Como es my accent?

Yo hablo espanol.

Or, at least, I used to be pretty confident I could speak Spanish. But as my departure for Peru creeps closer and closer, I find myself doubting my language abilities more and more.

Sure, I studied Spanish for four years in high school, and I’ve spent the last three semesters drilling grammar, culture and Latin American history into my head. I know Spain was conquered by los moros, that you use an “a” before people who are receiving actions and that you never conjugate two verbs in a row. Check.

But that was classroom Spanish. Can I be sure that it will hold up against the speed and rawness of real, South American Spanish?

So this summer I decided to take charge of my Spanish learning and raise my skills to the next level. I wanted to be able to practice Spanish with a native speaker so I could reassure myself I would be able to survive abroad.

But how is an Anglo-American girl from the Midwest supposed to master Spanish without some amigos latinos at her disposal?

Oh, I improvised.

I started watching films in Spanish. In two weeks I made it through the Latin American versions of the first five “Harry Potter” films, the entire fifth season of the Spanish version of “Lost” – “Perdidos” – and the better part of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy – “El Señor de los Anillos.”

But even after all my practice, I didn’t feel much more confident in my listening abilities. Barring a sci-fi film-related emergency, I didn’t feel like I would be able to communicate very well in Spanish.

So, I borrowed books from the library. Pablo Neruda poems, Gabriel García Márquez stories – anything that was Spanish I took. And I plowed through them all, my highlighter and diccionario in hand.

But still, what I couldn’t get enough of was practice speaking the language. I kept eating at Mexican restaurants trying to work up the courage to make small talk with the waiters without being pretentious or culturally insensitive, because ordering in Spanish at Chipotle can only get you so far.

Then, last week at the pool, I heard it for the first time in a long while: spoken Spanish. I turned and I saw an entire family walking up the slide hablar-ing in espanol. I couldn’t contain myself. This was my chance. After running through the most appropriate mistake-free phrases seven times in my head, I approached the family and introduced myself. The youngest boy, who looked about 7 years old, turned around and said, “Huh?”

I was taken aback by his confusion, but I regrouped and told him I studied Spanish in college and I wanted to practice.

I asked him how my accent sounded, and he just laughed. “OK,” he said to me in English and kept walking on his way to go down the slide.