Last week I found a useful online community website called Gumtree where you can post all kinds of messages. The site was originally just for London, but there are now local versions for many other cities in the UK, including Brighton, and other places around the world. One section that particularly caught my attention is called skills & language swop, where you can find language exchange partners.

I posted a message there and already three people have contacted me – one from Venezuela, one from Spain and one from Belgium. I met the Venezuelan today and we talked mainly in Spainish for about an hour – the longest conversation I’ve ever had in that language. I was able to express myself quite well, inspite of my sometimes muddled word order and dodgy grammar.

A similar community site with versions for even more cities and countries is Kijiji, which means village in Swahili apparently.