On my accent in Spanish: I sound weird. First, I have rather a high, nasal voice, which actually makes me pretty easy to understand because it's easier to hear high tones than low ones. That's just my own way of talking, though. Second, I have a fairly strong Kansas-Texas accent, noticeable if you're from one of the Coasts. Third, people from Texas and Kansas and that general area often cannot distinguish, before a nasal, between the "short I" sound or mid-high front unrounded vowel(pin, bin, etc.) and the "short E" sound or mid-low front unrounded vowel (pen, Ben, etc.) I pronounce them all the same, with the short I. This makes my English just a little weird, and it carries over into my Spanish since I didn't really learn good Spanish until I was about 22 or 23. It's impossible to get rid of an accent when you learn a language that late in life unless you have an unusually fine ear and an unusually good ability to mimic. I have neither. The only convincing accent I can do is of someone who's a bigger redneck than I am. This all means, combined with my fluency and fast talking, that it takes these folks a couple of minutes of listening to my voice to catch on. Damn. Wish I was better at this. Oh, well, can't change it, so no point in worrying about it.