katezinha

I’ve been learning Finnish for the last two years at Leeds Metropolitan University in England. For the first year I would commute four hours every day to make my classes. Once I realised that this was far more important than my lacking career in Liverpool, I decided to move closer to the university so I could spend less time driving and more time studying.

So now I live just outside Leeds. And I love it. Being in Yorkshire is almost like living in another country. : )

But, to my distress, my Finnish is still not amazing. It is not even close to fluent. I am still constantly perplexed by partitiivi and genetiivi and nomitiivi. My vocabulary is good, but definitely needs improvement. A lot of it.

Does this get any easier??! I’m in need of some hope!

Ever since I was a young girl I’ve wanted to live anywhere other than England. Japan, Iceland, Australia… You name it, I’ve dreamt about it. It seemed to me that everywhere else in the world was more exotic than the place I was born.

Which for me was Liverpool, England, a wonderful city full of life. I am English, I feel English, I say I’m English, I carry an English passport. But I was born to a mother of Puerto Rican discent and a Latvian father. And because of this, we have always been a family who understood the importance of travelling and seeing new things. My mother’s family is dotted all over the world; our favourite relatives living all over North America. My dad is a culture freak, as am I, and pushed me to learn a foreign language from a very young age.

So, I did. I studied French when I was very young, and again during high school (with some German thrown in there too), but my heart was never in it. As an child in education, language is oddly ignored and the mainland culture noted as “overrated” and “unimportant”. I know so many people who are quite happy to never leave the tiny isle that is Great Britain, and if they do, it’s never to Europe. Europe is boring, Europe is old, Europe is a multitude of ridiculous assumptions that are so far from the truth, I feel that it’s my duty to argue this fact at any chance I get.

When I was about fifteen, I discovered music. Real music that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Music that helps people, challenges opinions, even saves lifes. And this love for music made me want to travel even more. To see as many live acts as I possibly could. To truly appreciate music. Perhaps to even work in that industry also.

At about the same time I discovered a love for the Nordics. Sweden first, but then Finland. Finland was all I seemed to think about, to talk about. So the moment I turned eighteen, I booked a flight out there and promptly fell in love with the only place on Earth that has truly felt like home…