The longer I'm back home in the US, the more acclimated I become. I've noticed myself gradually falling back into my normal routine. Things that had become so foreign in Chile, are now normal, just a they were before I left. But my biggest fear in returning, my biggest fear as a Spanish major, is losing my Spanish.It's been a challenge. I went from speaking Spanish everyday with very few conversations in Spanish, to using my language skills very little, only using them as a "party trick" so to speak. I try to watch movies in Spanish, listen to podcasts, go over materials that I used in my classes in Chile, but I know that forgetting things I've learned, my skills not being as sharp as they once were, is going to happen.
Before I left, I watched movies in Spanish and was constantly overwhelmed by how quickly they actors spoke, how different more complex, stem changing, forever difficult to conjugate verbs and tenses were used in place of verbs that meant the same thing. Watching those movies again, I'm amazed at how much more I know, at how much easier it is to understand, how I can hear bits and pieces of Chile in their voices, phrases that I heard over and over again from my host family, teachers, and friends.
My grammar class in Chile busted my tail, over and over again. When I thought I had found my footing and I thought I was starting to understand, our teacher drug the rug out from under us and throw us another curve ball. BUT, I learned so much. It's unreal how things that I was learning in that class, tied into conversations I had outside of school, with my host family, with locales, with anyone really.
Being home is a challenge, I not only want to maintain my Spanish, I want to improve it.
No olividar nunca.