Back in February of this year some friends challenged me to learn their language, which is Haitian Creole (kreyòl ayisyen). I speak English with a smattering of German, but no Romance languages. I had no idea where to start, but they pointed me to another app. So I started lessons at the beginning of March and began to learn some words and phrases. But it wasn't clicking. How would I learn to *speak* kreyòl? I didn't want to just keep pestering my friends, so I looked for online support and found this site. I was nervous. Would my limited language skills be so terrible that I'd embarrass myself? Would they listen to my terrible accent and grimace that I was wrecking their beautiful language? Well, none of that happened! My new teacher and I hit it off. We started by using a curriculum that took me step by step through grammar and vocabulary. I gradually increased my lessons from a half hour to forty-five minutes and up to an hour. By the end of May we began simply having conversations before the grammar lessons. And today we talked about food, the weather, jobs, and family, and we told jokes and just had a great time. Almost fifty minutes of just speaking and listening and thinking in kreyòl! I'm so so super pleased by how much my teacher has helped me pick up this language. There's no way I'm going to be mistaken for a native speaker. At least not yet. But I intend to do my best to go deep into this language. Because not only can I begin speaking now to my friends in their language, I've made so many more new ones to disk kreyòl with. In gaining new friends over learned so much more about the people and the nation of Haiti. And perhaps that is one of the best things about learning a new language!