If I were a real man, I would've given up English for Lent.



Unfortunately, I'm spineless, controlling and pathically devoted to my mother tongue. I'm also wallowing daily in utter shame and self-pity because after four years of living in this comfortable city not far from the arctic circle, choir rehearsal is the only place I really speak my mediocre Swedish without switching back and forth to English as soon as I feel the least bit frustrated at not being able to express exactly what I think. Is it really perfectionism - wanting to get everything right all the time and without a trace of an accent - that's doing me in?



I've turned into the thing I dreaded when I moved here: the American who doesn't bother to speak the language.



Woe is me.



You can hit me now.



The Swedish verb for the day is att sparka. It means to kick.



- by Francis S.