HOUSE TOUR! | Our Dublin Home

Hi everyone! Welcome to our Irish crib! Or chez nous, like my French-speaking counterpart would say. We recently moved to a lovely new flat not too far from the city centre of Dublin, so why not take you to a little tour around this Irish-Finnish-Canadian fusion living of ours?

This is the first time I have a hall in my apartment since I left Finland. Our flat in the UK, both flats in Canada and my previous one in Ireland all opened straight to an open space or to a long corridor, but this is some serious hall-ness happening right here. The door on the left opens to a bathroom, the one on the front leads to the apartment.

LIVINGROOM

Welcome to our living room! And bedroom. And kitchen... Needless to say, we live in a studio. Dublin is a nightmare when it comes to the rental market, so as poor-ass students there's not much more we can afford. Luckily this beauty is more than spacious for us two, with a mezzanine to sleep on. Let's take a tour around!

In case you're wondering about the white panels on the walls, those are our heaters. Now, we've all heard horror stories about badly built apartments on the British Isles, and I've got my fair share of that in the past, but this apartment has none of that crap. The temperature goes down to 16 or 17 degrees Celcius during the night if we don't keep the heaters on, but we can set the heaters to a fixed temperature (usually 23) after which they turn themselves off automatically. It's a dream, really. And like I stated in one of my Christmas vlogs, upon returning to Finland for the holidays I realised I'm not comfortable in the typical dry, 24-degree indoor air of my parents' apartment. Ireland has made me thick-skinned.

There used to be a fireplace, but the structure was removed during renovation. What's left is only the beautiful exterior as a sign of the apartment's past. Most flats in here seem to have a fireplace of some sort, functional or not.

MEZZANINE

When living tight, every square meter has to be used. Our bed is up the stairs on a mezzanine. Storing clothes is also well planned...

This is the coziest space ever. I confess sitting right here at this very moment, typing this post! The bedsheets are the absolute best.

KITCHEN

Welcome to our kitchen. This kitchen is a source of many disagreements for a multicultural couple - kitchens often tend to be. During the last few years I've learned to live without the greatest Finnish invention since the dawn of mankind - that being the dish drying cupboard. The substitute is this metal horror on my counter.

Another issue is the brush/sponge debate. To be honest, I had kind of forgotten the Finnish fascination of brushes and submitted to using sponges, up until I re-encountered a brush when the previous tenant left us his unused dish brush. Nothing prepared me for the pleasure of washing my dishes with a good ol' brush once more. Alex, however, can't stand this anomaly, so we had both options until I decided to do some self-rehab therapy and sacrificed the dish brush to wash our stove plates with it. Good bye brush: gone, but never forgotten.

One of the hardest things to adjust to in a country of teadrinkers is the poor quality of coffee. Now, before anyone attacks me by screeching "THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE COFFEE IN IRELAND", let me remind you that my lovely northern nation is statistically speaking the most passionate coffee drinker in the world, with an average of 5 cups of coffee being consumed each day per person. Let that sink in. Also I'd like to know why there aren't more heart attacks per day.

Anyway, coffee. My lovely sister bought us a French press accompanied with some real Finnish coffee for Christmas, and I absolutely love it! Two years of drinking instant coffee has left its mark on my dark Finnish soul, but those days are no more. I have a French press now.

BATHROOM

There's not much to photograph in our bathroom apart from a few Anglo specialties. Now, the first one is of course familiar to anyone who's ever been to London for a holiday. The taps. Right. The physical representation of all illogic of the Empire. This shit drives me nuts, no lie. Every morning I'm put on a trial to choose whether I want to start my day by burning or freezing my hands/face: great times, each morning. It keeps you on your tip toes in a way.

Don't look at the toothbrushes, I know there are three. One of them is, according to Alex, his next toothbrush.

Here we have many more funny things to wonder and ponder. Air conditioning up right, this random source of heat on bottom left. My primary way of using this heat anomaly is to dry my hair with it, because for some absolutely unknown reason the only power socket in this whole house that does NOT follow the British/Irish standard happens to be in the bathroom. It fits the European standard. It fits the Canadian/American standard. It even fits the AUSTRALIAN standard, but no, my hairdryer with its British/Irish plug doesn't fit. The irony.

This was new for both me and Alex. The fuse. We have a water tank in the cupboard behind our bed, which heats us water on command. The command is this red button. It creates a weird kind of sense of control to my life, as now I have to plan my showers at least 15 minutes in advance. What a terrible idea for a postgraduate used to spending each day in her pyjamas, living dangerously and spontaneously by using cookies and snack bars as her primary source of nutrition.

I hope you liked what we did with the apartment! Alex and I are well-suited in many ways, one of them being a similar taste in decoration. The only element which caused trouble was the above scented candle I insisted on buying because it was fancy and colourful and it has this little furry thing hanging from it. No regrets! Alex learned to live with it within a few days after realising it doesn't smell like balsam and amber after all...

Have you found it hard to adjust to a new apartment in a foreign country? Who decorates in your couple? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Polyglot's Guide to Learning Languages

If there's one ace up my sleeve to impress people in my wandering life, it's my ability to speak six languages. I've turned from a Silent Sam to a self-functioning polyglot. But how did that happen? Was I bit by a venomous spider? Or was it all just hard work? Read my simple 5-step list to find out how to learn languages quickly and efficiently!

We all have a different set of factors to start with: whether we have a better long-term or short-term memory, what kind of teachers (if any!) we've had in the past, and how motivated we feel to learn a particular language. Even our own mother tongue can play an important role in our ability to master a new language: to this day I haven't been able to decide whether it's a curse or a bliss to have the odd-one-out Finnish as my first language, since it doesn't resemble any other language I've ever wanted to learn. Despite all these variables, speaking six languages has no magic involved - no matter how often they try to tell me so! It's not a gift you're born with. Don't believe me? Well listen to this:

I started studying English at the age of 9. Shy as I was, my first lesson didn't go as expected. We were supposed to introduce ourselves one by one by saying "I am (insert name here)". When my turn came, I choked and started crying. The teacher was merciful enough to let me skip my turn, and thus, I never actually ended up saying a word in English on my very first English lesson. Then life happened, and today, countless of hours (days and nights), years of studying, some English-speaking friends/lovers, months of living in multiple anglophone countries and an infinite amount of frustrations later, I consider myself a fluent speaker of English. It was not magic: it was a carefully harvested project filled with sweat, tears and at least 2 whole hours spent by repeating the word "zucchini" in front of an Australian.

After English a few other languages have tagged along, and now, as a 25-year-old, my linguistic quiver consists of six languages: Finnish, English, Russian, French, German and Swedish. I've also had a beginner's course in Mandarin Chinese, but let's not talk about that - so far the only thing I can still say is Zhè shì wǒ de míngpiàn (这是我的名片, "Here's my business card"). The project continues...

This blog post aims to share my tips on how you can achieve the same. Whether your personal project is to master Spanish as a second language or juggle six languages at once, I hope this list of useful techniques clinically tested on yours truly will turn you from a choking 9-year-old to a linguistic ninja pirate wizard. There will be no concrete advice to help you learn verb conjugation in Portuguese: instead, my list consists mainly on mental training and ways you can improve your own mind-set towards learning a language, since my observations have shown that our own attitude is often what holds us back.

1. LISTEN TO NATIVE SPEAKERS

Native speakers are your key when learning a new language. Read what they read (newspapers, social media, books), listen what they listen to (music, radio and TV shows), and take every chance to talk with them. They usually know how to use their language properly, and even if not professional teachers, they're able to offer you an authentic approach to your target language. They can correct you on the spot if you make a mistake in your grammar or pronunciation.

However, when I specifically advice to listen to them, I mean it. And not only for the pronunciation: by listening to everything you can possibly find from singers to audio books to your Spanish neighbour, training your ear to be comfortable around that language is, in my opinion, a fundamental part of beginning to learn it. You can't magically absorb the language to your brain through your ears, but as someone who moved to a French-speaking country with close to none knowledge of French and who now considers French to be my third strongest foreign language without any systematic studying, I believe the daily exposure plays a crucial role in the learning process. Beginning to understand what is said is where it all starts: if possible, find a text and ask a native speaker to read it out loud for you, or find audiobooks with scripts. Actively bring the actual authentic language along to your studies from the very start so you won't get distanced from it as you advance in your studies. Learning vocabulary by reading is one thing, but learning real, spoken words is another.

I was once approached by a girl after my Russian oral exam carried out by a Moscowian girl. She had listened to me chat about my studies and interest for Russian literature with the examiner, and wanted to know where I had learnt to pronounce so well. Back in the day I had to ask myself the same question, but today I'm fully aware that my frequent trips to St. Petersburg 5 years ago might be to blame. I didn't speak a word in Russian back in the days. What I did, though, was sitting hours upon hours on the benches of Letniy Sad and strolling back and forth Nevskiy Prospekt all the way from the Winter Palace to Neva river. I didn't understand a word spoken or written around me, but I listened to them. And as I finally started my systematic Russian studies a year later, I knew exactly how Russian is supposed to sound like. Later on I added Russian news and music to my training material, and today I can happily listen to Vladimir Putin's annual presidential address to the federal assembly without much struggle!

TL;DR - Listen to everything you can find from radio shows to native speaking friends. Using authentic material to support your systematic grammar and vocabulary studies brings you at ease with being around the language and trains your ear to catch familiar words and phrases. You can start with children's TV shows, as the vocabulary is often fairly simple. Native speaking kids are also the best: merciless and fast to criticize, but sincerely eager to help!

2. REPEAT, THEN REPEAT AGAIN

You'd think this one is stating the obvious. To my experience, however, the importance of routine and repetition just can't be highlighted enough. I'm actively teaching English to a native French-speaker on a daily basis here in Dublin, and man can he be stubborn at times! The same mistakes happen time and time again even after telling him at least five times to put that S at the end of his plurals. Then I tell him ten times, but he still keeps saying "There is many cat in this city". And then, after twenty times and long after crossing the line of my patience, I hear him casually say: "Well luckily there are many restaurants around."

My heart probably missed a beat. I almost had tears in my eyes. He finally got it.

You don't learn a language overnight. You learn it by reading that list of irregular verbs, then re-reading it - and then re-reading it again. There are no shortcuts when it comes to grammar. I personally rely a lot on memorising tricks: as an auditive learner, I create little songs of word lists and then hum them in my head when a missing case is needed.

The thing is this: in order to become a fluent speaker you absolutely have to learn the basics. It's the cold hard truth. I promise you it all gets nice and cozy once you take your time and thoroughly learn those irregular verbs, case lists and whatnot. There will be a day when you wouldn't even question the irregular conjugation of the verb aller in French because it's so deeply burned in your spine that saying anything else but the right form feels like a serious offense.

TL;DR - We can sometimes be extremely impatient when it comes to learning languages. We want it all and we want it right now. However, before mastering a language we have to learn the basics. Take that list of irregular verbs of yours, tape it next to your bathroom mirror and read it through every time you brush your teeth. (And remember to concentrate while reading it!)

3. STOP TRANSLATING IN YOUR HEAD

You know that frustrating moment when you know just the right saying to brighten up an unfortunate event - in your own language? We've all been there. Translating your favourite aphorism word by word for a foreign friend just seems to make it sound even more confusing. (I'm looking at you, Finns: despite your numerous attempts, saying something "took off like from Esther's ass" doesn't make any sense no matter how you're trying to explain it)

I get it: the temptation of doing some on-the-spot interpreting from your inner native voice to your second language is huge. It makes you feel like you have more control over your sentence structures, and it gives you more time to really think what you want to say. It might also be easier for you to remember words if you think of them in your native language first.

Sadly, this is not how any of this works - at least if your goal is to become a fluent speaker of your target language. On-the-spot interpreting isn't only making your speaking much slower and more complicated for no reason, it also does some serious harm to your 2nd language grammar. As we know, not every language follows the same sentence structures. Your own language's peculiar order of words might make sense to you even after you've translated that whole phrase word by word from English to German, but for your target audience, that poor German fellow, that... thing you just said might just be the most confusing moment of the day.

When speaking a foreign language, think in that foreign language. As slow and frustrating as it gets, it's your only way of developing a comfortable relationship with a strong base with your second language. Walk around looking at things and name them in your second language in your head. Memorize phrases. And when the time comes and you're face to face with a native speaker asking about your weekend in French, take a deep breath and start that sentence immediately in French! Don't use any other language in between: by persistently going for your second language right from the beginning you become more at ease with using it, and it also trains you to speak it faster.

TL;DR - I was still translating from Finnish to English in my head when I moved to Leicester, UK. Needless to say, I often stuttered and took pauses when trying to explain my academic thoughts on Shakespeare's Hamlet while trying to translate that long, complicated idea from Finnish to English on the spot. Everything changed after I stopped and concentrated on constructing that academic thought in English from the beginning. I turned into a fluent participant of university-level English Lit discussions in a month.

4. DON'T BE AFRAID OF CONFUSION BETWEEN LANGUAGES

So you have successfully mastered a foreign language, and now it's time for another one? Right. You will soon witness the walls of your carefully nurtured language boxes crumbling down. Your Swedish box gets mixed with your German box. French suddenly starts to look exactly like Russian. Everything you try to say in Italian comes out in Spanish. What's going on? How do I stop this?

You don't. Your brain wants to deliver that message to your foreign opponent in any way possible, whether the words pop into your mind from the correct language box or not. It's highly likely that your first attempts of speaking your third language will end up a fiasco, and it's ok.

There's a fine line between mixing up languages and letting them softly lean on each other for support. At first it may seem like you're never going to learn to keep all these foreign languages in order and you'll be doomed to frequently embarrass yourself, but there's more to that. Knowing multiple languages will actually make learning new ones much easier, and the more you know, the faster you'll master them. My first attempts on speaking French after moving to Québec were a catastrophe, as all that came to my mind was Russian. However, after going on about my life in a French-speaking city I soon noticed how many words Russian has borrowed from French. That bliss! Many signs and warning plates soon made complete sense when I spotted words like étage (етаж, a level/floor) and magasin (магазин, a shop).

It will be a bit tricky at first, but with time you'll learn to keep your foreign languages in their rightful order. It's all about associating new words and phrases with the correct language: I immediately get triggered when I hear someone speak French, and suddenly it becomes immensely hard to continue my ongoing discussion in English. It's like Pavlov's dog.

TL;DR - I was 14 and doing my German exam when my teacher arrived behind me, pointed at my sheet and whispered: "Melissa, you're writing in Swedish." 11 years later I still occasionally mix up these two, but by combining my knowledge of both languages I can actually expand my vocabulary in both German and Swedish. Mix-ups happen - make the most of it!

5. DON'T STRIVE FOR PERFECTION - IF YOU DON'T WANT TO

Language is, above all, a tool of communication for me. It's not as much a part of my identity nor public image as it's a medium I use to get my message through. So next time you feel too self-conscious to open your mouth and speak a foreign language due to your insecurities related to your non-native level pronunciation skills, STOP.

If your goal is to train yourself that perfect BBC-Oxford-David Attenborough British accent, by all means go for it, but not wanting to have that accent is perfectly ok too. Don't keep yourself from speaking a foreign language because you feel like everyone else around you speaks it much better and has an accent much closer to a certain native speaker dialect. Concentrate on coming to comfortable terms with speaking that language at first - and later on, when speaking it starts to feel fluid and natural to you, you can finally take on that challenge and start practicing a consistent style of pronunciation.

Having a native-level accent in your second (or third, or fourth!) language is not a merit in itself. Being able to become fully understood and deliver your message without misunderstandings or confusion is. I'm not saying you shouldn't practice pronunciation - of course you do, it's a fundamental part of learning to speak a foreign language. But remember to stay merciful to yourself. Don't become so self-conscious of those little hints of wrongly rolled R's that it keeps you from trying.

TL;DR - It's perfectly ok to reach an agreeable level of pronunciation and concentrate on becoming a fluid speaker instead of striving for a native-level accent. Too many times I've heard (especially) native speakers bashing a foreigner's accent, saying "He speaks perfect *French* but there's this little hunch of something in his nasal that gives him off..." My message to you is: SO WHAT?

Is there something else you would've added to the list? Or do you need more help with your language project? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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She's From Québec

I'm standing in a queue to enter Vancouver Art Gallery, chatting with a friend, when suddenly the man standing in front of us turns around and strikes up a conversation:

"Do you mind me asking where you're from?"

"From Québec", my friend answers for us. "Québec City."

"Québec! How delightful! I've been there once, and I'm actually planning on returning later this year. Well, quebeckers, could you give me some tips? I'd like to visit some smaller cities on my next trip, but I don't really know the province..."

"Well, you could start by Sherbrooke I guess?", I suggest. "It's a little to the South from Québec. Or Lac Saint-Jean in the North."

"Or Trois-Rivières!", goes my friend, being a little patriotic about his hometown. "And there's Granby."

"How about the Gaspé region? It's by the Atlantic", I say.

"And well, there's always Montréal, not really small but..."

I give a little look at my friend and smile. "... Or Lévis."

We both laugh, and the man looks confused.

~ * ~

I first landed in Québec in June 2014, taking my first step to the continent of North America. I was a Finn in Québec, and to keep it simple, I hated it. I hated pretty much everything about Québec from the attitude quebeckers tend to give me when I couldn't speak French to the architecture and food. It was my first-ever culture shock. Needless to say, I was more than terrified a year later when I realised I had made the decision to immigrate into this anomaly.

Seven months later I'm paying my hot chocolate at Second Cup in Banff, Alberta. I'm slightly exhausted from all things English Canadian happening around me - but then I stick my debit card into the reader and see the machine automatically change the language into French. I smile, grab my cup and return to my table.

"Cette machine me parle en français!"
"Pour vrai?", goes my friend.
"Ooouuiiii!"

In seven months my hatred triggered by the fear of the unknown had turned into tender affection. Instead of pouting at home, I found myself seeking ways to adapt, learn and understand my new homeland. The uncomfortability (discussed more in THIS POST) had turned into unconditional curiosity. Thoughts like "Why is everyone always trying to talk to me in public places?" morphed into "So what if I sound like an idiot when I say the word 'la porte' - I want this door open!"

Seven months ago I never would have thought that there will be a day when a man from Vancouver addresses me as a quebecker, and that one tiny word, that absolutely irrelevant little term of a definition, warms up my cheeks and frees the butterflies in my stomach. Seven months ago navigating through a payment process in French was my absolute nightmare, but today it makes my heart long for my new home when I'm lost in the western prairies.

A Christmas gift from my spouse

To be called a quebecker doesn't make my heart skip a beat because it somehow erases my identity as a Finn. My identity as a Finn might take new forms in the upcoming years, but nothing will ever take away my childhood eating rye bread and feeling awkward about other people in the elevator. To be called a quebecker hits the right spot because it means I belong - that after months and months of struggling, fighting, tears and frustration I have reached such a peace of mind with my new home that being addressed as one of its residents feels right.

A Local is something that every immigrant seeks to become. A traveller, however, voyages on in the crowd, bumping into people she will never meet again, sitting in cafes observing passersby going about their lives - and in the end, catches the train and leaves forever as all the locals go on with their routines, never having known about the girl who was there for that blink of an eye. I was sitting with my backpack in that Starbucks in Vancouver, watching those people desperately trying to catch the bus, being an outsider from somewhere else. Their routines were my adventures.

To become a local asks for more than catching that same bus with everyone else: it asks you to want to belong. Becoming a local means you have to stop observing things by asking what is different, and instead address things with the question of why does it even matter. The showers are really different in Québec compared to Finland - but so what, since I can very successfully wash myself in both? Door knobs might be a bit confusing for someone who has turned handles all their lives, but so far I have been able to enter and exit every room I wanted. Quebeckers wash their dishes with sponges, and so will I.

Seven months ago I was a Finn in Québec, comparing my every step to all the steps I had taken in Finland. As months passed, that hunch of bitterness and sickening I felt for my home country slowly turned into nostalgic memories and distant contacts as I dove into the mystery called French-speaking Canada. After the first shock passed I proceeded to explore my new home with a never ending hunger, to a point where my colleague once told everyone that "Mel probably knows this city far better than any of us, so if you need directions, ask her".

Rue du Petit Champlain, Québec City

Then I made a trip to British Columbia, to the shores of the Pacific Ocean - to the very other side of the world from Finland. At that moment, as Finland is so very far away, Québec is my home. I experienced the same distance I took to Finland by moving to Québec by travelling across the whole country to Vancouver, and it made me realise exactly how much I have fallen in love with Québec. I now sweep its streets with routine and breath in its damp winter air every morning as the snow keeps on falling, and it feels like with every inhale I absorb a little piece of this land within me.

~ * ~

I sit at my desk at work, Facebook open, when my friend sends me a message. It's a link to THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO about people answering to the question "What is it to be a quebecker". I watch it, little teary-eyed, and then proceed to ask him if he thinks I will one day become a quebecker.

"But Mel", he says. "I think you already are."

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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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.