I would love love Love to be able to converse in the language of a country I'm visiting, alas, I have absolutely No language skills
I do accents Quite well, pretty much any accent, once listened to (makes for interesting phone answering if I've been listening to someone's accented speaking for a bit) but the language gene skipped over me.
My dad seemed to be able to pick up languages quite easily (his time in Germany, China and India brought him home with languages and a dialect or two) He also spoke a wee bit of Irish, learned from his mom (mum).
I have an aunt that speaks 7 or so languages (in ADDITION to English, French, Spanish and Italian) And taught at the UN school for a while. I know, that's 11, but that's how she always explained it to me
I will always at the very least memorize the hello, thank you, please, goodbye, where are the bathrooms.
I love the idea of drawing a picture! That has to at least open the door to meeting new folks
I did try to learn Spanish during school, but coming from where I did, the only people I had to practice with were friends from the neighborhood.... so in class one day my Spanish teacher said to me "We speak Spanish in this classroom, Not Puerto Rican".
After that, I just zoned out in his classroom
I could pass the reading parts of the class and test, I just couldn't speak the language *sigh*