How people realize they're finally learning something

For those of us who struggle or who have struggled to learn a foreign language, there (hopefully!) comes the time when we realize that, yes, we actually are learning something. For one person I know, that time comes when he successfully was able to make bus reservations in a Mexican town. For another, that time when someone realized that she could read the signs in stores without having to ask someone what they meant.
 
For me, it was when I started remembering what people had said to me in Spanish, rather than remembering my translation to English of what they said. And for a recent participant in our forum, it was when he or she found him- or herself conjugating irregular verbs correctly while talking to self. Join the conversation...