Morenita Soy Yo

A conversation, in Spanish, translated to English.

“Where are you from?” ~Tico Fella

“I’m from the U.S.” ~Yours Truly

“You’re from the U.S.? Then why are you morena (brown)?” ~T.F.

“My mother is from Mexico. And I tanned.” ~Y.T.

Get asked a lot why I look like a Tica.  I actually like feeling like I can relate to the people here and say: “Yes, I too am Latina.”  But then again, people sometimes follow with a: “Why don’t you know Spanish?”  So, I’m not fluent (close, but not quite).  Still in the conversational level where I may get flustered when speaking about completely new things, and my accent is obviously a bit gringa-like.  I’m workin’ on it.  So then I have to go into the spiel about why my mother never taught me Spanish (she grew up in south Texas when kids got punished for speaking Spanish in school and she wanted to make sure our English was pristine, etc. etc.). 

Because of my accent (and huge backpack), people figure out I am not Tica.  But they sometimes do not figure out I’m from the U.S. either. Sometimes I call hostels, and when they see me, they say that they thought they were speaking to someone from Japan.  And yesterday, someone thought I was French.  Don’t ask, because I have no idea.

Score for being a multi-cultural chameleon!  Now, only if I could adopt a Brit accent (a goal of mine, you might say).