Today was our first day on the Chile Plus3 trip. We met last night in Atlanta, and traveled together on a 10 hour plane ride to Santiago. I met 2 very friendly Chileans on the airplane; Luis who works with Catapillar, and Pablo who works with Humano. Luis sat next to me and we talked about Chilean mining and various aspects of Chilean culture and language. I asked him about the proper way to greet people in Chile: Men meet men with a handshake, and men meet women with a kiss on the cheek.
We landed in Santiago early in the morning, right after a beautiful sunrise amidst a lot of fog. We exchanged our money at a 460:1 ratio, and then loaded onto the bus. I slept on the bus because I did not sleep much on the plane.
We got to the Hotel Americas in Vina del Mar around lunch time and moved into our rooms. They were very interesting and nice, but my room had a broken toilet so we were graciously moved to a new room.
We had lunch together at a sandwich and hotdog shop, it was delicious and expensive, but the food was huge.
We walked around town and went into a market where I bought my baby brother a toy for his birthday, the price was very reasonable.
We broke into groups, some stayed at the hotel and my group of 5 people went shopping in town. We saw many shops and a few parks; it was very fun and the town is beautiful.
We had dinner with the leader of the University here - Werner Kristjanpoller, he is a very nice man. We had Mexican food, and the restraunt played American music for us.
After dinner we had ice-cream together, and discussed the efficiency of the restraunt's ordering system.
Lessons learned: 1.Chileans are very friendly and nice.
2. Food comes in very large portions.
3. The dollar does not have a very inflated purchaseing power in Chile.
4. Many doors do not have springs.
5. There are many dogs in Chile.
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