5/8/13

Hola! Today we left at 8:30 to ride the public transportation to the University.  It’s always fun trying to squeeze our entire group on to those tiny buses. 400 pesos later we arrived at the University. Then we climbed a lot of stairs and went through lots of corridors to find the classroom that our lecture was in. It was a long stretch of lecture, but it was all vey interesting. First, we learned about the history of Chile. They had a very eventful past with all kinds of different governments, going from being native South American to a colony to gaining independence to being ruled by a dictator and finally to democracy. We then learned about the literature and geography of Chile. I found it very interesting how much the economy and culture was influenced so much by the location within the country. The economy of Chile is also based a lot on commodities because that is how it was set up colonial times and is still based heavily on that. Efforts, nowadays, however, are attempting to diversify the economy more. We then learned about Chilean art and tourism and finally the different drinks. Pisco with coke is one of the popular drinks in the country. After that, we went to lunch, which again, tasted terrible. The bread and juice was edible, however. After lunch, we came back to learn about Chilean culture and their norms.   A few things we learned was that Chileans were almost always late and that they get 8 months of maternity leave (much more than in the United States). We finished on Chilean natural disasters and music. The recent Chilean Earthquake was brought up and we learned how to protect ourselves from an earthquake. Coming back was very interesting because it was rush hour and the buses wouldn’t stop for us. We crammed all of us on an already full bus. Coming back we went to get empanadas. I got two, a shrimp and cheese one and a shellfish, both of which were very good! Until tomorrow…