It's strange...one of the reasons why I took Spanish was because I thought, I work so closely with Maria and she's completely fluent in Spanish, so she'd be able to help me out a ton with whatever questions I had. The thing is...when I ask her questions, I get the feeling that she is quite impatient or not really very willing to help me because her answers are normally quite short and curt. She does answer all of them, but when I say something in Spanish to her, the first thing she normally says is, 'HUH??' like I'm completely idiotic and she can't even TRY to figure out what I just said. My pronunciation is not atrocious, because you start to get the hang of it after a while (and I did get an A- for pronunciation in the very first Spanish oral OF MY ENTIRE LIFE(!)), but I always feel like she is treating me like she simply cannot understand what I'm saying and has to have me repeat it like at least 2 or 3 times or spell out every word before she goes, 'OHHHHH -insert the exact thing I said, in a Colombian accent-'.

Of course it's always easier to be irritated about something when I'm not on the receiving end of these questions, but I like to think that if someone was learning Chinese (Mandarin), I would be excited for the person and similarly, be excited when he/she asked me questions and actually take time out to answer them and explain it. I'm not INCREDIBLY fluent, but I would still be happy that the person wanted to learn it and appreciative of the fact that it is extremely difficult to learn a new language from scratch.

So my point is, if you are a true friend, you will love me for my "Cómo se dice..."s and preguntas.
The End.