Spent the evening behind closed doors, reading out loud Finnish words and phrases while the boy watched the parade of poshlost' known as "American Idol" try-outs in the living room.

Can now produce several complete and coherent sentences in Finnish. This is big news.

Hyvää paivää! Minä olen Ax. Olen venäläinen. Puhun venäjää, englantia ja saksaa.

Christ, am I really going to undertake Finnish? No classes, no teacher, just whatever I can scavenge off the internet? Well.. why not? The internet has so far yielded some neat starter materials, both in Russian and in English. What is more difficult to grasp through Russian instruction (helping verbs) poses no problem through the English and vice versa - it's probably a tough going explaining fifteen noun cases to a monoglot anglophone... There are audios and videos aplenty. Certainly there are texts aplenty. The only thing that's missing is someone to interact with - and even that can potentially be got on a chatboard somewhere.

Good then, it'd decided. I shall soldier bravely on, armed with my trusty workhorse "Anteeksi, en ymmärrä."

(Any hardcore linguaphiles in attendance? Say it out loud: "Anteeksi, en ymmärrä." Consult the IPA for proper Finnish phonology if necessary. "Sorry, I don't understand" - but for Heaven's sake, please, keep talking!)