THE PENNY IS DROPPING ...

I guess when you live in a country long enough there comes a moment when things suddenly start to make sense. I'm talking about the Thai language here, and this afternoon I was in a meeting with around 12 Thai colleagues and, whilst one of them was talking I realised that I can actually understand more that I thought.
I think my Thai vocabulary now extends to more than 200-300 words, and it seems that I am now able to fill in the gaps between the words I understand and the words I don't - and make some kind of sense of things.
This had to happen now - just eight days before I travel back to the UK for 10 days. I hope it's not going to take another six months to get back to where I am now in terms of the language.