“Remoted” – Day 477 (Tuesday)

It’s another celebratory day at The BungaLowell. It might be less of an actual milestone accomplishment and is perhaps more a testament to steadfastness, drive, and Finnish sisu. Today marks day 365 of Finnish lessons through the Duolingo app. Time well spent, or just time spent? Who knows. Sadly, there has been no ceremony, no certificate, and I didn't even think to take any pulla (Finnish coffee bread) out of the freezer.

Despite the number of days involved, there are no real conversational skills to brag about. Yet. I will not be delivering any oral presentations in suomea. Yet. Maybe I should have spent more than ten minutes a day on the lessons. Reading is coming along, but it’s hard to have a conversation when there is nobody to converse with. 

In any event my coos of “Hyva poika!” (Good boy!) and “Kuka on kiltti koira?" (Who is a good dog?) are pretty good; my “perkele!” swear is improving, although I don’t quite have the rolling “R” to make it truly impressive. I recently verified that one of Mummu’s favorite expressions “haista napa” is not quite, as she told us, a Finnish greeting that means “How’s your belly button?” but is actually an insult that translates to “smell my navel.” Oops. Luckily, any time my brother or I said the phrase there was nobody around who would know better.

Maybe by the time I get to travel to Finland, my spoken language skills will have improved, and now I know I should also go easy on the “haista napa” business. The module I’m in now, titled "wild" has delightful phrases like “The wolverines are smelling the plant” (Ahmat haistavat kasvia). It’s important to be prepared. According to the website Finnature, there are 270 to 300 wolverines in Finland, and organized wolverine watching tours, so this might be a more useful phrase than I first thought. The wolverine stuff is at least as fun as one of my favorite early lessons “Kissa on viikinki” (The cat is a Viking).