Ecce! Puella Romana!

I've always wanted to learn another language. I used to know a little Spanish, but those memories have long faded. In high school, I had this romantic idea that I could learn Latin and it would sound beautiful and poetic and everyone would be so impressed with my knowledge of this dead language. Much to my disappointment, I came to find out that the Latin taught nowadays is only written, not spoken. And it doesn't sound pretty when you pronounce a word out loud. And I was stuck in the extremely boring class for two years, wishing I had at least taken French or something. Since then, I've been a little hesitant to try my luck at learning another language. I had grown weary of being graded on how well I could conjugate a verb or how accurately I could translate a paragraph. I usually ended up with a couple sentences that didn't seem to go along with the picture next to it at all. I would end up with a story about a gladiator defeating the lions and the picture would be of a little Roman girl at the market. So, after a couple years, I've decided, once again, that I'm going to try to learn a new language. I went to the mall yesterday and circled the Rosetta Stone kiosk for several minutes and finally chose a language. My choice? Nope, not Spanish. Not even French or Italian. I chose Swahili. Now I know that sounds extremely obscure and, honestly, it really is kind of random, but I travel several times a year to Africa and I've always had this crazy fantasy of being able to speak with the native people there in their own language. Most tribes or different areas of Kenya and Uganda have their own language, but most people in the area can speak and understand Swahili, so that's why I chose it. Also, Swahili is the only African language Rosetta Stone produces. :)

I will continue to post my progress on mastering this foreign and exotic language! So far, I've only completed one lesson, but I actually did pretty well on it - I only missed a couple out of a long list of questions! If you ask me which one is the boy or the girl or the dog or the plane in Swahili, I could probably tell you which one is which...or point to the picture, since those words are kinda hard to pronounce :)