Spanish was my major in college. I taught high school and middle school Spanish for a while, but most of my experience was teaching English to adult English language learners. The vast majority of them had Spanish as their native language. They were from all over Latin America - Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Peru. One was Italian and had lived in Germany for a while. I guess that two languages, Italian and German, were his limit. He had a very hard time with English and kept putting Italian and German words and phrases into his English. One woman was Portuguese and her husband was Dutch.
Several of my students became personal friends after their classes were finished. They were homesick and a large group of them became each other's "family" away from home, with Spanish as a common denominator, despite the differences in accents, idioms, and some words. I was the "honorary Mexican" because they made up the largest number in the group and my vocabulary was more Mexican than any other form of Spanish.
We got together as a group for Christmas and birthdays, and in summer for picnics, plus other occasions like children's graduations, weddings, etc. Their church had mass in Spanish and a few times I went with them to a church event. One time the priest (from Colombia) asked me where I was from because my Spanish sounded "authentic" to him but he could not place the accent. I said, "Soy la gringa del grupo. Soy de Pennsylvania."
We have drifted apart over the years. Children are grown. Some people were transferred to other places in their jobs. A few have passed away. But at one point, we numbered about 30, plus spouses or boyfriends and children. When we went out for dinner (without the children) we took up 2 banquet tables, jabbering away in English, Spanish, and Spanglish.
There were some hilarious moments of misunderstanding, using a wrong word or phrase, them in English and me in Spanish. And some funny moments when they learned English words for things. For example, we had dinner at a Mexican friend's house who invited a newcomer from Mexico whose English was very limited at the time. The dessert was angel food cake. The newcomer said it was delicious and asked what it was called. She thought we were putting her on when we said angel food. So the hostess, also Mexican, pulled a devil's food cake mix out of the cupboard and told her that there is devil's food in America, too, but only for bad people. The look on the newcomer's face was priceless.
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