Today was my first day of language exchange. At least, the way I envisioned language exchange. I am a huge fan of sites such as lang-8 and Livemocha (both sites I will discuss in greater detail later), it’s just I always imagined actually talking to someone in real-time instead of playing message tag. I wanted instant gratification, ya know?
It was definitely an awkward encounter at first, but by the end of our conversation (after about 2 hours), I knew a lot more about Japanese grammar, and I felt like I helped him understand more English. It felt particularly good to hear how surprised he was because my Japanese knowledge. I’m looking forward to continuing our talks once we get a more stable schedule set up. How many of you have had successful language exchanges, Japanese, English, Russian, whatever. I’d love to hear about them!