Our 10th EOTO session ended up happening in Stockholm since Patty, me and one of my Finnish friends went on the Pirates of the Baltic cruise to Sweden. We had a day to see Stockholm and we decided to teach each other some sentences while going out and about since we always have fun while doing it; it doesn’t feel like we’re doing an actual assignment for a course at all.
We taught each other sentences like “Do you like this city?”, “What do you want to eat?”, “We need to go in the metro” and “I would like to buy a souvenir”. In retrospect, I don’t remember all of the sentences that we taught each other but I remember some and that’s already really good. Patty did really well again though; I think she’s still super motivated to learn as much Finnish as she can while she’s here.
Since this was our last and 10th session, I reflected back on the whole experience a little bit. I think that it got a lot easier to learn after I got more used to Dutch and the type of language it is. It’s also really helped that me and Patty have become such amazing friends and that we spend a lot of time together. When I’m around her, I hear a lot of Dutch and I’m exposed to it a lot so I can pick up on some phrases that I hear again and again.
I think that the fall break when we went to the Netherlands together was the highlight of our EOTO course. I got to practice my Dutch in Holland and meet a lot of Dutch people that I’m now friends with so my social media also has a lot of Dutch on it. We’ll probably keep teaching each other Finnish and Dutch for the rest of the time we’re spending together this year but probably won’t keep a more official track record of it.
I can have a short conversation in Dutch and I can now follow a conversation. I think me and Patty were very successful in our Each One Teach One course and I know I’ll need to remember my Dutch since we’ve already planned for me to go to the Netherlands for a few weeks in the spring and I’m pretty convinced that I’ll put Amsterdam and Utrecht on my choices when I apply for the mandatory exchange for International Business students in a few months.
Comments