never changed the fact that for a year our Skype conversations would always, always start with this mantra:

"Hi there, how are you?"
"I'm fine, how about you?"
"I'm fine too. So, what's up?"

Many times I requested we drop this courtesy and go straight into business, since we never had much time to exchange news. But no, he insisted and kept doing it. So after a while I understood that another way to start a conversation with a French-speaker doesn't seem to exist, and have been playing along ever since.

One thing that directly affects the everyday life of an international couple is the question of holidays. We consider different days of the year to be worth celebrating. Quebeckers go absolutely nuts on the 24th of June: St. Jean, Québec's official national day, is one of the biggest celebrations of the year. I myself am very keen on Midsummer (Juhannus) around the 21st of June, when the sun doesn't set and Finns spend their nightless nights dancing around bonfires and trying to avoid drowning. Our common calendar holidays, such as Christmas, have completely different traditions, and I'm already mentally preparing myself for a Christmas without smoked salmon this year.

BUT: It offers us a chance to question our own habits and opinions as something universal.

Exchange students and emigrants-to-be are often warned about the upcoming monster called the culture shock. It's the small dreaded creature sitting on every expat's shoulder and suddenly making all Finns want to exclusively eat rye bread and drink salmiakki vodka, even if neither of these things have been on their daily grocery list in Finland. They spend hours and hours running around their new hometown desperately trying to find a store that would sell cardamom (speaking from experience here!), because you absolutely need those cinnamon buns right now. The locals don't seem to understand the importance of cheese slicers and door handles, water tastes nothing like in Finland, insulation is nothing like in Finland, people are weird and nothing like in Finland, grocery stores and washing machines are your biggest enemy, and even showers are trying to kill you.

Stepping outside of your comfort zone to a new and strange culture is a crucial moment for anyone's national identity: it offers us a chance to rethink our position in this world and in our own culture. Am I a Finn? What does it mean to be a Finn? How much of a Finn am I? Living in one single culture makes it easy to take cheese slicers for granted and think of door handles as something cosmopolitan - the Finnish way of living appears as something universal, The One Culture, and the rest of the world as The Other in relation to it.

Multicultural relationship puts you into a position where struggles like these are part of your everyday life. The new home country/travelling destination/exchange university might appear as the biggest enemy for someone who's not used to facing that mild helplessness at first, but for one struggling with cultural differences on a daily basis such a feeling is nothing but new. Your whole life is that culture shock: your spouse doesn't understand doors without knobs nor see the point of cheese slicers, toilets in Europe don't have enough water and there are multiple separate stores for stuff you would normally find in one single pharmacy in Canada. Every time I might slip into thinking the Finnish way is the only way, he reminds me that none of us knows the right way to do things - only different ways. And no matter how much I might think asking the unnecessary "ça va?" is not at all me, last week I actually asked this question for the first time completely automatically when I entered our HR Manager's office and simultaneously realised how handy it is when trying to break the ice!

The Difference: We don't have a common native language.

My boyfriend is a French-speaker. Sometimes I wake up in the morning, I look at him and it strikes me all of a sudden: My boyfriend's mother tongue is French. How did this happen? I was pretty much able to say "Bonjour" and "Merci" when I met him for the first time. I, however, speak Finnish as my first language, a language that no one has ever even heard of. It was obvious that Alex had no idea how Finnish even sounds like.

Sometimes our linguistic differences reveal much bigger things about our general cultural differences. French and Finnish are binary opposites on many aspects, but I came up with one fundamental difference: GENDER. Finnish is a language of gender equality. There is no she or he, only hän to describe the 3rd person singular. After 2 years of speaking English every day I still screw up at times when it comes to mentioning the gender of the person I'm talking about, and it makes my quebecois friends really confused.

I might be telling a story while simultaneously fucking up the pronouns in English (or French, even more drastically). My quebecois friends look at me, a little confused, before they proceed to ask: "So.... was this person a man or a woman?"

Me, being raised in a culture where I will necessarily never know the gender of the protagonist, ask the obvious question: "... Why do you need to know anyway?"

They stay silent. Because they don't know why they want to know. They're just used to knowing. We argue about this at times, since it's hard for me to understand why there has to be a different word for a female mayor. At the same time, Alex makes lots of efforts to make me realise that without a female word for a mayor, the French word only refers to a male.

So we communicate in English, which has been a natural choice of language since the very beginning - we lived in England, after all.

Is it hard? At times we might have to stop and try to find words for certain things. We might sit down on a couch and go on Google Translate together to check this word the other was is trying to explain (usually diseases or kitchen utensils). You should hear us when we have to tell each other something really quick while doing 10 other things at the same time (cooking is a perfect example: imagine a situation where I witness a bowl of tomato sauce about to fall on the carpet, and I have approximately 0.5 seconds to inform Alex about the upcoming disaster!).

BUT: We learn new languages while simultaneously mastering our English skills.

The best way to learn a language is to speak it with native speakers. Even if my French skills are not at all impressive, I'd like to be brave enough to say my pronunciation is not too bad, thanks to learning it from a French-speaker.

At the same time we learn a lot about our own mother tongues by listening to our spouse questioning the obvious. "But WHY do you say it like that?" "WHY is there a difference?" I've become familiar with the confusion and helplessness I feel in front of my own mother tongue, thanks to my partner's brilliant questions.

Sometimes it's hard for me to remember that Alex has a different mother tongue, a whole different world happening in French inside his head - a world I haven't been able to understand. Communicating with Alex in any other language than English feels unnecessary and weird, since we both speak it almost perfectly. The idea of Alex not understanding my mother tongue has never been on my list of concerns - and you know what's much scarier? Now that I speak and understand French remotely well, I'm finally able to hear the French-speaking Alex, the quebecker who ends his sentences with "là" and swears by saying "calice".

The Difference: Our future is always a bit uncertain.

According to the study by European Commission, more than quarter of the people attending Erasmus exchange meet their long-term partner while studying abroad. I have all means to start believing I have become part of this happy group, but building a life with someone from another country is somewhat tricky.

We spent a year in a long-distance relationship before being able to live in the same country, but we were lucky - for some, it might be 2 or 5. Where a Finnish couple picks up a phone and calls when they miss each other, we created detailed weekly schedules to find a moment for a quick Skype session. We saw each other every 2 to 4 months. The question I heard the most during this time was ”Are you sure it’s worth it? I mean, that must be really hard.”



The word is not hard - it’s complicated. It’s complicated because it asks for arrangements which make that lifestyle sound just a little miserable: it asked us to schedule our every day to match someone’s who’s living 7 timezones apart just to hear their voice for an hour at 2am. We ate noodles and porridge for two weeks straight just to be able to put that last 100 bucks aside for the plane tickets to have a chance to see each other every 2 or 3 months. We always took that one extra shift, thus making us study at nights, I even sold over a half of everything I owned so I could move into a hippie commune from my cozy studio flat. It asked for long, uncomfortable and complicated flights, to sleep at all these bloody airports using a computer as a pillow, to plan our life a year ahead and to argue with friends and family who think we’re batshit crazy - and I really can’t blame them. It asked me to start over once more by beginning to learn my 7th language while Alex tries to make all 14 Finnish cases make even a slight sense. A hint: they don’t.



To maintain this relationship I went through a long and complicated immigration process of half a year, filled 8 forms and provided 20 different supporting documents from criminal recods to medical statements. I had lived my whole life in a barrel called European Union, and nothing could have prepared me for the complications and procedures it required to move to North America. No, ESTA, I'm not a nazi!

We finally live together - for now. If everything goes well, next September our common destination will be Ireland, and I can happily jump back into my barrel of visa-free immigration, euros and European Insurance cards, and it will be Alex's turn to go through a war of papers and certificates.

BUT: We share the desire to explore and experience the world.

You meet a guy on an exchange semester, you fall in love after chasing each other like idiots for ages in the fear of an uncertain future, and finally at the end of the year you promise to stay faithful and skype every day. Sounds like a disaster-to-be-born, doesn't it?

A situation like ours had all the chances to become a disaster, and it's exactly what happens to many. The disasters like that turn into exchange flings, and are the reason why I had to count to ten, inhale and exhale a few times and bite my tongue more than enough when family and friends came up with their concerned queries about the realistic outcome of my love life. There are always obstacles to overcome and extra willpower to maintain.

But when you overcome those obstacles, keep up with those skype sessions and fill all those forms, in the end you end up with something absolutely amazing!

Over a quarter of the people attending Erasmus find their long-term partner while studying abroad - why? People attending international mobility programs often share the passion to see the world, meet new people from different cultures, gain more international experience and figure out whether or not the expat life could be their thing. Meeting such people is a welcomed change for many. I'm personally more afraid of getting stuck in Finland and living in the suburbs with a 8-to-4 job than I have ever been of getting my heart broken because my international relationship ended up being too hard to maintain.

So you go on an exchange semester in the hopes of figuring out what you want to do in life and experience new cultures, you meet a guy from the other side of the world who shares your passions, desires and plans to see the world and never get stuck in one place, you fall in love, and finally at the end of the year you've figured out that the person you fell in love with will never ask you to stay when you need to go, they will never make you choose between them and your own ambitions, and if you're lucky, they're mad enough to surrender to a life of weekly skype schedules, lonely nights and countless hours at airports, so that in the very end they will have a life with you.

We have so much to offer and teach to each other due to our different cultural backgrounds. We don't have a common native language, so we will master three at once. Our future is always a bit hard to figure out, but it makes our everyday life yet another adventure. It's a perfect deal!

What are the pros and cons of multicultural relationships in your opinion? Do you have any similar experiences? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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What's up?

I'm an immigrant. I live the life of an immigrant, which is, for obvious reasons, rather different to the one I led in my dear old Finland.

Or is it really?

I've reached a point where I feel like my integration to the local society has come to a pretty comfortable state: I have a job, a bank account, a phone number, a bus card, a fidelity card for my nearby grocery store, I even do volunteer work for the local cultural centre every other weekend. I take the same bus 800 to work every day at the same time, at 7:33 from St-C.-Garnier to Univ. du Québec, work 8-16.30 from Monday to Friday, life has gotten really ordinary. There's a certain kind of excitement in living an ordinary life in an unfamiliar place, where your every ordinary day still feels like yet another adventure to the unknown. I step into the bus 800 at 07:33 and say "Bonjour!" to the driver, and everytime I open my mouth I'm afraid of how it will sound this time. Is my pronounciation of my nemesis, the letter "R", even slightly in place? What if my bus card has ran out of trips and I don't have 3,25 dollars to pay for my journey? What if today, when I'm going to the pharmacy to buy myself a new bus card, I forget how to speak French, or what if the cashier tries to small-talk with me again and I'll just look and feel stupid like I do everytime I don't understand the immensely difficult quebecois accent?

But outside of all these questions of my everyday life's little struggles, the life is really ordinary. I've gotten a few frequently repeated questions from people on the other side of the Atlantic, and instead of always answering something short and general to everyone, I'll do my best in answering these questions with a great attention to detail.

1. How's your French? Do you even speak it? I thought you studied Russian.

Now that you brought it up, yes, I miss Russian. Every muscle in my mouth wants me to speak Russian when I go on autopilot on the streets and someone suddenly starts to talk to me (because like said, that's what quebeckers do). Many times I've accidentally answered "Да", as many times as I've wanted to avoid the Rrrr-ed word "Bonjour" by going with the surprisingly more comfortable "Здравствуйте". To me, Russian is my The Foreign Language. It's the language I speak more or less, with occasional struggles though, the language in which I still have to stop and think a little of what I'm saying, but while listening to Putin's annual speech, I'm able to catch the drift. It's not like English, which I use comfortably enough to love in this language, or which I use to talk in my sleep nowadays. (these two aspects became poetically combined in a situation where I tried to stop Alex from going to work in the morning by grabbing his hand in my sleep and saying "Please don't go. I love you".) I'd still love to go and do an exchange semester or an internship in Russia to make sure I'll one day master the language I enjoy the most.

But when it comes to French, things get a little tricky. My love is not as sincere, it's even a little forced. I took 2 courses of French during my last year of uni and that's it - that was my level of French when I landed in Montréal. I've heard all these stories about people learning languages by immersion, and to be honest, I'd like someone to tell me how the fuck these people manage to do that.

I've come to terms with l'accent quebecois. I can handle the jaw that seems to be moving in ways that shouldn't be possible for the human physiology. I listen to them speak and I understand 50% of the things I hear if the said person speaks with a clear voice and loudly enough (i.e. mumbling to your stereotypically Canadian beard is not cool, guys). I'm able to make sentences if forced. I'm more afraid of speaking than actually not being able to speak, and it's impossible to say whether it's because of my own strive for perfection or my prejudice against French-speaking people being compassionate about foreigners trying to rape their language. At this very moment I'm still a little bit afraid to go to the pharmacy and tell the cashier "bonjour, je vais prendre une carte de bus, douze fois s'il te plaît". I often amuse people with my perfect pronounciation of the famous swear "tabarnak", while I still struggle with my favourite word, "aspirateur".

Dear French, I know you're not like Russian and you'll never be, but I want to get to know you. You sound nice but you're a shitty thing to pronounce. Give me some time.

2. Have you found work?

Photo from Activision.com

As a matter of fact, I have - for 2 months at least, since it's a temporary contract for now. I work for Beenox, a videogame company responsible for the development of products from Activision Blizzard. That's pretty much everything I'm allowed to say, since my obligation to confidentiality is close to the one of the FBI (which is also why there is no demonstrative picture). Most of my work happens in English, but my colleagues are native French-speakers (with an admirable level of English, merci my dear fellows). I really love it there. The days are long and at times I'm exhausted from all the concentration that comes with working in an environment with an advanced-level linguistic immersion, but I don't think I've ever enjoyed more being in a job where I have to face clear zero customers per day. Videogames are cool and Activision is cool.

Afterwards? No fucking idea, once again. Life is an adventure.

3. Are you still with Alex?

This is a funny question, and a bit on the private side too, but I'll answer it nevertheless. I understand your concern - I mean, we met on an exchange semester, spent 11 months in a hardcore long-distance relationship, and then I ended up moving halfway across the globe to be with him during the last year of his uni, so we could move together back to Europe next autumn. The odds are always a little against us, BUT. The odds don't overrun the fact that we still ended up being in a long-distance relationship for 11 months, during which the longest time spent apart was 4 solid months between January and May. It also doesn't overrun the fact that I have, after all, moved on the other side of the world.

I wrote a little love letter for him once at the end of our semester in Leicester. The last chapter of this little piece of poetry will serve as my answer to this question, despite the overly cheezy and possibly even a little embarrassing atmosphere I'm about to create by sharing it here. Brace yourselves:

   My life with you is a travel. You take me to an excursion to myself, you make me discover parts of me I didn’t know exist. I might have sat next to you on the rocky wall of that fort in Marseille, staring at the horizon of the Mediterranean Sea, the southern wind in my hair and salt on my skin, but of all the places I have seen with you, the things I find when I stare into your eyes are the most breathtaking of all.

 The answer to this question is Yes, Yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes like Molly on the last page of James Joyce's Ulysses. Yes, I am still with him.

4. Do you miss Finland?

The picture above would suggest that balancing in the nature is what Finland is to me. What Finland is to me, though, is a country that brought me up. I was raised in the Finnish cultural context, I've assimilated Finnish customs, I am a Finn. English might be the language that has been titled as my mother tongue more than once since I arrived to Québec, but I still, regardless of the situation, always count in Finnish in my head.

Before Leicester I thought Finland is boring. The culture is boring, the people are a bit boring too, the weather sucks and there's too much Iittala in every home. I wanted to get out really badly, swearing I'd never miss anything I left behind.

That was, of course, very naive of me. I enjoy the fact that I don't live there at this time, and I don't have any intentions in doing so in the near future. But moving abroad to broaden your own understanding of cultures, customs, people and life in general has never been the binary opposite of appreciating where you come from. I'll share a little concrete example here in the form of a discussion between two approx. 13-year old Finnish girls I once overheard in a tram in Helsinki (I assume they were students from the nearby international secondary school) after I had just returned to Finland from my 8 months in Leicester:

Girl A: So uhh, are you like completely a Finn or are you from somewhere else...?
Girl B: No, I'm not a Finn. I'm 1/16 Finnish-Swedish.
Girl A: Really? That's so cool! So like, do you speak any Swedish?
Girl B: Yeah, I can say "Jag heter...", it's like "My name is". and I can say "Hej!" and "Tack!"
Girl A: That's so awesome!
Girl B: How about you, are you a Finn?
Girl A: No, I'm also 1/16 Estonian.
Girl B: Oh wow! Hey, say something in Estonian!
Girl A: I don't know any Estonian....

My grandfather is a Swedish-speaking Finn. My great aunt is Russian. But I happen to be a Finn and it's cool. It's cool to come from a country with a good reputation abroad - it's a sign of good education, possibly a great skill in languages, awesome "Scandinavian" culture that becomes more and more trendy all the time. Finland has given me enough in this life for me to be able to leave it, knowing that if I ever fall and need a cave to crawl into, Finland is waiting for me with open arms and free healthcare.

I miss Finland at times. I miss the silence. I miss how I can maintain my resting bitchface without getting asked if I'm alright dear. I miss the absolutely amazing public transportation system of Helsinki (there are still things to develop for sure, but in here it's no surprise if the bus is 25 minutes late on a daily basis). I miss my weird-ass language with its weird-ass expressions. But at this very moment of time and space, Finland is not the place for me to be.

5. Do you plan on staying in Canada for good?

Canada is absolutely breathtaking. The nature leaves me in awe everytime I put my foot out of the city and the people are as polite as all the stereotypes make you think. Despite the non-European atmosphere from architecture to city structures I've taken for granted all my life, I feel like I've settled in here rather well. Actually, I'd like to share this piece of artwork with you as a way to sum up my feelings about Canada. (side note: quebeckers don't like the Canadian national anthem. They have their own unofficial anthem "Gens du Pays" by Gilles Vigneault and Gaston Rochon. Listen to it HERE)

But no, I don't intend to stay in here for good. Why? Because I'm participating a mobility program called SWAP Working Holidays, aimed for university students and newly graduates to go and work around the world for a year with a work permit. My SWAP Canada visa is valid until the 23rd of June 2016, after which I'll have to return to Finland at least as a courtesy. My better half has also expressed his desires to leave the country, so who am I to disagree.

Instead I plan on applying for several MA programs for September 2016. Right now my destination seems to be Ireland instead of the UK due to their new, conservative-lead immigration policy which makes it almost impossible for my Canadian companion to study in the country. Besides, we're both in love with Dublin. Sláinte!

Top 3 Cultural Differences Between Finland and Québec

"Oh, you're moving to Canada? So it's basically like another Finland isn't it?"

Here we have a sentence I heard multiple times while informing my Finnish acquintances about my plans for the upcoming year. And who can blame them? When you type "Canada" in Google Image Search, you'll mostly see pictures of mountains, snow, ice hockey, forests and clear waters - excluding the mountains, sounds pretty familiar to me. For a person who's spent the majority of their life living in the Nordic Wonderland with Nordic-Scandinavian culture, surrounded by a nordic landscape and nordic habits, it might be hard to imagine that on the other side of the Atlantic, in seemingly similar settings, a completely different kind of culture goes on a rampage.

What Finns probably mean with "basically like another Finland" is this:
FACT 1: Canada is in the North - Finland is in the North
FACT 2: Canada has snow - Finland has snow
FACT 3: Canada has forests - Finland has forests
FACT 4: Canada likes ice hockey - Finland likes ice hockey
====> Canadians live in the cold, dark north, drink vodka to keep themselves warm, hate social interaction because you can't see anyone in the dark anyway, wear plaid shirts all year round and hate their over-social neighbours (USA) who always think a bit too high of themselves.

NO!

So what is it then?
Québec is the rebellious emo-kid of Canada. The province has a very unique culture which might differ slightly from the general "Canadian" culture (which is, to be honest, quite a wide term taking into account Canada as a country is wider that the whole of Europe), having influences from the French culture and combining them with the English-Canadian customs. The result is something that might put the "basically like another Finland" into a weird light. My self-ironic list loves generalisations and could actually be titled "Where can a Finn go wrong in Québec". So here goes:

TOP 3 CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FINLAND AND QUÉBEC

1. Social Interaction

When Finns meet each other for the first time in an official situation, they might shake hands quickly. In other occasions they're more likely to just wave hands from a distance and say "hi". Or not say anything at all. Actually we might just suspiciously stare at each other in silence. The truth is, Finns are a bit reserved when it comes to social interaction. We might be surprised if someone touches us and we most definitely won't get too close without a reason. The personal space for a typical Finn is quite big and we might make people from more physical cultures (e.g. Italian or Spanish) a bit uncomfortable with this distance. We don't do small talk - actually, we don't really do talk. Silence is golden and if we have nothing important to say, we're more likely to stay silent (unless we're drunk - in that case, everyone's our best friend). And rule number one: You don't talk to strangers in Finland. You just don't. People will think you're a crazy person.

BUT: When you come to Québec, a quebecois(e) grabs you softly from one arm, pulls you closer, gives you kisses on both cheeks and asks "Ça va?"
When a quebecker goes to a grocery store, he or she has a short small talkish conversation with the clerk while waiting for the groceries (which are, by the way, packed for you). Actually, they have small talk with everyone. I was walking down the street with my ice cream cone the other day and I was stopped by three people to ask where I found a cone that big. People easily comment out loud on the things they see, and discussions from one balcony to another in an apartment block is not uncommon at all. Quebeckers love to talk - and they talk loud. If I stop on the traffic lights, stand still for 5 seconds in a grocery store or even breathe in a public place, someone will most likely come and e.g. ask where the fries are, tell me my bag is super cool or just comment on life in general. Which, of course, could make a typical Finn absolutely terrified.

Conclusion: If a Finn in Québec looks a bit awkward when talked to in public or given a kiss when greeted, it's not necessarily because we don't like it - it's because we forget to expect it. Sorry everyone.

2. Alcohol

Finns drink. We drink a lot. Our alcohol culture could be described as "anything goes". Finns tend to get smashed with vodka and the idea of drinking just for the sake of getting wasted is really common. Sitting on a front porch on a Friday night sipping your wine responsibly really isn't a typical Finnish thing. Instead, we're more likely to lie naked in a fountain wrapped into a Finnish flag, hugging a bottle of Finlandia vodka. Not referring to any 2011 events here.

BUT: If Finns thought we drink a lot of beer, we don't. Because quebeckers do. I have 7 12-packs of beer in my kitchen at this very moment, and we buy more every week. Beer is mostly sold in boxes in here, and no one really buys individual bottles. Beer is cheap and beer is good. Quebeckers are crazy about their microbreweries, and every town seems to have at least one. It's a hipster's dream in here, really. If a quebecker wants to get drunk, they do it with beer or, in some cases, cocktails. People seem to be able to drink ridiculous amounts of beer without their bellies looking like beach balls, which is the case with yours truly after c.a. 3 bottles. It wobbles.

Conclusion: Quebeckers drink more beer than I ever could. On the contrary, when I served bottles of vodka and Salmari on my very Finnish birthday party, I was the only one waking up without a hangover the following morning.

3. Language

The people of Québec consist of 80% Francophones. Vaguely 8% of the rest are speaking English as their mother tongue, and the last 12% are either immigrants with a diverse set of different native languages, or Native Americans.
People in Finland speak mostly Finnish with approx. 5% of the population falling into minority categories, most notable ones being two other official languages, Swedish and Sami. As a Finnish speaking Finn surrounded by 99% people with French as their mother tongue, the third section of my list concentrates on comparing the way our cultures differ in their ways of dealing with their own language without going into details or political questions, since this entry is already huge.

When a tourist arrives to Finland, they'll get by perfectly without ever even trying to say a word in Finnish. In case you'd decide to try, the clerk from whom you tried to order a beer in broken dictionary-Finnish is most likely to immediately switch to English without even offering you a chance to continue the discussion in Finnish. We might actually even find it a little weird of you to try - because no one speaks Finnish. There are a little over 5 million of us in this world and so far I know 3 people who've decided to study our language on their freetime just for fun. I'm not expecting it. I can go around Québec and when people find out my mother tongue is Finnish, they might request me to say a sentence or two just for them to catch up on how it sounds like. No one has ever even heard my mother tongue.

BUT: Quebeckers are really jealous of their language - and one might say, for a reason. French is an official language of Canada, spoken by approximately 7 million people out of c.a. 35 million inhabitants. So when you come to Québec, the first question is "do you speak French?" If the answer is no, the next question is "Are you planning on learning?"
People of Québec want you to speak French, and they do all they can to help you with that. You might ask for a word and they'll give you at least 7 different variations and expressions where you might be able to use the word. They're more than happy to tell you everything they can about the ethymology of a certain phrase and all the dialectical differences of it around the province. They tell you all the swear words and their origins even if you forget to ask. You might go to a counter and try an embarrassed "Hello", and they'll immediately continue with "Bonjour".

Conclusion: Even if your pronounciation of French sounds like a reindeer driven over by a pick-up truck filled with angry beavers, it's better to say that Finnish-seasoned "merrrrsiiiii", just for the sake of showing respect.

BONUS: The famous ice cream cone.