And we're back...

So I was all set to tell you about yesterday's events when Blogger decided it had other ideas.

For a while, I could read my blog but not post to it. Then I couldn't even read it. Then I could read it again, but it ate my post from Wednesday.

Finally we are back...whatever those "maintenance issues" were must have been doozies!

Yesterday, we got a chance to meet an Estonian diplomat who is part of the Transatlantic Diplomatic Fellows program. He will spend nearly a year working alongside our folks for nearly a year before taking up his assignment at the Estonian embassy here in D.C.

To say he is impressive would be an understatement. Your Estonian word for the day, is in fact, impressive: muljetavaldav. Also impressive is actually being able to pronounce it.

Anyway, like me, he seems to have done a bit of everything, and unlike me, he speaks quite a few languages WELL. Estonian is not his native language, but you would never know it. His Estonian is perfect. Really perfect. Even our teacher said so, and she'd know. He actually wanted to teach Estonian at one point...yes, that good at it.

So of course what do you do when you meet someone that impressive. If you are me, you stammer. You understand most everything he said and lose the ability to respond at all. And when you do force out something, you are several minutes behind the conversation, you make mistakes you know better than to make, and you get so frustrated you let your really talented classmate do all the talking.

I have come to the conclusion, after thinking about it a lot, that a big part of my problem is self confidence. I usually have it. Lately I haven't. Some of that I suppose could be the distraction of trying to figure out how my wife and I can actually move at the same time, and not feeling like I am succeeding at protecting my family. And that distraction, which doesn't make for good studying, then also affects my performance. And so I have gone from someone who has always believed she was a good language learner to someone who feels like an idiot. This happened to me before...in algebra. It took a year for me to get back on track, and I still don't think of myself as being good at math even though I actually know I'm not bad at it.

So do me a favor, if you see my self confidence laying around, could you return it to me? That lack of it is really screwing me big time. And I don't have a year to get back on track.