http://icfpcontest.org/
43th place, out of several hundred teams thats not bad. :) (teamname: pluk)
This year the contest was extra intresting for me because I decided to use Pluk instead of C# and in the end i never missed a thing from C#. The compiler needed some fixes and the library some extensions but nothing major.
Really using a language for 72 hours on a difficult challenge is the best way to learn I think.