In 347 more days, Julia and I are booking a trip to Mexico.

IF, that is, we meet our goal.

A while back, on a whim, I got the Duolingo app and started learning Spanish. Like a lot of folks, I took Spanish in high school. And, like most of those folks, I’d forgotten most of it. “Hola” and “uno, dos, tres. . .” was about as far as I could get.

The app makes it easy, though, and it didn’t take long before I could hold my own ordering lunch at Taqueria Morelia.

Now, you might not know this about Julia, but she can be highly competitive, and there was no way she was going to let me run around talking Spanish unless she could do the same. And, although she’ll deny it, she’s got just a touch of jealousy, and I’m sure she wanted to know exactly what I was saying to the cute waitress at Taqueria La Unica.

So the next thing I knew, she had Duolingo on her phone too, and we had a little competition going.

I’m not going to lie, y’all; she’s kicking my butt. The app is set up like a video game where you get points, and in half the time she’s earned twice as many as me.

Competitive, a touch jealous, and really smart.

That’s my girl.

And she had a great idea the other day. We’ll commit to doing Duolingo every day for one year and, if we make it, we’ll go to Mexico.

I agreed but added that we both have to put $30 in a jar every week between now and then to offset the expense. If either of us misses a day, we have to start over.

By the time we book the trip, there should be enough in the jar to cover a good portion of the cost.

So, yeah, we’re going to Mexico.

The only question is whether or not we’ll be going next fall or one of us drops the ball, and we don’t get to go until later.