orthohawk:

Merkuro:

orthohawk:

kaŝperanto:

In the last year or so I've been consistently active on these forums, and I've been listening to Esperanto music and audio lessons to work on my speaking/listening skills. I'm also reading "La Hobito: Tien kaj Reen", but the vocab level is quite high and I have little time so I'm only on the 2nd chapter. I was planning on attending the Somera Esperanto Studado in Russia this year, but due to recent circumstances I have decided against it. I plan to attend the SES in Slovakia next year, and possibly the JES for new years. I might try to do the Universala Kongreso as well if it doesn't overlap with the SES.

Have you thought about NASK? I've been wanting to attend for years; however, either not enough vacation time (it used to 3 whole weeks) or (more usually) not enough money.

Go to NASK!!! I went this year for the first time and it was amazing! I learned so much, everyone was lovely and now I can almost speak Esperanto fluently.

I had been studying Esperanto, off and on, for 4 years on my own, but the 8 days of NASK helped more than another year or two online.

Last I heard, the proposal is for next year in Detroit and the year after in Florida. They also have scholarships, so just ask if money's going to be the issue.

Detroit?? Cool! that's within driving distance, for both me and some others here.

Wow, that's only a 2.5 hour drive for me. If the UK overlaps or is too close to the SES I may do NASK instead. How diverse is the attendance at NASK compared to the other meetings?

With it being in Detroit I wonder if they'll rent full houses to each participant. ;P

And I have no money, so I'll never go anywhere. [*/me indulges in a little self-pity]

I have been at this for eight months. I was following an internet rabbit trail involving Wikipedia and Leonardo da Vinci, and came across the website of a guy who made a program to display text in boustrophedon (where the lines go in alternate directions). Well, in checking out the site, I found that he seemed to have a somewhat similar personality, and some of the same interests, as I did. But he was also really crazy about this weird "international language" thing, and I was like, "International language? What an insane idea!" But I was curious (I'm always curious), so I went to the site he linked to, which happened to be lernu!. Here I poked around a little, sort of curious, but not real interested, until I came upon the sentence that changed my life forever: "There are no irregular verbs!" And with that I was hooked, and have been more and more in love with Esperanto ever since! I count that as the moment when I became an Esperantist, even though I didn't know much, you could say I was a "komenconto" more than a "komencanto."

From that I started doing the courses; I did the first part of Ana Pana, and then did Bildoj kaj Demandoj, and then went back to Ana Pana, and after that did all the other courses more or less consecutively. I didn't finish La Puzlo Esperanto, because it was too tedious for me. And I'm still working on Kio Okazas?. After I finished all those courses, I asked my lingvohelpanto from Ana Pana, with whom I had maintained contact, what I should do next, and his advice was to use the language as much as I could. I read David Jordan's "Being Colloquial in Esperanto," which he recommended, and found it very helpful. And since then I've just been picking up whatever knowledge I can get, almost entirely online. I learned Christmas songs, read stuff on Vikipedio, and did whatever else I could to learn "how it's said in Esperanto." And then I did more active things like writing in my journal, on lang-8.com, and on my blog about essential oils. In doing this I found that I needed to look up a lot of words, so looking up words as I needed them, I've been gradually improving my vocabulary. I also like to do the exercises "from the picture dictionary" on this site, to learn words about various categories.

At this point I can communicate quite freely, but still need to improve my vocabulary. I practice speaking as much as I can, but have not had the opportunity to speak Esperanto with an Esperantist in real life.