We have started tying to learn some basic conversational Italian & Mandarin from each other cos we decided it's better this way to communicate with each other's parents and elders. When I say trying it's due to both our busy working commitment but we try to accomodate accordingly.
I must say to speak Italian is a mouthful and Mandarin for him isn't the easier due to tones. So I bought these little flash cards for him so in between some free time, I would flash these cards to him over our msn chat. He does have that little flair for language for a man, he doesn't fail to impress me.