Nu sunt toţi românii aşa... trebuie doar să găseşti pe cineva cu mai multă răbdare. Keep spirit! :)

At this point, when I try and practice, if it's a new encounter and I haven't established that I'm a foreigner yet, I try to see how far I can get before I inevitably have to reveal that fact. It's worked to various degrees, and then it's more subtle and there seems to be less stress on the person to parse their speech to accommodate for me. I actually fooled some Romanians into thinking I was Romanian for 5 minutes before I slipped up, and then after that they wouldn't believe me when I told them I was American lol. (They believed me however when I said I was from Russia, even though I don't speak Russian yet.) Of course, after it's revealed I am indeed foreign, they usually seem to have less inhibitions about speaking to me in Romanian first before they consciously switch to English, and I think this is better than immediately assuming the thought process of, "he's foreign, we're just going to have to speak English to him." But yeah, I'll usually see how far I can get before I have to reveal I'm foreign and then politely ask if we can practice Romanian.) Though I haven't visited Ukraine and Russia yet, I've heard they have a similar mental state to us Americans with expecting foreigners to speak the local language, which will be great for rapid progress in Russian. There are still plenty of people in those countries who will probably want to practice English, but I've heard it's a lot less than other countries in Europe (eg Romania, Germany, Sweden), and they will expect you to know a bare minimum in Russian.

Thanks Valeriu.)) Don't worry, it isn't leaving me with any permanent negative opinions too much, I did note in my answer that I don't hold this against anybody. This is probably just coming from my American mentality where if we have a foreigner here, we usually do expect them to speak English if they wish to interact and integrate with us, as it is the majority language here in the US (yes, I am aware we don't have an 'official' language). In this case, we usually expect them to speak to speak English and nothing else (as we usually don't speak anything else, much less Romanian XD). Going to Europe more or less showed me most countries don't seem to hold this opinion, depending on who you talk to. Everyone will expect you to know the language if you're living in the country for an extended period of time, but if you're a tourist, they seem more than happy to speak to you in English. It's a strange shift since we just speak our native language to everyone regardless of where they come from, in an indiscriminate manner. It seemed strange to me that more countries wouldn't hold this opinion. But that's just me )) It's also funny that you mention that I'd have more luck with younger Romanians for speaking. This is actually the majority demographic I talk to since I'm in that range. And most of their English is miles above my Romanian, so it will usually change to English unless they really believe they can have a convo with me in Romanian. The one who actually really pushed me to speak and converse with him was this 42yr old Romanian guy I met in a hostel. But usually when they change to English, they are nice about it, so I"m not putting it against them, but when it happens all the time, it just keeps on reinforcing the nagging doubt of, "why bother learning this?" in my mind. It's a small but persistent doubt that keeps on appearing in my mind even though I can look back and see that I am progressing where I can speak less and less in English.)