Our First Full Day !!!

Today is our first full day here in Chile! I have already had a lot of fun last night and at Pitt the day before, and today was even better! We got to see the University of Santa Maria during our tour of the campus. The university is located atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The whole university was founded by a generous donation from a local wealthy Chilean who wanted to promote engineering in Chile. The campus is beautiful; most of the buildings are very old and remind me of the Cathedral of Learning at Pitt. We also met a few of the local students who are going to be with us for our time here in Chile. After the tour, we headed down into one of the classrooms and were given a lecture about the business culture and climate of many South American countries. I thought the lecture was interesting, however, it could have presented a little better. After the lecture, we headed down to their one and only cafeteria on campus. There must have been nearly a thousand students waiting in line to get in. It took us a decent amount of time to get our food. Anyways, after the lunch we got onto the bus and were given a tour of Valparaiso. The city is located right next to Vina Del Mar, which is where we are staying. You literally cross a street and you’re in the other town. It’s essentially one big city divided in the middle. The tour was amazing, I always enjoy visiting new areas and learning about how it was created and its history. The tour was going great until I nearly died! We rode an incline up to the top of a mountain to take pictures and shop at some local stores. However, this nearly ended badly for me. There is a rickety old wooden door in the back of the car that you get in and out of, and me, being the smart person I am, was standing right next to it. Then, as we were passing the other incline on our way up, the car jerked. Everyone was tossed a little and I flew back against the door and I felt it bend back. If I would have hit it even a bit harder, it would have opened, and I would have fallen down the whole mountain! But that didn’t happen and I survived that near death experience. After the tour, we went back to the University to have our first dancing lessons. We all learned how to dance Salsa, and it was really enjoyable. The only bad part was that we were doing these lessons in a courtyard and there were a lot of local students who were watching and laughing at us during the lesson, but they were really fun! Now I’m back at the wonderful Hotel America writing my blog and later tonight some of the Chilean students are going to take us out!