The Difficulties of Exchange - Switching host families

Hey guys!

So at this point in my life I've been an exchange student seven times in six different countries. Three of those experiences have been homestays, in which I've been hosted by local families. In addition, I've become a proud volunteer and member of alumni communities of multiple programs I've participated in.

As a result, I've gotten to know a great many people who have been exchange students, who have hosted exchange students, volunteered for exchange programs and worked closely with hosted students, or have been closely involved with the exchange world in some way.

Many people that I've gotten to know over the years have had difficulties with their host families, which have at times extended as far as them having to switch host families. At times, it's a simple matter, something which takes place for simple logistical or timing issues which are out of everyone's hands, greatly lamented, and they stay in touch with the original host family in a completely peaceful manner. Sometimes their departures are fraught, dramatic, and at worst even scarring experiences. Sometimes they move down the road or just a few minutes away, and the rest of the exchange life continues relatively undisturbed as usual. Sometimes they end up moving halfway across the host country, and the host family change winds up being a defining and life-changing moment within the exchange itself, spelling a completely new chapter within it where they have to start all over again in a new town, new school, and maybe even a wholly different province or region.

Back in 2017, I participated in a program in Baku, Azerbaijan with the Critical Language Scholarship, a US State Department-sponsored scholarship whose job it is to send American university students abroad on two-month summer programs to learn critical or less-commonly taught languages, to study Turkish. I mentioned while I was there that about ten days into the program, I wound up switching host families. It was the first time that it had happened to me in three homestay programs and four exchanges total that I had completed at the time. But I only described it in vague and evasive terminology, as at the time it was quite recent and fresh, and I had been pretty shaken up by the whole experience.

Now, I want to tell my story in its entirety, so that it can be helpful and provide context to current or future exchange students on the reality of such occurrences.

When I first arrived in Azerbaijan, I was one of a few students that were hosted in families that consisted of one single, ostensibly widowed woman, whose children were grown and lived on their own. Initially, things seemed quite promising. I was worried that being hosted in a family consisting of only one person would be awkward. But she was extra nice. She treated me in a manner that was welcoming and friendly. She was unbelievably generous, always brewing scaldingly hot Azerbaijani tea and cooking me heaps of tasty food that would give a trucker a run for his money. She had a lot of very interesting perspectives, having been born and raised in Yerevan, Armenia, back when Armenia and Azerbaijan had never been to war, and each hosted large communities of each others' ethnic groups, and would talk a lot about her childhood in Yerevan and Armenian friends and neighbors she used to have when she lived in Baku. I had a lot of space in her house, and felt comfortable and at ease.

But after a few days, strange things started happening.

It became clear to me that the second room upper level of her house, where I was staying, was being essentially rented out. In the first week of my stay, several people came and went, including some that were clearly making use of the space as a sort of love motel.

Then she dropped a bombshell: She was leaving for Turkey for three weeks (almost half the program, mind you) because her daughter lived there and was getting married. She assured me that she would have relatives coming in regularly to check on me, and that she would leave loads of food ready in the fridge for me to heat up. She also advised me not to tell anyone from the program or the Azerbaijan University of Languages where I was taking my Turkish classes, so that she didn't get in trouble.

After my knee-jerk reaction of "am I a cat or something??" I decided to do exactly what she had told me not to. I called my residential director and told her about the situation. As I was taking advantage of a long weekend we had off classes for Bayram (Turkish for Eid, the end of Ramadan) and traveling to a city called Sheki up in the Caucasus Mountains in northern Azerbaijan, she advised me to relax, and that this was actually a big help, so that I could be far away while the problem was dealt with, and wouldn't have to confront her directly.

Although I enjoyed Sheki, the drama of what was going on back in Baku hung over the weekend like a dark shadow. As she was contacted, my host mother changed her story several times, namely changing to length of her trip from three weeks, as she'd originally told me, to ten days, to two weeks, over the course of several times she was contacted. She messaged me on WhatsApp, seeming crazed and frantic in her wording. The gorgeous mountain views and lush forests distracted me, but it was hard to focus.

By the time we were heading back to Baku, I'd already been given the choice between several backup host families, and picked which one I wanted to stay with. I was very open about how stressed I was about having to go back and get my things from my host mother's house, as after everything that had happened and how unpredictable she'd revealed herself to be, I wasn't sure what she was capable of anymore. The whole CLS group that year was very tight-knit and close, and people were very good about checking in, helping me with anything I needed, and assuring me that they would be there for me if I needed any further help. I felt uncertain, I felt afraid, but thanks to both the support of my program-mates and the prompt, swift, professional, and tireless response on the part of my RD and the other American Councils staff in Baku, I never felt like I was fighting that fight alone.

After I got back to Baku, my RD and another staffwoman from American Councils met me at the bus station, accompanied me to my host mother's house, and came with me to help me get my things. I'd been quite nervous the whole trip leading up to that point, and my anxiety skyrocketed once we got close, and was at a wild high when I saw her, and she was acting in a manner I'd never seen her before, as if there was a storm brewing underneath that she was barely able to hold back.

At this point, I didn't even try to maintain any semblance of order or consistency in my packing job. I threw clothes, books, everything that was mine haphazardly into my suitcase with trembling hands, wanting only to expedite the process of getting the heck out of there. The whole time I was frantically packing, she was frantically talking, trying to highlight reasons that I should be allowed to stay with her ("...look at all this space he has, where is he going to get that anywhere else?" "...he hasn't met my daughter yet, she's so amazing, he can talk to her in Turkish, Russian, English, German..."). She did seem genuinely distraught that I was leaving, and seemed to direct most of her anger at the staff for removing me, rather than me for blowing her cover, at least as far as I could tell. Though I tried to remember the logical elements of the situation - she had lied, she had tried to cover her ass, she had violated her contract, which stated that we're supposed to have at least one adult host family member staying there and breakfast and dinner everyday, she had probably only taken an exchange student to benefit from the stipend, which was not a sum to sneeze at when converted into manat, and so on. But it was still hard to think of all that seeing how distraught and desperate she seemed.

The rest was a blur. I waited with my RD in the taxi outside. My host mother was allowed to come out and say goodbye to me, and when she did, she also threw a whole lot of shade at my RD and the American Councils staffwoman. And so we drove off, and I was checked into the same hotel where we'd stayed right after arrival for the night, to then move in with my new family the next day. In spite of still knowing that I was in the right, that I hadn't done anything wrong, that I'd made the right decision by letting people know what was going on and pursuing a host family change, I still felt deeply shaken up sitting in the backseat of that taxi, staring out at the winding streets. This was uncharted territory for me, as I'd been incredibly lucky in my high school homestays and placed in kind and welcoming families that I'd never had any issues with, and I felt even more grateful in that moment that I was dealing with this sort of thing as a 21-year-old with far more experience, knowledge, and far thicker skin, rather than as a teenager far away from home in a wildly different culture for the first time. But it still shook me more deeply than I imagined it would.

My second host family made overcoming all of those difficulties wholly worth it. I stayed with a 75-year-old woman named Valide, an easygoing and kind lady with henna-red hair who cooked buttery kurabiye cookies that were crunchy, but would melt in your mouth after a bite or two, and were absolutely to die for, and her niece Subiye, a warm 25-year old with a warm smile and short, curly brown hair, who had moved in with her aunt to study to become an Azerbaijani teacher, but spoke to me in impressive Turkish. Their apartment was much smaller, but it was so much more homey. I felt welcome, and comfortable, and able to breathe metaphorically in their home, in a way I was never able to in my first Baku residence. The host family change impacted the homestay element of my experience almost universally for the better, and even besides the shadiness of everything that had happened, I felt so much happier and comfortable with them.

The reason that I'm telling this story is because I'm absolutely sure of the fact that there are exchange students out there that need to hear one like this right now, who may be struggling in their experiences, perhaps not feeling so comfortable or at ease in their host families' homes, unsure of how to proceed, and feeling like they've done something wrong. Like their experience is somehow affected or tarnished by not getting along with the family, or made less valid by this struggle. Like they've failed as an exchange student, and can no longer consider themselves wholly at home within that label.

And to let anyone out there feeling that way, that they're wrong.

Switching families is not something which diminishes your experience in any way. To anyone who is thinking of switching, in the midst of switching, or has already switched and feels negatively affected by it, know that you are valid. Rest, self care, and take time to process your feelings in healthy and restorative ways. But remember at all times that if you were reasonable, if you were willing to communicate and make compromises and grow, and it still didn't work for whatever reason, or especially if you were treated badly, it's not your fault.

If anything, you are brave and admirable to speak up for yourself, and demand the positive and welcoming homestay experience that you deserve like any other exchange student. Don't let this experience fill you with remorse or self-doubt. You are doing the right thing. This will allow you to see other sides of your host community and its environments, ones that will hopefully be far more soothing, welcoming, and supportive for you. Things will work out. This, too, shall pass.

And especially if you feel poorly treated, unsafe, if your host family is not conforming to basic elements of what's expected of them, or expecting you to hide stuff from the program, as happened with me, tell someone. Tell your RD, your counselor, a volunteer you trust, anyone who you feel comfortable telling that will be able to enact real and immediate change and get you into a better living situation as soon as possible.

And if at any point you feel truly down and out, or with no idea of what to do, know that you can always contact me. My comment sections and DM's are always open, and I am ready to listen with an open heart and without judgement.

Much love.

AFS Iceland Volunteer Camp Fall 2019 Padlet Answers

Hi everyone!

Recently, I participated in a volunteer camp with AFS Iceland, which was a fantastic experience (more coming up on that soon). Since I had significant prior experience volunteering, organizing, and being involved in the organization, I participated in the more advanced track of the two that we had, and had to complete a few extra steps and assignments beforehand. Most notably in the form of answering questions about teamwork and vulnerability, which we later used as material for discussion and reflection within our own specific track's activities.

Here are my answers.

• Share and example from fiction (can be a novel, tv show, movie) of good or bad teamwork and explain shortly why. 
  The Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe):
  The Pevensie siblings in the first Narnia film are an example of bad teamwork turned good later on. Initially, there is quite a lot of tension and disagreement between them as they navigate the difficulties of being far from home, separated from their mother, and of Edmund and Peter specifically butting heads over Edmund's bad attitude and acting out, and Peter's desire to live up to their mother's wish for him to "look after the others." Up until about halfway through, Edmund is constantly making fun of, snapping out at, and actively trying to prove himself better than his siblings, ultimately culminating with his departure to the White Witch's castle, which leaves his siblings and many Narnians in great danger. After he sees how calculating and evil the White Witch truly is, and realizes the role which his negative attitude and actions contributed to her advancement, his perspective changes greatly. When he returns to his siblings, he is apologetic, but doesn't seek praise for his change of heart. He joins his siblings as a united front, contributing insider knowledge that he has been able to gain about the White Witch's plans, intentions, and army, which is of great help. The Pevensie siblings ultimately are able to defeat the White Witch and fulfill the prophecy they fit, through a combination of Peter and Edmund working to hold off the White Witch's troops, which greatly outnumber their own, and Susan and Lucy rushing to gain reinforcements with Aslan's help (and magical breath).

• Write a few sentences about the term "Teaming" and if you think that describes your experience within AFS.
  Although I do understand the thought process behind it, I'm not sure I agree either with Edmondson's assessment that teams have to be static in order to function properly. Although closeness and mutual understanding can certainly increase greatly over time, in other situations they can stagnate greatly, and new perspectives and beliefs introduced into a space, even just in temporary circumstances, can go a long way to introducing and precipitating substantial change.
  In my AFS experiences, as well as other similar exchanges, I've found that even groups of people I've been a part of for a very short time, such as a week-long Returnee Leadership Summit, or a semester-long exchange, can create very strong bonds and plentiful exchanges of ideas. In many cases, people continue to bring the ideas or information exchanged into places and contexts which they are a part of for a long time afterwards, rendering them highly valuable.

• Put down a few points on when you think teaming can go well vs when it doesn't (can be the same points as in the video or something from you).
  Teaming can go well in situations where people are interested in similar things, open to learning and change, willing to make compromises and sacrifices, and wish to accomplish a common goal. It is much harder without willingness to learn things from other people, as well as to make compromises and sacrifices. In such situations, even when people are interested in similar things, tension can grow and worsen group dynamics, and cause people to remain fixated in their own ways and own knowledge.

• How would you define vulnerability?
  I would define vulnerability as willingness to let down one's guard and openly express one's emotions and thoughts, and being willing to engage with others' emotions and thoughts when they are expressed, even if they may be different from what one is used to (assuming that they are posited in a respectful and non-threatening manner).

• What’s your current comfort level with vulnerability?
  I consider myself quite comfortable with vulnerability, and believe that being able and willing to feel vulnerable is one of my greatest strengths. My willingness to be emotionally open with people has enabled me to connect with many that I hold dear at deep levels that I would likely otherwise not have been able to, and allowed me to open myself to entirely new ways of thinking, approaching problems, and visualizing the world that have been greatly enriching and empowering for me.

• What’s been your best experience with receiving feedback? What about the experience was effective or meaningful? What role did vulnerability and/or openness play in the process?
  Three years ago, I was applying for a scholarship to study Turkish for a summer. As she was applying for the same scholarship (but a different language), I worked very closely with a very close friend of mine, who I had studied in Turkey with the first time we'd been there together. When editing my essays, she pointed out a number of flaws in the writing style I had used in my essays when applying for the scholarship the previous year (being subsequently rejected). Although I was confident in my writing skills from a young age, her blunt, but constructive and supportive feedback enabled me to understand ways in which I was applying writing techniques in these essays that would work in other contexts, but not there. My willingness to understand, process, and integrate her critiques into my essays enabled me to greatly improve my writing skills and taylor specific skills to certain contexts, which enabled me to get into the program and study Turkish the following summer, as well as to get into numerous other programs I have applied to using the same skills.

• If you’ve had a negative feedback experience (either giving or receiving), what didn’t work?
  I have dyscalculia, which is defined as "a mathematical learning disability that impairs an individual's ability represent and process numerical magnitude in some way" (I often refer to it as "dyslexia's math cousin"). Throughout my elementary, middle, and high school education, I often received extra help from tutors, academic support counselors, and an individualized education plan that were theoretically supposed to help me. But rather than investing time and energy into understanding my learning disability in full and making true concessions and compromises in helping me to succeed, I was essentially made to believe that it was an issue of mind over matter: that if I worked hard enough and got enough help, eventually something would click and I'd understand. In high school, I realized that this was not true, and that my learning disability is not something I would ever be able to overcome and change. I felt deeply resentful and angry that I had been fed a false narrative for so long, and that I had spent so many years struggling with insecurity over my disability and feeling stupid for something that is innately part of me and that I cannot change as a result.

• If you compare your answers from these first two questions, what’s the lesson?
  The two occasions described in my answers are quite different in their duration, scope, and implications. But there are important conclusions to be gained from comparing them: unlike many of my educators who largely overlooked my needs and fed me a false narrative from a flawed system they ultimately refused to deviate from, my friend Gianna, when reading my essays, processed everything she was reading calmly, comprehensively, and in context. She reflected upon it, and in a way that was respectful and thoughtful, mentioned what was strong, what needed improvement, and what aspects of my writing were strong in and of themselves, but would be better to use in different contexts of writing.So my conclusion from comparing the two would be that it is necessary to look into things thoughtfully and carefully based on their context and where they come from, in order to make a fair and determined assessment that will be constructive and not destructive.

• Have you experienced receiving a giving feedback with people from another cultures? How have those experienced been to you?
  I have been able to learn from and interact with people from many different cultures and countries from my exchange experiences and language classes. These experiences have varied greatly, as there is a great variety of technique and approach in giving feedback at individual. contextual, and generational levels, in addition to at cultural and national ones. But many of them have been greatly enriching and interesting, as they have revealed different tendencies and cultural conceptualizations of various things. For instance, in my experiences as an exchange student in Iceland and Finland, I have found Nordic people to be generally quite direct and straightforward when communicating about most things, in ways that are, to an even slightly experienced eye, very well-intentioned, but that to many from other cultures could be perceived as abrasive or even rude. In contrast, when taking Japanese in my final year of college in the United States, I noticed that the way my professor and her teaching assistants communicated, particularly with each other within the expectations of their own culture, was often more indirect, and relied on numerous implications through intonation, changes in language or vocabulary, or unspoken cultural norms of interaction.

Hope you enjoyed!


Nico

(Fleiri) hlutir sem ég hef tekið eftir um Íslandi - (More) things I've noticed about Iceland

Hey guys!

So in continuing my little series about July in Iceland this past year, today I'm going to be making my first ever addendum to the "things I've noticed" series about a country I've already written about. There are a few more elements of Icelandic culture and history that caught my eye while I was there last summer that I wanted to share really quickly. Hope it's interesting and enjoyable!

1) Just how important swimming pools are in Icelandic culture.
This was definitely something which had been mentioned multiple times during my first Icelandic program in 2016, but I didn't quite get the extent of it until this past summer. Sofia and I were living less than two minutes on foot away from Sundhöllin, one of the main swimming pools in the city, and we also payed a visit on one occasion to the lovely Vesturbæjarlaug over on the other side of town. But Sundhöllin became a true staple of our experience, a place that we'd go up to four or five times a week at points, to relax, blow off some steam, take our minds off of things, hang out with friends, or just chat. And that's very much how swimming pools are in Iceland.
Even the tiniest of far-flung, windswept fishing villages will proudly sport a swimming pool, and they are important community meeting points across the country, the Turkish hamam, Finnish sauna, or Chinese tea houses of the situation. Retirees catch up on the latest gossip while they swim laps early in the morning; children energetically make use of the diving boards and slides in their first hours off of school; families make weekend afternoons together out of it.
Most Icelandic swimming pools consist of hot pots (usually around 38-40 Celsius/100-107 Fahrenheit), cold pots (around 12 Celsius/53 Fahrenheit), and the main swimming pool itself (around 26 Celsius/80 Fahrenheit), with the idea that patrons will move between the different temperature extremes and benefit from the related circulatory aid, much like in Finnish saunas. It's truly refreshing and can even leave one feeling pretty tired afterwards!
Also, let me take a moment here to say that the rumors are true - you have to shower naked at the pool before you go in. The water all comes from natural geothermal or glacial sources, and it is treated with extremely limited chemicals, so it is trusted that everyone will do their part in turn to keep the water clean - which is to say, thoroughly clean themselves. I know for some people this can be super nerve-wracking, but rest assured that the showers in Icelandic swimming pools are extremely non-judgemental and relaxed places. One of the benefits of this is that Icelanders grow up very comfortable with their own and each other's bodies, and discomfort in these environments is nearly non-existent.

2) Iceland and Finland have many parallels in their historical control by mainland Nordic powers, but it has resulted in two very different contemporary linguistic situations. 
For context, Iceland and Finland were ruled over by the monarchies of Denmark and Sweden respectively for periods of several hundred years, which was hugely influential in their development, and their ties to the rest of the Nordic world. Whether or not these periods of control could be considered colonialism is a subject of much debate in Iceland and Finland alike, including among Icelanders and Finns themselves. But suffice it to say that these periods were important.
However, in contemporary Finland about 5% of the population, particularly on the southern and western coasts, continues to speak a unique Finnish-influenced dialect of Swedish as their native language, which enjoys equal official status and state protection as the Finnish language. In Iceland, though a more pan-Scandinavian influenced version of Danish was a required subject in schools until recent decades, no significant portion of Icelanders use Danish amongst themselves or as a native language anymore.
I thought of several reasons that could have contributed to this: for one, the simple matter of population. Finland's population has never been huge, it's only about five million today. But Iceland's contemporary peak population is about 350,000. With numbers that (relatively) low, which have historically been even lower, it's simply difficult to maintain a minority population with a distinctive identity, using a different language than the main one.
Another is geographical isolation and logistics. Finland is much closer to Sweden, particularly the areas that retain high numbers of Swedish speakers today, and so creating cohesive transportation and trade routes and spheres of influences from Stockholm was much easier, compared to the thousand or so miles (2,000 or so kilometers) which separate Iceland from mainland Europe, especially with the duration of transportation during those days. So laying down comparably solid influence was difficult.
Then, Iceland has had a tremendously rich and strong literary tradition throughout its history - even while the vast majority of Icelanders lived in poverty for many centuries working in nearly squalid conditions on turf farms across the country, people were educated to be literate, so that they could read epic poems and sagas aloud to their families while they worked, particularly during the kvöldvaka (evening-wake) during the long winters. This literary history and inadvertent country-wide standardization of the language gave it a uniform legitimacy. In Finland, in contrast, Finnish remained a spoken language only until the 14th century, when Protestant monk Mikael Agricola published a Finnish translation of the New Testament of the Bible, and was not standardized until the nationalist Fennoman movement became prevalent during Russian control in the 1800s.
And finally, Icelanders have historically been distrustful of the higher classes, and sought to make themselves as distinct from the upper echelons of society as possible. Not to say that Finns historically were more differential, but the aristocratic caste system was something which was more entrenched, enforced, and therefore accepted. So it stands to reason that Danish, which was largely used by and associated with the higher classes and colonial administration in Iceland, would be largely shaken off and often resented in the years following independence (it is important to note, however, that not all Icelanders hate Denmark by any means; in fact many continue to study Danish in school even without being forced, as many jobs require proficiency in a mainland Nordic language, and large numbers of Icelanders live and study in Denmark, particularly in Copenhagen).

That's all I could think of for now. I will add anything else that comes to mind.

Best wishes and good vibes to all!
Nico

The fulfillment of another Nordic dream: Iceland July 2018

Hey guys!

So as I've mentioned a bit in recent posts, I had the privilege and honor to be able to return to Iceland for a month this summer, which will be the focus of this post.

I returned to the U.S. from Finland on May 31 after nearly nine months abroad, and spent a much-needed month doing nothing at home with my family (more to follow on that soon potentially). As needed as the month of down-time was, by the time I'd been home for a month with next to nothing to do, I was feeling pretty antsy and restless, in need of a bit of direction and adventure - feeling quite ready to head to Reykjavik.

I arrived on the morning of July 1, and after two years of absence from one of my favorite countries, which was host to such a beautiful formative experience, I can't accurately explain in words how it felt to break through the clouds, see the green of the Reykjanes Peninsula jut through our view of the North Atlantic, and touch down.

My dear, dear friend Sofia from Bologna, who I met on our first Icelandic program in the Westfjords two years ago, had also gotten into the Árni Magnússon Institute's summer program, and so a dream of many years was made even better. We got to room together in a beautiful, cozy, perfectly-sized little apartment on Leifsgata behind Hallgrímskirkja, and walked together to class every morning about twenty minutes away at the Institute, located on the main campus of the University of Iceland.

On our first day we were sorted into three different levels based on our Icelandic language backgrounds; since Sofia and I had both completed the A1/A2 level program in the Westfjords, we got to sit in the third and most advanced level, spending a month studying Icelandic with people from Switzerland, the UK, the Isle of Man specifically, Ireland, the U.S, Brazil, and Germany, which was a fantastic group that made for thought-provoking and stimulating conversation, in Icelandic, English, or whatever else. As fate would have it, our teacher was actually one of the teachers from my program two years ago (though not the one that had taught my own class)!

Recognizing that being immersed in Icelandic can be somewhat difficult in a place like Reykjavik, which sees so much tourism (particularly in the high summer) that the center of town can get rather flooded with English, every possible measure was taken to ensure that we'd have as immersive an environment as possible in the classroom, and with great success. I didn't realize how much progress I was truly making until the end, when I realized just how many new things I was able to say. A particular moment of triumph was meeting my friend Unnur, an Icelander who my dear friend Salma met at a European Youth Parliament event in Vienna a few years ago and put me in touch with. We got coffee together at a delightful little place called Stofan, and started out speaking Icelandic almost jokingly...and then spent almost two whole hours speaking Icelandic, in which I only had to resort to English a few times and made few grammatical mistakes! Aside from being a way to finally meet up with a great human, it was also a pivotal and defining moment in my Icelandic learning experience, when I found new confidence in my own abilities and felt unspeakably proud of the progress I'd made.

Overall I was immensely satisfied with the organization of the program and how everything was set up. We had a couple of excursions outside of the Reykjavik area, day trips which took us mostly to saga sites in the countryside, where we heard all about these tales of strife and conflict which are so important to Icelandic literature and culture. Dramatically beautiful natural spaces are never too far away in Iceland, and as compact and comfortable as Reykjavik is as an urban area, it was still wonderful to escape into the lava fields and flowering cliffs that make the country so unique and beautiful.

We also enjoyed a number of academic lectures at the Institute itself, by far my favorite was a private lecture with Jónína Leósdóttir, a prominent Icelandic writer and playright, wife to Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the first Icelandic female prime minister and the first openly lesbian head of state in the world. Jónína's literary work is well-known and very important, as much of it centers around coming-of-age stories for LGBT protagonists that have been unprecedented among Icelandic literature. But it was most incredible of all to hear her talk so openly and candidly of coming to terms with her identity in the early '80s in Iceland, having to hide the relationship that developed between her and Jóhanna for FIFTEEN years, and the euphoria of coming out and being eventually accepted by her family, buying a flat with Jóhanna, and eventually tying the knot as Iceland legalized same-sex marriage in 2010. Even though only Jónína was present, their love was so strong and perceptible to every person in the room, just by virtue of the way that she told their stories, and talked about her wife.

It's stories of queer perserverance, triumph, and representation like Jónína and Jóhanna's that provide so much hope, inspiration, and solidarity for the future, and showcase the beauty and bond of what it means to be part of the queer community.

Overall I did my best to make this a trip of establishing rhythms and routines in the city, fully immersing myself in to the experience. Although I didn't stay in Reykjavik for the actual program that I did my first time in Iceland, I was there for four days at the beginning and another at the end, so I still did most of the staple touristy things and got to know the city quite well. I went for long walks in different parts of the city that I didn't know. I tried different coffee shops when my wallet would allow, trying to find ones that were a bit off the beaten path tourist-wise. I went to the pool with Sofia nearly every day, as there was one less than two minutes away from our apartment on foot called Sundhöllin, and we also visited several others with program friends. Given the relationship that I have with Iceland, and the comfort that I feel in the place and its general atmosphere, that month was, in many ways, just as, if not even more restorative than the month that I spent with my parents in St. Louis prior.

Leaving Iceland is never easy, especially when it was such a calm and wonderful experience as this one. I miss it very much, but am hard at work on a Fulbright application which will hopefully allow me to go back and study Icelandic at the University of Iceland for at least a year if I get selected. Ég vona að þetta reddast.

Thank you all for reading, and stay tuned for more about Iceland soon.

Best, Nico

"Noni(in)" - Finland's "jæja"

Hello everyone!

Today I'm here to nerd out as per usual, and discuss two parallel marvels of linguistic adaptability and versatility that I know from the two Nordic countries in which I have sojourned and whose languages I have studied - Finland and Iceland. It's always funny and fascinating to find little patterns like these between different cultures and languages; though Finland and Iceland certainly aren't too alien to each other as two Nordic cultures, but their two beautiful and complex languages come from entirely different language families (being Germanic/Indo-European and Finno Ugric respectively), so that makes this similarity all the more striking to me as a non-native learner of both.

Since this title probably makes very little sense to anyone who isn't familiar with a bit of Icelandic or Finnish, let alone someone who knows none of either of them, here is a little context:
First on the word "jæja," courtesy of my favorite Icelandic writer, the talented Alda Sigmundsdóttir (check out her great work on Icelandic culture, history, and language), from her book The Little Book of Icelandic:

"A highly versatile word that can be tricky for those not well versed in the cultural nuances of Icelandic. It can be used to herald in a conversation, as in: Jæja, það er blessuð blíðan í dag - "jæja, the weather sure is nice today." It can also be used as a standalone when a silence becomes uncomfortable - you know, when you don't really know what to say but aren't comfortable saying nothing. The other person would then likely respond já - "yes," which would mean nothing except that they heard your jæja and they, too, are feeling kind of awkward. 
Jæja can also denote your mood or feeling, depending on the intonation. If the inflection goes up at the end you are probably feeling buoyant and would like to start a conversation in that vein. If the inflection drops at the end you are probably feeling downhearted and pessimistic, and the other person with pick up on this instantly.
Jæja can also be a response to someone who has just told you something fascinating - as in jæja já! It can also signal that you want to bring a conversation or exchange to an end. In such an instance you might arise from your seat with a jæ-ja that is slightly elongated on the second syllable, and the tone of that jæja would absolutely tell the other person that you think it's time to go."

Shortly into my stay in Finland, I learned about the word "noniin," sometimes rendered without the final "in" or with an extra "n," which I felt performed a pretty similar linguistic function:
(According to Paju N. Luola, a "native speaker and enthusiast" answering in a thread on Quora:)



“No niin” (or “noni” or “nonnih”) is a very versatile interjection which most people use at least a few different ways. The different meanings/implications are true vernacular and vary according to the area and the microdialect. Some variations are very widely understood and close to settled, while others may be understood in the same way by just a few people within a single group.


Ismo Leikola is also astute in noticing that this specific word has intensive homophone variation conveyed via stresses, elongations and constrictions as well as tonal shifts, which as a rule do not carry more meaning in Finnish than slight nuances and basic tonal questions which are well known in many languages. (As in “Savvy?”)


Just some examples of the variations that are best known around where I live:
NON-ni (high-low) — “now you’ve gone and done it!”
non-NI (high-low) — “whew, all done now”
non-NI (low-high) — “let’s get going”
no-NII (low-dipping) —”didn’t I tell you? yes I did”
no-nii (neutral-falling) — “aww lookit you” (to babies/pets)


For an English counterpart, I’d suggest “yeah” or “sure”. They do gain a surprising list of meanings when you sit down and think about the many many ways they can be said.


(Here is a video by a well-known Finnish comedian named Ismo Leikola, for a vocal aid to help contextualize the various applications and usages of noniin.)


The similarity of the two words, and their multifaceted characterizations and usages, struck me, as two little versatile syntactic components of two of my favorite corners of the far north, so I thought I'd just share that special little linguistic feature with y'all.


Best,

Nico

Cross Border Areas: Entrance Exam

Hey guys!

This will be (at least for now) the last piece of purely academic writing that I share from my semester in Finland, the entrance exam from my "cross border areas in the Baltic Sea region" course. Hope you enjoy!

Löfgren largely characterizes the nature of borders as artificial projects, and the experience of crossing them as alienating and othering. He mentions cases such as the two sides of the opposing sides of the Öresund bridge, where nationalist characteristics are assigned even to the surrounding flora and fauna to act as cultural symbols and cement the physical sense of the nation-state, and its perception by others. The crucial notion that “marking differences of privilege and status and symbolic worlds of two territories” is highly important, bearing in mind that the flow of people across borders and their experiences vary greatly based on rather arbitrary aspects of who they are, where they come from, why they are coming, and what permission they may or may not have to do so. He describes “sharp divisions and distinctions” and “transgression” not only national but also physical and psychological in nature, such as intimidation and guilt, that are used to strategically other groups of people in transit, making them feel welcome or unwelcome in their passage into another nation state, often based on obsolete and biased traits of physical or stereotypical attributes associated with particular places.

One of my most defined experiences in moving across international borders has come from this very semester. Being the son of an Italian mother and an American father, I inherited two of the world’s most powerful citizenships upon birth. As such, I have been awarded an immense amount of privilege in where I am allowed to go and how I am allowed to move across the world, and how I am able to present myself in the context of my various identities in different contexts. Living in Finland as an exchange student, my possession of a European citizenship and its associated documents (my Italian passport and identity card), I can stay, study, and live here for up to three months at a time without even needing a residency permit, and was able to travel to Finland from Italy and between Finland and Sweden without having to show so much as my identity card, and undergo little to no scrutiny or even formal document control in the process, even though I was born in the United States and have been raised and educated there for the vast majority of my life. In contrast, I have met many other non-European citizens who have had to go through intensive bureaucratic processes in order to come to Finland, even flying across their homeland for fifteen-minute appointments at the Finnish embassy. As such, situational luck and individual privilege have greatly dictated my own ability to move freely across our ever more interconnected world and engage with different places therein, just as it has for others.

Variations of the Finnish Language: Essays

Hey guys!

Continuing my little academic series from Finland, here are my essays from my Variations of the Finnish language class, which I had to write about the dialectal variation and the development of the written version of my first language, that being English.

Hope it's interesting!

Linguistic Variation in the English Language:
Due to its status as an official language in many countries, and becoming the default lingua franca for international communication, many spoken variations of English exist. Some of the best known and most dominant across the Anglophone world include American English, British English, Irish English, and Australian English. Lesser-spoken variations include New Zealand English and Canadian English, which due to geographical proximity, cultural affinity, and political cooperation alike exist largely in tandem with Australian and American English respectively. Differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and influences from other languages certainly exist in these variations, setting them apart as distinct dialects. But excepting perhaps isolated sub-dialects or thick parlances of older individuals, the divergence between these aforementioned dialects is usually not sufficient to hinder comprehension between their speakers. In general, it will become obvious quite quickly which country the speakers in question hail from, and they may occasionally be unfamiliar with specific vocabulary or slang pertaining to daily life in each others’ homelands, but overall communication will take place without issue. Due to the fact that speakers of English from these countries tend to be familiar with each other’s cultures to a certain extent, they will often know and somewhat stereotypically associate certain pronunciations and phrases with each other’s dialects. One example would be the name of the famous Australian Idol singer and drag queen Shane Gilberto Jenek, better known by the stage name of Courtney Act, which in non-rhotic dialects such as his native Australian becomes a play on the phrase “caught in the act,” whereas in rhotic dialects such as American English, the stage name loses its originally intended pun. Other spoken examples of divergence in the dialects can be seen in highly informal greetings, with “what’s up?” being popular in North America, compared to “wotcha” in southern Britain, “how ya goin’?” in Australia, and the famous greeting “what’s the craic?” in Ireland.
Other spoken dialects in Anglophone countries are more than sufficiently distinct to hinder comprehension for other English speakers, even if their standard forms do not differ greatly. Two such examples could be spoken Jamaican English, which is often referred to as a patois or creole daughter language in its own right, and Singaporean English. In the case of Jamaican, words are pronounced in a highly condensed fashion and many letters are changed or cut, as can be seen in the dialect’s widely recognized greeting “wha’ gwan?” or “what [is] going on.” Word order and syntactical structure are often quite distinct from even Standard Jamaican English due to Carib and African influences. Singaporean English is known for often featuring the particle “lah,” borrowed from Malay, which is used to emphasize certain parts of a sentence or a whole sentence depending on use and context, and has no direct English translation.
Aside from overarching national and geographical divergences, socio-economic and community-based variations also exist in English, within or across such geographical umbrellas. Prominent geographical variation in dialect is certainly present in the United States. The most general regional groupings consist of New England, the South, Midwest, West Coast, and Pacific Northwest. But aside from small variations in vocabulary, and a few unusually strong regional accents (namely in East Coast cities like Boston or New York that were established earlier in the country’s history), linguistic diversity in the United States is manifested more through sociolects. A key example of a prominent American sociolect is African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Often condescendingly dismissed as “improper speech” or “poor grammar,” in recent decades AAVE has gained more recognition as a defined sociolect with its own grammar, syntax, word order, and morphological features. Words are often shortened, particularly in the elimination of final consonants such as “r’s” and their frequent replacement with glottal stops (i.e. “four” becomes “fo’”) or schwas (i.e. “mother” becomes “mothuh”). Other commonly recognized features of AAVE include its distinctive usage of the verb “to be” in various sentence forms (such as “I been done,” meaning “I’ve finished”), double negation (i.e. “I didn’t go nowhere” to mean “I didn’t go anywhere,” which reverses the sentence’s original meaning in Standard English, and the common use of “ain’t” as a general particle of negation (i.e. “He ain’t know” instead of “he didn’t know”). Speakers of AAVE, particularly those living in urban areas and middle class neighborhoods, tend to code switch quite frequently, using AAVE in informal contexts among relatives and African American friends and acquaintances, but switching to a more standard American English register in school or work environments, or when communicating with non-AAVE speakers. Because of the influence that AAVE and its speakers have had in certain areas of American culture, particularly in various genres of music, it is often an object of imitation and appropriation by non AAVE-speakers and non-African Americans.
Another common sociolect found in the United States is that of Chicano English, or “Spanglish,” which is widely used among Hispanic, particularly Mexican American, communities and neighborhoods. It uniquely fuses Spanish and English vocabulary, word order, and syntax, producing a combination that is not fully dominated by either language (i.e. instead of the fully English “I went to the store to buy some strawberries, but they were sold out,” or the fully Spanish “fui a la tienda a comprar unas fresas, pero ya no quedaban,” a Latino American might say “fui al store a comprar some strawberries, pero ya estaban sold out.”

The Development of the Written English Language:
English as a written language has evolved dramatically from its original registers, and understanding these changes is key in classifying the language. Scant written records exist of the Germanic speech of the earliest Anglo-Saxon invaders of Great Britain, who absorbed or displaced many of the local Pictish and Celtic clans inhabiting the island (as well as their languages). Literacy became more widespread in Britain following its Christianization by St. Augustine and 40 other Roman missionaries in the year 597. The pagan Anglo-Saxons had used a runic alphabet which closely resembled those found in northern Europe, specialized for engraving on wood or stone, and fused it with the Latin alphabet introduced by these missionaries. The resulting written language included letters such as “ƿ (wynn),” “þ (thorn),” “ð (eth),” and “ȝ (yogh),” some of which have been retained in other Germanic languages, such as Icelandic and Faroese. Old English refers to the register and literary works of the English language hailing from from the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. Old English was the dominant spoken language of the time, with Latin only being used regularly by the clergy and elite, but Latin borrowings, particularly religious terminology such as “priest,” baptism” “eucharist,” “candle,” and so on were increasingly adopted for common use. Literature published during the Old English period included numerous works by poets such as Caedmon from the 7th century, and epics such as Beowulf, still well-recognized and commonly read to this day. Old English was quite grammatically akin to Old Norse and modern Icelandic, showcasing more intricate features of expression such as three genders, seven strong verb classes and three weak ones, five potential case inflections, and consequentially freer word order, which modern English has all but lost. Further Germanic influence in Old English came from Viking invasions and political domination in following centuries.
A dramatic and pivotal turning point came with the the Norman conquest of Britain, in which the French King William the Conqueror seized control of the island in 1066 and redistributed land to Norman lords, subjugating the Anglo-Saxons and making them second-class citizens. This manifested in the increasingly diglossic linguistic situation, with Anglo-Norman becoming the spoken language of the court, administration, and noble elite for more than three hundred years afterwards, and English being seen as an inferior, simple peasant’s tongue. Because of Old English and Anglo-Norman speakers being largely separated by rigid societal hierarchies, the two languages developed in tandem with each other for many decades, only beginning to fuse when intermarriage between speakers of the two sociolects becoming more acceptable. Romance-based prefixes such as “con-,” “pre-,” “ex-,” and “trans-,” and noun suffixes such as “-age,” “-ance/-ence,” “-ity,” and “-tion” made an appearance in written English at this time due to French influence, and huge numbers of French loanwords, particularly relating to positions of power (i.e. “government”), and artistic expression (i.e. “poet,” “literature”) were adopted. French scribes reversed the common Old English diphthong “hw” to “wh,” wishing to uphold an aesthetic consistency with other diphthongs such as “ch” and “th.” Other reappropriations of spellings common at the time seemed more arbitrary, such as adding a “w” to the word hal, a precursor to the modern “whole.”
Following Norman rule, dialects became so divergent across Britain that mutual intelligibility was impossible over long distances, and the spoken register gradually shed the grammatical complexities of Old and Middle English. A monk called Orm from northern Lincolnshire crafted a text referred to as the “Ormulum,” in which he attempted to combat excessive mispronunciation by transcribing biblical passages exactly as they were pronounced. This was done by simplifying and altering the written language, shifting many common diphthongs (i.e.“cw” to “qu;” “queen” instead of “cween”), eliminating “h’s” at the beginning of many words (i.e. “neck” instead of “hnecca”), and perhaps most crucially, eliminating the use of the letters wynn, replacing it with "w," yogh, replacing it with g or gh, thorn and eth, replacing them with th, and so on.

Out of touch with their French roots, many of the Norman elite began to craft a more English identity, and the plague killed much of the Latin-speaking clergy, resulting in a more even linguistic playing field and adoption of common English by classes who had previously discredited it. By the 15th century, Old English was likely just as mutually unintelligible as it is for modern English speakers.

A defining benchmark in the development of Modern English was the so-called Great Vowel Shift, referring to an unusually swift evolution of long vowel sounds being pronounced higher and in a forward position in the mouth. Spelling changes that were made to reflect these changes rendered written English increasingly similar to its modern form. The last crucial facet in the development of Modern English was the invention of the printing press in 1476, which made literature of diverse genres and purposes accessible to more of the general population, and led to greater unity among the speakers who used it. Late Modern English has remained relatively unchanged in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and spelling; the greatest changes are reflected in vocabulary, as many words have been coined for technological inventions and newly discovered scientific concepts.