I know what orange juice and cinnamon are in Norwegian, at least

The language barrier has been a weird thing in my time here. On the one hand, I've never really been in a situation where I've been unable to communicate with someone or had to use hand gestures or anything, since so many people speak English here. On the other hand, sitting on a train or in a restaurant and not understanding anything that's going on around me has been a bit disorienting. It's almost tiring to spend so much time unaware of what your surroundings mean. In the U.S.A., airports are still confusing but because all the signs around me are in English I'm able to go about figuring out where I should go and so on. But the airports and train stations in Norway, and the rest of Europe for that matter, become a lot more intimidating because of having to guess at what things mean. This mostly doesn't matter, because I can pretty much always ask someone where I should be, and also because there's nice universal symbols for bathroom and exit and those types of words. It's more of a psychological problem, the feeling of never having complete control. It's something that I guess I took for granted back home, or maybe didn't realize that I have, but the ability to understand written instructions or menus or maps at a glance is pretty wonderful. The flipside of that, though, is that it's kind of nice not to have to understand all the personal or mundane conversations behind you on a train. And it's a little bit funny to let someone talk to me for a few seconds before I stop them and let them know that I've wasted their time for the last 10 seconds while they tried to talk to me. This is especially great when somebody makes what's obviously supposed to be a joke and I laugh to play along. It gets kind of awkward if they follow that up, though. I just feel like such a failure among the people here, especially the international students, none of whom know less than like 4 languages it seems like. Some of the students knew English as their 3rd language and were getting by in the class. This is something I've felt on my previous shorter trips to Europe, too, but it's a little more deeply ingrained than I knew. For example, when I was doing my field study, I think every person I met with asked what other languages I knew, as if that was just a given, and I said Spanish but really I don't have any fluency with it. I just don't see the incentive of learning a foreign language (besides the inherent learning value) when it seems so obvious to me now that English is really becoming, to an extent, a universal language. Of course it's a good thing to be able to communicate with people in the language that they're most comfortable with, but as a student or a tourist like I've been it isn't necessary or expected. I've been continually impressed when somebody comes up, asks a question in Norwegian, I say "Sorry" and they continue to ask "Do you have a lighter?" without even pausing. Having to engage with people in their language is a great learning experience, and it simply hasn't happened since I've been here. Meanwhile, all these Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Germans, and Dutch have had that experience of interacting with me in my language. I just wonder if us Americans have missed a chance as all of Europe seems to pick up English. Granted, my experience has been limited, and I know there's places outside of the tourism/commercial industry where one can really be in a foreign place in terms of language. I just mean that, in general, there's less necessity and fewer opportunities to have to learn a language and use it. I don't know if this makes us dumber or somehow less complete, but it was always something I thought I'd have to deal with in a study away experience and that hasn't been the case. Maybe Spain or Chile or something next time, then. So with one week left, I will continue speaking my English. Actually, this last week will not be nearly as boring as I had anticipated earlier. Plenty of activities lined up, and the final goodbyes are starting to happen. As potentially depressing as that is, it's been fun while it lasted and it's important to be able to say that. It doesn't hurt that I do feel ready to be back home as well.