Jon Christensen

In a year of holding on tightly—white knuckling at times—to the theme of becoming better people by learning the language and traditions of another culture, London was a break. We got to relax. What a privilege it is to be able to walk into a building without planning what to say or considering whether your foreignness is important. And the places we went in London got me really thinking about the places where we feel at home, the places where we’re permitted, and the places where we’re not allowed.

This year in Spain, it is one of my top goals to improve my Spanish so that communicating doesn’t feel so hard. I started learning Spanish in 2008 living for a honeymoon year in Uruguay with Kelly. I got to a level where I could communicate, but I still couldn’t understand native speakers talking animatedly in groups. Every newspaper article had words I didn’t know, and movie dialog was nearly impossible. Since then, my Spanish has been in maintenance mode at best.

Damp from standing in the Copenhagen rain to get my lunch, and sweaty from wearing a wool sport jacket, I wasn’t entirely comfortable sitting in breakout room number one. I was at Nordic Fintech Week watching a panel discussion about how to work towards a “Big Vision” of the future within fintech. The speakers on the panel were successful, composed, intelligent, and assumed the audience shared their understanding of the market.