In February 2016, I naively signed up for Swedish as a second language 3 (svenska som andraspråk 3). I thought I would dive in, get it done, then happily persue a few university level classes that autumn. It was only one obligatory class a week, albeit badly timed from 2:30pm to 4pm. Sure, the girls had to stay in daycare until the end of the day. They came home tired and cranky, but I was optimistic that this would be worth it.

Mid-February and all the way through March, the stomach bug season was in full swing. One child or another was always home sick each week. I was fairly grateful that we could afford for me to stay home with them without having a job to ditch. But I certainly did not get any Swedish done.

I didn’t finish the class. In May, I had to apply to have it lengthened until the end of the autumn semester.

Somewhere, I got the equally naive idea to sign up for a programming class AND another French class. In all this, the French class has suffered the most from neglect. It is a very easy class (A2-level), and frankly, I could do it in a week. It sits there, forgotten and forlorn. One day, I’ll pick it up again, dust it off and give it lots of kisses.

Those two classes, through some snafu at the home office at Miroi, were somehow assigned at 13% speed. That means I can take two-months at a time to finish one section. There are five sections to each course. This is actually wonderful because if anyone is sick, I do not need to panic about something being due. But it also is horrible because that means things get pushed back.

The programming class is really a teach-yourself-programming class, and it has dragged through summer into autumn. I am currently trying to figure out sorting vectors which will eventually bloom into sorting classes and objects.

Meanwhile, I still have a novel to read, an essay to write, a report looming eventually about something, and the national test to take. Again with those national tests.

Needless to say, it is stressful. All the fun with language learning has been sapped. There is still very little material about grammar. We’ll see what happens.