Personal Effort

I think I've mentioned before that most people I meet and befriend here are quite a bit younger than I. This could be because the area I live in is home to many young working folks and university students. It could also be because I am simply older than most people in the world. In any case, I got to thinking this morning about these young folks I've met over the last nine years and a commonality that struck me is that they have all gone from speaking no English at all to speaking English rather effectively. This is quite different from the United States, isn't it, where most people are still monolingual. Of course, one could say that there is no need in America, as everyone speaks English, but that is not true anymore. More impressive yet, to me anyway, is that these young folks have learned not from schooling but simply from the application of their own desire to learn--through interaction, through self-guided study. They are a clever people, are the Indonesians, and an industrious one, and all they have to go on generally is their own ambition and effort.