One day my husband came home from work and told me a story about his co-worker trying to learn Italian because he wants to go Italy someday. I was like really? Is he taking a class? Jeff said no he belongs to this website called livemocha.com. So, generally I was curious about it and checked it out later that day. Once you go there, they had a video and go through what the site is all about. I decided to try it out and it is free. I picked Spanish because I took Spanish in school and figured I would learn this language.

I was impressed how many languages they had to offer. Also, a neat feature of this website is not only do you learn a new language; you get to chat to people from all over the world. And you can help others who are trying to learn your language. It’s a win-win situation. You learn a language, you can help others and you can talk to them using their chat feature in the site.

I got to chat with some people from Spain, Iraq, Africa and Russia but the most people that I chatted with are people from Brazil. If you didn’t know they speak Portuguese in Brazil. I made some connections with a few of people from Brazil. I even have three of them as Facebook friends. Even though it is neat to chat with them, I don’t really want to learn Portuguese. I am one foreign language person.

I met the coolest people but like everywhere you go on the internet there is always really horrible people. Yeah, I found them here too. I did have a scary stalker person. But Livemocha has a blocking system in place and you can write notes why you are blocking a person. So these horrible people and that stalker can’t find me on Livemocha’s website.

I have been on Livemocha for almost two years but later last year they changed their website completely. It was really confusing and some people had the new site and others had the old site. I feel they did a poor job of implementing the web change. I felt that they should have done WAY more testing before uploading it to any users. There were so many problems when they changed their website.

Because they did such a poor job of converting everyone and the hard time I had with the new site. I just stop going there. I no longer feel it’s worth my time or effort of being a Livemocha member. And not just the change of the site that made me not want to go there. I also decided I wanted to do something else with my time. So, partly the change of the website and a change of my mind that I no longer want to do this anymore however I do feel grateful to meet the people I did.

I also had something amazing happen to me on this website though. A woman contacted and asked me to be her American English teacher. To get this straight, almost everyone on that site has no training or has a degree in their own language. There is a place to say if you are teacher and have a degree but I am not one those people.

So I was taken back by this because like I said I have no degree in English. But I couldn’t miss this opportunity to help this person and potently meet a new friend. Now this is totally unlike me, I tend to shy away from these kinds of interactions because who knows who on the internet and I am not a social person. But like I said couldn’t pass the opportunity.

I am glad I said yes because this last April we will have been conversing for two years. Two years! Now I have a new friend from a different country which happens to be Russia. And I have to say I have been learning a lot more than I thought I would.