Languages

This post has been marinating for some time and I think it might be lengthy so, be prepared. I'm not exactly sure how it is going to go, but...here we go.
Yesterday we went to a Brazilian lunch with a bunch of the international students. At the table were 3 Americans, 3 Brazilians, 3 Finnish, 2 Germans, 2 people who have lived in various countries in their lives. I have to say, that as someone who can only speak one language fluently and can kind of speak another, Americans are WAY behind with respect to language abilities. (While I am no expert, I feel pretty comfortable saying Americans in general, sure there are many out there who can speak other languages, but in general, I think we're behind) Now I understand that these international students are probably only here because they have had extensive training in other languages, but it is still amazing to meet people who can literally go from speaking English fantastically to busting out Portuguese with the waiter and then speaking to the other person of their nationality at the table in their home language. There is one student who literally is fluent in German, English, Portuguese and French and can speak and understand Spanish, some Italian and is working on anything else that might come up. Of course languages are similar, so once you get one in the group, you can muddle through the others, but whoa.
My roommate asked one of the girls at the table, who can speak French, German, Swedish and a little bit of Dutch, what language she thinks in. She said she thinks in pictures. Interesting huh? I thought about it and I think in pictures a lot too, but not always.
I will have to say though, while I am not able to speak French that much, when I do start speaking it, I really do start thinking in it. Then I sometimes default to it and have to remind my self that some of the students don't speak French, so I need to speak English. It is a weird feeling having to pick which language to speak.
This of course got me thinking about the educational system for teaching languages in the States. I think I have decided that we can't effectively learn language in the states for many reasons. The major one being of course the mindset that everyone else in the world is learning English, so us learning other languages isn't vital to our survival. Other students need to learn English to compete in the world, but us? We get off easy because everyone is learning our language.
We also have the problem that we get to pick from the language we learn, but all of our friends are learning other languages. Sure I can take 6 years of French, but if my friends take Spanish and German, I can't really practice with them now can I? And, in all my years of French education at home, I was immersed in it in class, but after that, if I didn't look for it, it wasn't in my face to see. Makes the external stuff that isn't taught in class harder to learn. I don't know what the solution is really for kids from the states learning foreign languages. I don't think it will ever be as stressed as it is here, and I know that the general population of the States will not be hiring private tutors for their kids to go to each day to learn another language like many of the students here do to learn English. Kind of sad really that we are so limited, but maybe in 50 years everyone will speak the same language anyway, who knows.
I'm still jealous when I'm at dinner with people and they can bust out a language that no one else at the table can speak to talk to their friend from home. They have the ability to tell secrets and talk about people without them knowing. Americans have to get creative when we talk to eachother and we don't want other people to notice. That's when we bust out the slang and Americanisms. Ha. So take that.