In Grayland, where I lived as a kid, there were a lot of Finnish people there and I could talk to them in Finnish. (Sylvia speaks in Finnish). No one here (in the senior center) speaks Finnish, but I’d really like to meet some. My skills get a little rusty after awhile. I also read in Finnish.

My father used to read Finnish stories every night to my mother. I used to listen to those.

I went to school in Ocasta. That was the closest school to Grayland. They took us there in a big bus. The school was quite small.

In our family, it was just my sister and I. We worked very, very hard. My father had a house built so that we’d have a better house and we had before. I think he only paid about $49.00 for it. He had a bill by a local carpenter, who worked very cheaply.

My mother and father both spoke Finnish. My mother never learned to speak English very well but my father learned it because of his work.

I learned to speak Finnish by listening to them. (Sylvia speaks a few sentences of Finnish.) I said: “I speak good Finnish language; do you understand me?”

I’ve been back to Finland and visited some of my relatives. I saw the house where my father was born. My husband said that one of his linguist friends at the University of Washington said that Finnish was one of the most difficult languages to teach.

It was a Finnish community; there were lots of Finns there.