I taught Koreans how to roll their r's; I can teach you

So there's this mime. She (he? --I think it's a woman but I'm not really sure) works on Gran Via, which is the main street that runs through the newer section of Bilbao. Except that she doesn't work, because she's always sitting or squatting right in front of some building with her back to everyone walking past, either smoking or putting make-up on top of the make-up she's already wearing. I can't decide if I think she's some kind of weird performance artist (but a different kind of weird than the kind of performance artist who becomes a mime) and that's her act, or if she's just the laziest mime ever.

Anyway. Usually when I'm traveling/writing I spend a lot of time walking around and thinking about things. The thoughts eventually converge (usually) to something vaguely coherent and then I write them down. Here, though, I spend most of my walking-around time forcing myself to think in Spanish, and those thoughts almost never converge to anything coherent. Sometimes I mutter the thoughts out loud under my breath, and sometimes, if I really don't feel like thinking Spanish thoughts, I practice rolling my r's. Both of which probably make me look a lot more ridiculous than a smoking mime. (I keep wanting to write monk instead of mime.) But I'm a lot more self-conscious about my gringo accent than I am about looking sillier than a mime on a smoke break.

A long time ago I met a Spanish guy who had to go to speech class as a kid because he couldn't roll his r's. He told me to practice saying vroom vroom ("Loud, like a motorcycle!") and that helped a little. Then later I went on a couple of awkwardish dates with an Ecuadorian who had lived in Seoul for a few years teaching Spanish. He told me to use the back of my throat, not to make noise but to make my tongue move more, and that helped a little, too. But I'm still not very good, so I practice.

I realize that my accent is the least of my problems with the Spanish language. People can understand the words I say; my communication disasters happen when I say the wrong words, or when I get flustered and then forget all the words, or when I get distracted by how nice some Basque boy's teeth are and forget to listen carefully for a bit and then don't know whether I'm agreeing to bear his children or turn out the lights when I'm done in the bathroom. None of which has a thing to do with my accent. But still, Spanish accents sound nice and gringo accents sound ugly (there's this woman in class who speaks Spanish with a super thick French accent and that sounds a little goofy, but it doesn't sound ugly) and sub-par r-rolling is part of the gringo accent. Vroom vroom.