sorry no english

I heard before that in US some people dont speak english and they adapt well for living. At first it was quite surprise for me, how come people doesnt speak english there....? I cant imagine to be one of them living abroad without knowing its language. Dont you think it is kind of insecurity? How do they deal with only english spoken people for their daily life? I still remember my Indonesian friend after just moved in there for few months told me a story how it was so hard for her to understand how to pay electric bill of her apartment. She repeated to listen to answer machine many times to understand the instructions. Her english is fine in fact but for some reason to deal with real english native spoken apparently is a bit different.
It happened to me until now (shame on me!), especially for conversation on the phone, sometimes i need to ask the other person on the phone to repeat what did they say. At first few months it was even worse and made me feel lack of confidence when i engaged conversation with my husband family and i could not get the words correctly. I missed many words during conversation and it embarassed me. There were times when i let them told me a story and i was just stuck there without being able to ask them the missing word for me because i didnt want to disturb the flow of it.Unfortunately they were too excited, it was going on and on loong story.....so even if have moment to ask the words, it would be too much. Poor them, they just wasted time and energy.
Well i learnt more about accent and slank words. It was easier to read a book in english and to discuss or to listen to the lecturer speak english in indonesia because their accent is indonesian. But here........believe me, it's different.
Now after a year i have been "tortured" to always speak their language, i am improving much better. Before it was alwyas hesitant for me to make a phone call because i didnt want to feel bad after i speak with them because of my fluency. Actually i did good on the phone, even one of them were surprised to know that i moved in here only for few months (i hope she didnt lie to me). Well i took it as compliment to motivate me to practice more often. Voila......now i have no problem with making phone call!
So again i can't imagine how to be a person without speaking english here.....Must be felt terrible sometimes.
Then i found weird situation when i was in Florida, mostly they dont speak english! In the bus, mall, store, restaurant they speak strange language i dont understand. What the hell is going on...? Is it still America? A guy with uniform approached me at Wendy's and started to speak his language while i was looking for the handle for paper towel. I just looked at him with confused expression, then he pulled down the handle for me. Ohh....apparently he was trying to explain how to do that. "Thank you sir..." i said. He didnt reply and just left me. I saw him talk with his friend and sometimes laughed together. My friend told me that it was spanish, becoming main language there.
Then i started to think......how will it be like if bahasa as main language here?
Asyik kali ya serasa di kampung halaman setiap saat?! Terus nanti ada papan di pinggir jalan tertulis "tambal ban tubeles" atau "Warung Makan Pak Dirjo".

*Happy Sumpah Pemuda!

see you next posting!