I am embarrassed the next day, after the shock has worn off, about my mini-breakdown the night before.

Aksel spent what was left of the night taking care of me, making me a quick dinner and then climbing into bed with me, holding me like I was a small child.

I am embarrassed, thinking about it. I was so weak, so selfishly dependent on him. I didn't even think to ask him about his night out.

He woke this morning before I did, and let me sleep in, but I walk into the kitchen just as he finishes making himself a cup of coffee. He looks up when I walk in, and I go over to him. He's all dressed and ready for work, looking incredibly professional and sophisticated. It hits me anew how good he looks, especially in his work clothes.

I reach up to straighten his tie, wanting to do something for him, too. But, to be honest, I don't know a thing about ties. The stereotypical domestic scene of a woman tying the man's tie before he leaves for work – I couldn't enact it if I wanted to. Aksel does it himself so quickly, efficiently, even while multitasking, that it's pointless for me to try to do for him.

He puts down his coffee mug and his hand comes up to grasp my wrist gently. "Morning," he murmurs, looking into my eyes, checking for something. "How are you feeling?"

"Great!" I chirp, giving up on fiddling with his already straight tie and patting his chest for lack of something to do. "Completely fine."

"Emilie..." He looks like he wants to say something, but ends up simply sighing. He drops my wrist and slides his hands around my waist instead, pulling me in for a kiss. He tastes of bitter black coffee, and I almost recoil. But I catch myself at the last moment, and, steeling myself against the bitter taste, kiss him back. He pulls away after a while, looking into my face.

"Ah, sorry," he says, rubbing his knuckles over my cheek, "I forgot I was drinking black coffee."

How does he read me so easily? It's like he sees every emotion I feel, sometimes even before I register it myself.

"It's fine," I say, grabbing him by the sides of his face and standing up on my tiptoes to kiss him again, to prove that I don't mind the taste.

Oh, but is black coffee bitter. Finns like their coffee so strong.

Aksel smiles faintly, reaching a finger to touch my nose. I haven't realised that it's scrunched up as a reflex to the bitter taste on his lips. "This gives it away." He leans down and kisses my cheek chastely. "Thanks," he whispers.

Feeling a little flustered – what is he thanking me for? – I clear my throat and turn to look around the kitchen. "Have you eaten? I'll make you something–" I want to repay him, somehow, for last night.

"It's okay," he says, putting his hands on my shoulders and steering me towards the dining table right outside of the entryway to the kitchen. He pulls out a chair and gestures for me to sit. "I've eaten. And I made you something too."

I sit down, pouting a little at the plate of toast and scrambled eggs in front of me. "I love scrambled eggs," I say in a small voice. But I'm disappointed. I wanted to cook something for him today.

He takes care of me too much. I want to take care of him, too, sometimes.

"I know." He sounds unconcerned; he is back in the kitchen now, polishing off his mug of coffee. Then I hear the tap running. I'm poking at my eggs with a fork when he comes back out.

He stops beside me, bending down to kiss my cheek again. "I have to go," he says, straightening as I turn to face him.

I jump up from the chair, grabbing hold of his tie and pulling him back. "What–" he begins, but I cut him off by kissing him right on the mouth. He still tastes of the bitter coffee, but I'm starting to get used it. It's not that bad, really.

"Goodbye kiss," I say, when I let go of him. I smooth his tie back down, fixing what I messed up. He is still staring at me, so I add, "Did you know, goodbye kisses in the morning raises one's efficiency in the workplace by about twenty to thirty percent?"

A smile comes across his face. "So you're doing this for the economy?"

"Mhm," I hum, trying to sound nonchalant.

He chuckles a little, and gives me a quick kiss on my forehead. "Bye. I'll see you tonight."

"Bye," I murmur, watching him leave. As the door closes behind him, I blow out a long burst of air. I have the whole day to myself again.

Now what?

I should re-embark on my job hunt, I know, but I need time to recover from that failed interview yesterday. Maybe I'll learn some basic Finnish first. Work on my vocabulary, my listening, so I won't mess up next time.

And I want to do something for Aksel. He's been taking care of me so much. It's time I give back a little too.

I'll cook dinner, I decide. I'll cook him something Finnish. To show my appreciation for his culture and for him.

I'm feeling better about the day stretching ahead of me, now that I have a plan. I finish up breakfast, do my dishes, and head into the bedroom in search of my laptop. I haven't been on it in a while, other than to send out some job applications earlier in the week. I find it lying on the end table in the bedroom and settle onto the bed with it.

To my absolute annoyance, the screen stays dark even after I jab at the power button. Great. The battery is dead. This always happens. I always leave things lying around and forget all about turning them off, so that the batteries are always dead when I need them.

Grumbling to myself, I get off the bed to look for the laptop charger. As I plug it in, I think to myself that it's a good thing the Finnish socket plug is the standard European round two-pin one. This is one less difference I need to worry about.

Once the little charging light on the laptop lights up, I turn to head back to the bed. I am a few steps away from the edge of the bed when I feel an opposing force pull me back. I look back and see that the charging cable is stretched taut. It is not long enough to reach the bed. I could probably sit on the floor, but that's not a comfortable position in which to surf the Internet.

Blowing out a frustrated breath, I leave the laptop on the floor next to the socket and head for the desktop computer sitting on the desk in the corner of the room. It's Aksel's, but he has told me I can use it if I need to. I have my laptop, so I haven't needed to use it, until now.

I power the computer on, twirling around in the swivel chair as I wait for it to boot up. When the start screen comes up, I automatically move to click on the top button in the second column to get to the desktop.

As it loads, my hand stills on the mouse.

Everything on the screen is in Finnish.

All right, I think to myself, at least there are icons here. I can recognise the icons. I move the mouse across the screen and click on the familiar icon of the Chrome browser pinned to the task bar at the bottom.

I open two tabs. I search for 'Finnish recipes' in one, and 'Finnish for beginners' in the other, both in German. I type without looking, my fingers tapping at the keys instinctively. Halfway through my second search, though, I realise that something is wrong. Instead of the letter 'Ü', what comes out when I press the key to the right of the letter 'P' is the letter 'Å'.

What the–

I look down and peer at the keyboard. Right. I should have known. The Finnish keyboard layout is different too. Not only is it a QWERTY keyboard, instead of the German QWERTZ keyboard that I'm used to, but there is also no 'Ü' key.

The Finnish language uses so many umlauts – don't they have an 'Ü'?

I sit back for a moment, scowling at the screen. I can't type properly on the Finnish keyboard, not unless I install the German language pack via the control panel. But everything is in Finnish, which makes navigation a huge pain. Besides, the computer is running on Windows 8, which means that to open the control panel, I need to search for it in the search bar, since the classic start menu no longer exists. And I have no idea what the Finnish word for 'control panel' is.

I should have asked Aksel to do it for me, I find myself thinking, before I shake my head hard, as if trying to shake that thought out of my head. It is becoming a bad habit, this over-reliance on Aksel.

Taking a deep breath, I put my hand back on the keyboard and delete the mysterious letter 'Å'. And then, instead of the letter 'Ü', I type in 'UE' as a substitute. It's fine, I tell myself. I can still type in German this way.

I scroll through the results for both my searches for a while, clicking on the links that seem more helpful than others. There are so many Finnish recipes available, but I'm trying to find something that will be simple to make, for which we have the ingredients. I look through the recipes and their accompanying photographs, feeling the saliva start to pool in my mouth. They all look delicious.

I eventually decide to start with one Finnish dish – a sweetened potato casserole, coupled with fish for the main course. We have potatoes and fish. I will have to check to see if we have all the ingredients needed, but I'm pretty sure we do.

That settled, I turn my attention to the websites I've turned up for learning basic Finnish. It's easy to learn a language on your own these days, with all the resources available on the Internet. But my problem with Finnish is not the lack of resources or exposure – I am living in Finland, after all – It is with the grammatical structure.

Finnish is the first of its kind, from the Finno-Ugric language family, that I've ever attempted to learn. My two other main languages, German and English, are both from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family and therefore completely different from Finnish. I've always been good at languages – a result of growing up in a multicultural family, I think. I've had to learn several languages growing up. I may not be very good at any of them, but I've always been able to make myself understood. But it's different with Finnish.

Finnish is... hard.

The Finnish language websites are starting to give me a headache, so I open a new tab to check my email. I type in my login details and hit the enter key without double-checking.

The page reloads, and a red box tells me that the email address or password is wrong. I squint at the fields, and see that there is an empty space where the 'at' symbol in my email address ought to be.

Oh, right. That symbol is also typed differently on a Finnish keyboard.

I close my eyes and breathe in slowly through my nose. It's just a tiny difference. It's no big deal. Slowly, I hold down the 'Alt Gr' key with my right hand, then press the number '2' key with my left. The swirly symbol pops up.

I'm going to have to remember that.

I stifle a sigh. Even the simplest things are turning out to be a hassle.

My phone lets out a loud chirp then, and I almost jump out of my skin. I've turned on the ringer after yesterday's fiasco, but I'm still not used to my phone making noises. It gets annoying after a while, especially if I receive too many messages in a row, something that happens a lot with messenger apps like WhatsApp.

Grabbing my phone, I check the screen and see that it's a message from Tatiana.

When I was still living in Germany, I didn't give much thought to where in Finland Tatiana lived. When I had decided to move to Helsinki to be with Aksel, I had assumed that I would be able to see Tatiana frequently, as well. But, as it turns out, she lives in Tampere, a city about three hours away by train from Helsinki. And my assumption that moving to Finland would somehow allow Tatiana and I to visit each other more frequently was shattered.

It's interesting, though, that we've managed to keep in touch over the past two years. She's the only friend I made in Edinburgh apart from Aksel, of course that I've stayed close to. We don't message that frequently anymore, but we still Skype occasionally. Even though the distance between us makes it difficult, we've managed to hold onto our friendship.

My heart leaps as I read the text message. Tatiana will be visiting Helsinki in a couple of days. I swipe to unlock my phone, and then my fingers are flying across the keyboard on-screen as I eagerly type out a reply. In a few days, I'll have another friend in Helsinki, someone other than Aksel that I know.

Finally.