It’s been three months, and I’m still going strong in my quest to learn Spanish this year. It’s been fun learning words and phrases, even though most of them feel a little useless at times. I’m not sure how often I’ll need to tell someone “El museo es cerrado” (“The museum is closed”). But hey, you need a foundation of some kind, right?
To be honest, the most fun part of this journey has been doing it with friends and family. At the end of December I “recruited” people to join me in learning a language. Kari and Mom agreed. Pepper, Kyra, and Kaitlyn signed up. Even Alex decided to join us, although he’s absolutely fluent in the language. Brandon and Marie. Katie was a late addition to the group (mid-February) but has already put a ton of lessons under her belt. Each week we’re randomly assigned to “friend quests” where we have to accomplish something with the help of a friend. Pepper seems to get quests like “Complete 10 lessons”, while I end up with “Get a perfect score on 30 lessons”. All in all, though, the “gamification” of learning a language has proven to be a blast.
Marie and I have been jockeying for position for a couple months now. For whatever reason, we seem to do the same amount of work in the app, so our experience points (XP) are always right around one another. As a result, I often get notifications like this:
So of course I have to jump back into the app and do a few lessons to build up my XP. Then she gets a notification and busts out a few lessons. On and on it goes. It’s become a running joke between us. The good news: both of us are learning a lot as we compete for those XP.
I also have my eye on Mom and Kyra, who aren’t far behind. Pretty soon I’m going to be seeing multiple notifications a day about how I’m a slacker and need to do more.
Yo necesito muy XP!