I remember in the US trying to learn Spanish any way I could: talking to kitchen coworkers in the restaurant where I worked, listening to Spanish music, watching Spanish films, turning on Spanish subtitles on American films, trying to understand conversations I happen to hear in the grocery store, things of that nature. I really enjoyed feeling myself improving because it was something that I could control and allowed me to talk to more people. Plus, I considered it all part of my preparation for when I would study abroad my junior year. Now that I'm in Chile I'm seeing that my efforts have paid off. Even though I've only taken two years of Spanish, native speakers tell me that my level is about the same as my friends who have one more year of Spanish under their belts. Sometimes I'll be walking down the street and know all the words to a song being played in a restaurant because I listened to it a bunch in Seattle. In the US conversations with native Spanish speakers were a little harder to come by, and now my life filled with them to the point where I get a head ache from over-concentrating. Therefore, even when I feel really overwhelmed or just stupid, I try to remind myself how hard I worked in the US to seek out chances to learn Spanish.  I have the good fortune to be in Chile conjugating verbs wrong, slowly learning and relearning new vocabulary, and listening intently to conversations while not understanding everything. All of that goes under the definition of learning, and I am glad to be in a position where there are so many opportunities to improve my Spanish while making friendships with people that mean a lot to me. 

I have been looking forward to this day for quite some time. It is a religious holiday of some sort, which means no one has to go to work or classes. Therefore, Devin and I have special plans for his host family...We will be making an American feast of Mac n' Cheese (homemade, no orange dust will be a part of this operation), Caesar salad (I even bought anchovies to make the dressing fresh), and pumpkin pie (pumpkin pie puree does not exist so I had to buy a squash closely related to the pumpkin and and going to make it work). As you can see, it is no easy feat bringing homestyle cooking to Chile. There was only one kind of Cheddar cheese to buy and it was shipped from Australia and SUPER expensive but I figure it's worth it. After all,  I want this meal to be the best possible representation of something I would consume in the US so that I can share a little bit of my culture with a family that has opened up so much of their life to me. 

With the assistance of Devin, I'll be cooking for 6 people in his kitchen starting at 11am in the hopes of sitting down to eat eating a delicious lunch around 2. After that, Marcelo, Devin and I plan to watch about 4 Star Wars movies. We watched one last night, and have been talking about watching the whole collection for about a month now. Devin heads back to Oregon this Sunday night, so regrettably that doesn't leave much time for the three of us to hang out. It is interesting talking to people who are going back in less than a week. Of course they are excited for things like bagels, friends, family, and familiarity. However, a lot of them feel like they had just started to get used to their life here and now their leaving it. Four months goes fast, and I'm already thinking about how next semester will fly by faster than this one...Obviously, I can't stay in Chile forever. I still have my other life in Seattle that I truly do miss, but not enough to go back just yet. Ideally I could be able to combine the two somehow but due to linguistic and geographical reasons I see that as nearly impossible. I really want to make sure that I stay in contact with the great people I've met here so that I always have a second home to visit throughout my life.