Monte Alban

I'm following the tour guide's Spanish as well as I can when he asks me, "Entiendes?'
I reply, "Mas o menos."
"No," he says, laughing, "I asked 'where are you from?' De donde vienes?"
If only he'd spoken into my good right ear instead of the bad left one, this would have been a question I would have understood. But now it's too late. When the tour guide says, in Spanish, that he can speak to me in English, "Puedo hablar contigo in Ingles," or something similar, I understand him perfectly, but immediately five young Mexican tourists yell at me in heavily enunciated English, "He can speak to you in English!"
"Gracias," I reply.