I'm studying the language, culture and mindset of my own country.
It's not easy growing up in a language minority with its own culture and way of thinking, its own tight-knit community. The longer I live in this country, the more I realise that I hardly know it. The language has always been a struggle to me, the culture has run a closely parallel and only vaguely known course to my own, and my neighbours think a bit differently than I do.
No matter how much I dream of foreign shores - before I go anywhere, I will know this people and understand how they think. No matter how much work it takes to delve into the complicated grammar of this Finnish language, read up on popular culture that should already be familiar to me, and try to understand the mind of a people that is not my own. And yet somehow is.
One of the most beautiful Finnish songs of all time:
- Itkuja varten on ihmisen silmät,
vieriköön kyyneleet.
Tuleehan tuolta se toinen päivä,
kun on kepeät askeleet. -
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