Verbal Mishaps

While I was away on my trip, some of the empty rooms in my kos (boarding house) filled up and I returned to a much more lively and interesting living environment.  The new additions are all Indonesian and most are around my age and fun to talk to, eat dinner with and just hang out and participate in Indonesians’ favorite home activity- watching TV.  This development has also been a boon to my Indonesian skills as it expands the contexts in which I speak casually.  I was noticing that my vocabulary leans heavily towards political and development issues.  I could talk for ages about women's health, defending human rights, the plights of migrant workers, government transparency, and a new writing project is set to make me conversational in conflict resolution and community peacebuilding issues.  But I still get stumped when it comes to discussing household issues.  Hence my newest idea: sticky notes around my room labeling everything from curtains to drawers to faucets.  I am committed to balancing my language skills!

However, I fear this is becoming a detriment to my English again.  Friday night I was out at dinner with some American friends and feeling on the spot in the conversation found myself scrambling for the English word that means happening again and again.  The word that came out of my mouth: repetuous.  A couple minutes later I realized to my extreme embarrassment that I meant repetitive, not exactly what you would consider a challenging word.  I am hoping that verbal mishaps like this remain a rare occurrence as I try to maintain some language agility in while devoting myself to learning Indonesian.