I have revived my duolingo habit, this time to learn French. I think it's going better because mr. cee speaks french, so I can ask him how to pronounce things and why this rule makes sense. and I learned enough that when I was a few minutes away from landing in Montreal international, I had cobbled together enough of my lessons so I could say

je desolee, je parles pas Français. J'etudiant français avec Duolingo; je suis un débutante.

which is actually a HECK of a lot more fluent than I imagined! I certainly couldn't figure out on the fly how to say that in Finnish...

unfortunately, not a single person spoke French anywhere in the airport while I was racing to make my connection to Newark.