I signed the lease for my new workspace yesterday evening!

Global pandemic allowing, I'll be doing private Finnish lessons face to face in Kallio from August. There are still a few spots available in my teaching calendar if you're interested. Click here for pricing and more information, and to reserve your first free lesson! 

I'll also still be teaching online, and I'm planning my very first publicly available online Finnish course for August. It will be a short course on speaking and listening comprehension for intermediate to early advanced students (CEFR B1-B2 or YKI 3-4) with live meetings on Zoom, Tuesdays from 19:30 to 20:30. More info coming up as soon as I get all the details hammered out! 

Update: the course page is up and running! Click here for more details in English (the course page is in Finnish, as this is an upper intermediate course) and sign up here!

Doesn't it look pretty already? 

Hyvää juhannusta!
= Happy Midsummer!

As usual, I'm celebrating the shortest night of the year in the countryside by a beautiful lake. It's traditional to stay up most of the night, but last year and the year before that I was fast asleep before 10 pm. I suspect that tomorrow I'll do the the same, but we'll see!

Here's a great video from the brilliant Almost Finns about Finnish Midsummer celebrations. The video is in Finnish, with subtitles in Finnish, Arabic, Spanish and English. Do you celebrate Midsummer or Juhannus? 

A student of mine asks: 

I keep seeing the word "tarha" at the end of longer words: puutarha, eläintarha, lastentarha. What does "tarha" mean? 

 Here's a list of words ending in tarha with their translations to English: 

puutarha - garden
hedelmätarha - orchard
omenatarha - an orchard with mainly apple trees
mehiläistarha - bee farm
lastentarha - day care center or kindergarten
eläintarha - zoo

If you look at the list, you might see that the words all have something in common (besides ending in tarha). These words all mean enclosed spaces that contain something specific: trees (puu), fruit (hedelmä), apples (omena), bees (mehiläinen, mehiläis-), children (lapsi, lasten), animals (eläin). 

Tarha used all on its own usually means lastentarha, so a day care center or kindergarten. 

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time in Malminkartanon omenatarha, or the apple orchard in Malminkartano, where I also took the background picture: 

Who would have thought parenting would be so time consuming? Over a year ago, I seriously imagined I'd have the time and energy to update this blog at least once in a while, but the reality of it was quite different, as everyone except me knew well in advance. It's been a difficult and wonderful time, with all kinds of stuff (like teething and a global pandemic) going on. 

I returned to working full time on Monday, and resuming blogging seems much more realistic, at least at the moment! Send me your questions and I'll do my best to answer them. 

Before I switch my focus back to Finnish, here's a picture of my baby from two days ago:

Lapset kasvavat niin nopeasti!
= Lapse+t kasva+vat niin nopea+sti!
= Child+t-plural grow+3rd person plural so quick+ly!
= Children grow up so quickly!