About writing

Last week I've signed up for NaNoWriMo. I've heard about it before but never actually figured out what is about until i came across a link while browsing for language/expat blogs. Don't know if I can do it, partly because I work full time, and partly as i don't know i have enough ideas and enough stamina to keep on going. A couple years ago, or maybe ten and a half to be precise, I had a few months after dropping out of uni and finding any job or course so I was at home, doing the housework and writing and cross-stitching. I was so much into writing at that time that I actually did it in front of my mum and brother, and I'm usually keep the whole thing secret. I'd got a thick A4 notebook filled, every days entry written with a different coloured pen I picked depending on my mood.
Now, i should type it straight away on the laptop - don't think i will choose colours, but who knows. Another problem is, I have two days to figure out which one of my three ideas to use. Two is fantasy and the third utopistic. One of the fantasy plots I've always imagined as a manga so I don't know if I can or want to tie it down into a prose. The utopistic one might be too crazy and probably way too depressing to spend an entire month on it. And the other fantasy, well, it's fantasy, i might just get lost in my ideas and not get a proper story out of it. Also, none of them will be readable for the majority of my family and friends - probably my brother will have to be the guinea pig, on his own. But at least i know he will appreciate my effort!

How will I have time for all this writing and to continue studying Finnish (noun cases next - yee-ha!) and even to knit and do some Christmas-prep, I've no idea.
 

Suomi

 It happened after my ex-boyfriend moved out and I asked myself where is my life heading now. I thought about a lot of things to do - changing jobs, go on a Europe-wide trek on foot or by hitchhiking, move back to Hungary, jump in the Thames... I was also free to do things i didn't do while my boyfriend was around and could criticize and mock my quirkiness. I started watching movies and to knit while standing up and doing little leg-exercises, bought food he didn't tolerated like salami, and dug out my meager collection of snowboard movies. Which are either full with finnish guys or are made (partially) in Finland or both.
I've always had a soft spot for Finland and everything finnish. Being Hungarian, i knew from a very young age that the only country where they speak a language even remotely similar to Hungarian is Finland*.  I also loved the fact that they had beautiful forests and beautiful architecture, and the men are blue eyed and blond haired (which are relatively rare in Hungary so i always found them exotic ;) I ended up studying Swedish and Estonian at the university, then came to the UK to learn English - maybe i will write a post about these detours in the future. So this summer I asked myself what are the things I really want to do in my life, and staying here wasn't one of them. Going there, getting to know the country, learning or at least trying to learn the language was. That settled it. I bought a textbook and started to gather learning material on the internet, and started studying a month ago.
I haven't studied a language from the start in a long time and now remembered how hard it is. The one year of Estonian studies are helpful sometimes and a burden at others, both owing to the similarities between the two languages, since they are much closer to each other then either of them are to Hungarian, I'd say like English and German to Persian. It is also one of those languages which make me laugh all the time because they just sound funny for the unfamiliar ears, like Chinese, Swedish and English**. I also love the fact that it has a lot of words who mean something entirely different on another language, i think they are called homonyms.

These few I gathered today:

hinta - fin price, hun swing (the playground toy)
lanka - fin yarn, hun gentle slope
ovi - fin door, hun  kindergarten, nursery
te - fin you (2nd person plural), hun you (2nd person singular) - Hey, we are relatives after all! :)
on - is (to be, 3rd person singular)
helmet - pearls

So, here's for me doing something crazy and too big and completely non-sense again.

Hyvaa ilta! (Good night!)



*At that time, Estonia was part of the Soviet Union and not an independent country so nobody talked about them.
**  Yes, English. I remember i found it sounding ridiculous when i started to learn it at age 9 and dropped it because i felt too embarrassed to say all those funny words out loud in front of other people.