Would you like some incompetence with that?

There is a small park in the centre of the shopping precinct in my neighbourhood and it was in this park where I could be seen loitering around like a rapist, arguing with myself whether I was going to speak Swedish or not.

Eventually I won the argument and decided to go into a restaurant and make my reservation in Swedish. As I started speaking the very-Swedish-looking girl behind the counter gave me a strange smirk but spoke back to me in the mother tongue. In fact, the rest of the conversation (as brief as it was) transcribed in Swedish and just as I was about to walk out of the restaurant, chest puffed out with a new found sense of confidence that I may have just pulled off Swedish without sounding like a tourist, the lass called out after me to confirm the time - in English. Chest deflating like an old balloon. Shoulders slowly creak back up into hunch-mode.

I know I should stop investing so much psychic energy into desperately attempting to hide my 'exotic' identity but it's really quite difficult. You walk out of SFI thinking you are a god - only to clash with the real world which greets you with a hard smack on the cheek. 

My best mate once told me that the best way to learn a language is to learn, understand and speak it in your own accent and once general grammar and vocabulary have been mastered to focus on proper pronunciation and the like. But it's hard! I'm impatient and a control freak and not knowing the language of the country I'm living in makes me feel like I don't have a proper grasp of an aspect in my life.