On Saturday a new volunteer arrived from Finland. I’d never met anyone from Finland before. In my mind I had always lumped the Scandinavians into one group. They’re blond socialists who experience just two seasons: six months of day, then six months of night. They speak pretty much the same language but don’t like to admit it. They produce good music, they’re the most environmentally-friendly people in the world, and they live in small, practical homes filled with IKEA furniture.

It turns out that the Finnish language is quite different from Swedish and Norwegian, and Finland is actually north of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It borders Russia and is east–yes, east–of Poland. Check out a map if you don’t believe me. I had no idea Finland really isn’t a western European country.

Meri–who, by the way, doesn’t have blond hair–says that her weakest language is Swedish, which surprised me quite a bit since I thought the two were quite similar. She is much more comfortable speaking Spanish, English, Italian, German, and Finnish (obviously). Six languages? This blows my mind, but she’s very modest and admits her goal is eight. I have no doubt she can do it. Her English is extremely good, and her Spanish is even better. I wouldn’t know whether her Italian and German is good, but I trust that it is.

Every once in awhile Meri will search for a word in English, and she’ll say it in a different language. I get this all the time while trying to speak Spanish. I know what I want to say, but I just don’t know how to say it the same way that I would in English. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to sort out six different languages in my head.

She must be used to it though. Her boyfriend is from Spain, so they communicate in Spanish. She said they sometimes try talking in English–which she thinks would be more fair, since it wouldn’t be either of their mother languages–but mostly they use Spanish. Next time Schuyler and I misunderstand each other, I’ll have to remind myself to be grateful we at least speak the same mother language.