Learning opportunities and Lightborn

I have previously posted about some of the wonderful resources available through the library (link) and one of those is for learning foreign languages (I am trying to learn French) but I recently read about a different online program at Memrise.com which uses a gardening analogy for teaching a new language.  It is still in the beta stage for some things and I am not sure how many languages are available but it is quite interesting to work with.  It starts with the premise that new words are seeds and they gradually morph into plants that move into the greenhouse and out to the garden.  So far, I am much better at reading the French and translating into the English definition but much poorer at the reverse!   My biggest obstacle is the tendency to revert to the high school Spanish vocabulary that I am much more comfortable with but I do feel that I am making some progress.

I have also signed up for a writing class being taught by a favorite author, Linnea Sinclair.  I feel sadly out of place because as far as I can tell, the majority of participants are published authors and although I have the thrill of having seen a couple of my reviews on the cover of a book, my name is not cited...I am not in the same league as most of these people.  We started today and it was startling how much the first homework assignment panicked me. 

Now the question is, why did I take on both of these tasks at the same time?  I have French words swirling around in my brain which is fretting about learning how to refine my writing style and I also have to write reviews for five books due within the next four days!  Somehow, I don't think that I am going to get my other library books read before they are due.  Which brings me to Alison Sinclair's Lightborn, the sequel to Darkborn.  I enjoyed it immensely but was very disappointed to reach the end and relieved that I have the final book in the series (Shadowborn) to be reviewed in the near future.