I'm embarrassed to admit I'm a one language (English obviously:) guy. It was easy to work around this limitation during past (albeit brief) international leisure travel; however, traveling around the world for 9 months brings a fresh perspective. For example, while planning my trip, I've called multiple countries where English is not their first language; it would have been tremendously helpful to understand even a little of the native language. Also, I'll be traveling to rural areas in Japan, Korea, and SE Asia where most people do not understand English; this may turn out to be a good thing as it will force me to learn other languages (i.e., sink or swim:).
Anticipating this trip, I took a couple of Japanese language lessons this summer and hope to continue lessons when I arrive. At 59, I'm not expecting to be multilingual in 9 months:) but I do intend to start addressing my current language limitation in a serious way.
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