Thank you Stephanie for sharing this.

I have traveled to Japan, where I only speak a basic level or the language, and to Germany where I spoke none of the language. I never felt like people were making fun of me; however, I did feel a lot of pressure to learn the language from people around me. I was often too frustrated trying to make myself understood, and not knowing what was going on around me. In times where I was traveling by train alone, though, I was glad to be able to easily tune out the chatter around me and just read a book or something. It can unfortunately be a very isolating and lonely feeling to not be able to function even a little in the language especially in situations of emergency or necessity.