Let's Celebrate Learning French!

It's time to CELEBRATE This Week with Ruth Ayres from Discover. Play. Build.  Every week Ruth invites us to share our celebrations from the week and link up at her blog. What a fun way to reflect on everything there is to be thankful for. 

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This week I'm celebrating learning French!

*throws confetti*

I grew up speaking both English and Spanish. In middle school, I bought a sign language dictionary because it fascinated me. I ended up taking a sign language course when I was high school and that led me to working with students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Learning different languages has always been fun. 

I reread The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson last week and now I'm listening to Gayle Forman's Just One Day. In Just One Day, the main character finds herself on an adventure in Paris. The Devil in the White City mentions Gustave Eiffel and his world famous tower. 

Both of these books reminded me that I have long wanted to learn French. French is the next language that has caught my attention. Today I remembered that I downloaded the app Duolingo to my phone a while ago. I finally opened the app and logged in and chose French as the language I wanted to work on. 

Quickly, I found myself repeating the words on my screen and wanting to get the challenge right. As soon as I got home today, I couldn't wait to get back to my app. I love that it changes the style of question. It will give me a word in French and ask me to find the picture that matches the word, it might show me a sentence in English and ask me to type it in French, or it will let me listen to a sentence and then I have to repeat it and record myself saying it. If I do well, I earn jewels, if I make a mistake, I lose a heart. It's fun! I would love to someday take a real class and learn more about the ins and outs of the language but for now this is really fun and I'm definitely learning. 

I visited the Duolingo site and found that it was named an Apple App of the Year and Google Play's Best of the Best. It can help you learn Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portugese. I'll have to share an update of how I'm doing in a month or so! 

What are you celebrating this week?