Throwback to Home

In July I went back to Finland again for the weekend. I know, this is a real throwback... But anyways the reason for returning home this time was a wedding. One of my oldest and best friends got married and there was no way I was going to miss that.

The wedding was incredibly beautiful, I might have gotten tears in my eyes (or cried like a baby) a couple of times. The bride was just so incredibly beautiful, the groom super handsome and everything was just perfect.

I was of course late for buying my dress but luckily found just the perfect one from my birthday trip to Mallorca a few weeks earlier.

And the funniest thing happened to me, which I think other expats might relate to...

I was at a shopping mall and I heard people talking Finnish. My first reaction - wow! Finnish people! I wonder what they're doing here, are they tourists or do they actually live here...?

Oh wait... I'm not in Berlin anymore but actually in Helsinki. Yeah. Nice one. And it was not the first time... Now I'm safely back in Berlin, only hearing German and Spanish! ;) And the occasional English of course.

I have to confess though that I might have gone to a Finnish café a while ago to show it to a friend, which was pretty much just an excuse to talk Finnish)! ;)

Till next time!
xx

Looking Back...

Do you ever feel like time runs too fast? Like you just keep running from one place to another and don't even have time to think? I sure do. For the past few months. Hence my looong blogging silence...

Getting to the point I wanted to talk about today; evaluation of your goals.

For me it's important to stop from time to time, consider my goals and evaluate whether I'm going in the direction I want or not. So, looking back, I've been in Germany for 9 months now. So far I've done an internship and gotten a job in the field I wanted, which was my goal and biggest reason for moving to Berlin. I'm doing things I've never done before and learning a lot - which is amazing. I live by the belief that you should never stop learning new things, whatever they may be, sports, languages, etc., which leads me to my next target: fluent German.

Back in Finland I studied German in school for 8 years but going to university I decided to give it up for Spanish instead. A few months after coming here I decided to really work towards this goal and registered for night classes in German. Somehow with a lot of luck (and a good head for languages I guess), I made it into a B2.2 course - which kind of changed my life here. Besides learning German, I met amazing amazing people and had so much fun...

After the course finished,  I was weighing my options whether or not to do the next one. After all, 3 hours of intense German classes twice a week after work is quite a lot. However, after some consideration and talking with a few classmates I decided to go ahead and do it - after all, stopping at this point would have been a waste.

So, now I'm working my way through a C1.1 course, which is a whole lot more challenging and I actually have to put quite a lot more effort into it. As I mentioned earlier, I happen to learn languages quite fast but it only helps you until a certain point, then you really have to work for it and that's where I am now... But I am very slowly but surely working towards my goal!

Also, not to make it too easy on myself I'm casually trying to retrieve my rusty Spanish on the side... You gotta have some challenges in life to make it interesting, am I right?! ;)

Have a great weekend everyone! 
xx