Proudest moment of the week: (!!!)

One of the Paras at my school is from Oaxaca. On Tuesday she came into my room and said she had some questions about how I'd gotten my teaching license in order to work in a Minnesota public school. Teachers here have to be licensed by the state, however, in my case I have a Community Expert license since I've spent several years in Spanish-speaking countries and was granted temporary status as a Spanish immersion teacher. 

I danced like this in my head when
 she said she thought I was Mexicana.

I told her about my situation and, confused, she said, "But you're from Mexico, aren't you?"

Thrilllll!!!!!!

You have no idea how happy this makes me (!!!) because hello, I don't look Mexican, and I obviously never said I was from there. Do you know what this means, people? It means she thought my Spanish sounded Mexican!!! 

It's not that I think Mexico has the best accent, but losing a non-native-speaker accent is not easy and not even something I was really striving for because I thought it was pretty much not achievable. I started learning Spanish too late in my life, and didn't have any kind of handle of it until I studied in Ecuador at age 22. And by handle I mean not much. I spoke English to my local friends down there and they spoke Spanish to me, so I really mainly had passive skills. And think about Arnold Schwarzenegger (why is his last name in the spell check dictionary and not marked as wrong?). He's still got an accent and he's been living here for the last 45 years! I Googled.

Toot toot. Tootin' my horn thank you very much.