Sobriety is Overrated!

Yesterday, Michele (of http://michelesmistakes.blogspot.com/ ) and her husband Ian drove up from Sandefjord for a visit. A few of my Norwegian friends stopped by too and soon we were all sitting around, drinking wine and talking. The conversation was mostly in English but we did flip flop between English and Norwegian. The funny thing is that I had many glasses of wine but I understood everything that was said in Norwegian, and I was able to speak without agonizing over every word. (I remember thinking to myself, in my tipsy state, "Holy crap, I'm keeping up with the conversation! Woo hoo!") I wonder if my biggest obstacles to fluency have been my embarrassment about my funny accent and grammar mistakes, and my constant worry that I might misunderstand what others were saying. The alcohol erased any shame or self-consciousness I had and I babbled away. Maybe if I had consumed a pre-norskkurs cocktail every day, I'd be talking like a native by now! (At the very least, it would have made all the goofy songs we had to sing a lot more amusing!)