Wow, what an experience that must have been! During my speaking language test at the end of DLI, one of the testers was from Chile. I spent the 30 minutes right before the test (while waiting for my turn) praying: "Please not, Chile, Argentina, or El Salvador..." and then I walked in and as soon as they introduced themselves, of course I had testers from all three locations testing me! :o) One of the questions they asked was 'If you were visiting Chile and you were driving around the country in an RV and got stopped by the local police who had never seen an RV before, describe everything inside the RV' At that time, it was not an unreasonable question :o)



>I lived in Chile for two years (78-80) and spoke Spanish everyday to people there. I was once very fluent, but haven't used it much since and forgotten most of it.
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>>I can read it better than speak it now, because immersion was 17 years ago. I try to practice and my daughter it learning Spanish now so that helps somewhat. There are a LOT of native Spanish speakers in this area (military base) so now that I am back around base, there is more opportunity to practice. I find the Puerto Ricans are more easily understood than Mexicans in general once you get past the speed with which they speak! I think Chileans are the MOST difficult to understand :o)