For Barán, the biggest cultural difference has been how much people care about others. She feels that the people in Benin are so much more interested in each other, and so much kinder than what she is used to in Finland, where, she admits, it often feels like people simply don’t care about others’ daily concerns such as flus, stressful life situations of funny everyday occurrences.

This November right before father’s day one of Finland’s best-known dad-joke comedians published a humor book that seemed to have the corny humor category especially in mind. Author Stan Saanila created a guide for pronouncing Finnish using words, slang and sounds that are familiar (and pronounceable!) to speakers of English.