Tonight marks the first night of my Finnish classes. I am SO excited - I've been counting down the days for weeks now. In preparation, I've been trying to think in Finnish when possible, though unfortunately without much luck. I have quite a large vocabulary still, but my head is all confused now the "le/la" and "un/une" and all kinds of French grammar.

I seem to have a one-language brain. Meaning my brain seems to be able to handle only one language at a time. The better my French gets, the worse my English gets, and vice versa. I used to speak Finnish fairly fluently and now I can barely form a sentence. I know it's all still in there, and will come back quickly, but I'm wondering what effect it will have on my English & French.

The most frustrating thing for me though is the fact that I have lost my "knack" for the Finnish accent. Years of trying to properly pronounce the French R and all the nasals have triumphed over my ability to correctly pronounce Finnish words. I think that's the worst hit to my ego - I have never sounded like a foreigner when speaking Finnish, and now I sound like a French person trying to speak it. Super.

I am still excited for my classes quand même though, and I hope it will be a good way for me to meet some more French people. I signed up for the beginner's class just as a way to revise all the basics (for example, for some reason I am drawing a blank on how to say "Thursday"), plus I will be traveling a lot for work between now and Christmas, so at least that way I can make sure I don't fall too far behind!