Hi, I’m Ellin!

I moved to Finland from Canada in 2023 to be with my Finnish partner, and I began taking Finnish language courses in 2024. Despite being born in South Korea, I grew up in Canada and consider English to be my native language since I unfortunately lost my ability to use and understand Korean long ago.

I created this blog to practise writing in Finnish, document my progress, and share what I’ve learned along the way. When I started this blog in February 2025, I was around level A2.1, and my goal was to “one day become conversational in Finnish and pass the intermediate YKI test”. In August 2025, I took and passed the YKI test on my first attempt.

Currently, I am around level B1. In practice, this means I can get through everyday interactions and have conversations on a variety of topics in somewhat broken Finnish – although, I probably won’t understand every word.