Language Olympics

Living in a foreign country, and speaking a foreign language, is like running a race.  One with hurdles.  You start off hitting every hurdle.  You're making conversation - not particularly sparkling or witty conversation, but you're keeping up.  Then something happens.  Someone uses a new expression or makes a play on words or uses a word in charentais, or is talking to fast or too quietly.  But OK, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, either figuring out what the word means or saying to yourself laisse-tomber.  However at this point, all the other runners are way ahead of you and it's twice as hard to keep up with a conversation you missed half of because you were trying to puzzle out the meaning of the first half.

I'm the one on the right.

 That's when I usually start smiling and nodding until there's a new subject, which works really well in a group situation, but often in a one-on-one situation I'll get called out for my glazed expression. "Did you understand?"  Uh...quoi?

What makes it worse sometimes is that unless I'm with a close friend or a bilingual person, I don't ask for something to be repeated more than twice before I either guess at the answer or smile and nod.  If it's a yes or no question, so much the better, because you have a 50/50 chance of getting the answer right. *
*You also have a 50/50 chance of telling the dude at the foyer that you have a token for the washing machine, then returning 2 minutes later to admit that you didn't know what the word for "token" meant and no, you don't have one.  But hey, win some/lose some.