Welcome to Chile! And what a welcome it has been! I finally got on the plane last night after being delayed about an hour because the crew was cleaning the place, and landed in Santiago this morning at about 8:30 a.m. I have to say that I was really scared to go through customs by myself, having never done it alone before, but everyone at the airport was really nice and helpful. I got through without any troubles and met Jo and Werner's cousin who drove us to the hotel. On the ride there, I got to see my first bit of Chile, and I tried to just take it all in. First of all, it is really cold and foggy. I know that it is almost wintertime here, but I guess I didn't really expect it to be this cold. I also didn't really expect to see some of the poor living conditions along the highway. Lastly, when we arrived in Vina Del Mar, the stray dogs were a bit of a shock. They follow people around but they don't really seem harmful at all. Even so, they are going to take a bit of getting used to.
Luckily, I got to come back to the hotel and take a shower before joining the rest of the group. The hotel is definitely a lot smaller and less extravagant than anything you would see in the United States but it has pretty much everything that we need. The maid was making my bed while I was in the room so I tried to use my very limited Spanish to speak with a her a little bit. I wanted to tell her that I had only ever taken one Spanish class but all I knew to say was "Tengo un classe de espanol" - I take one Spanish class. Oh well, at least I tried, and i guess I got the point across.
After getting ready, Jo and I took the bus to the University. I never appreciated how nice our bus system is in the U.S. Here the buses are small, rickety, and the fares are confusing. Luckily, Jo was there to help me out on my first bus ride. The university itself is absolutely beautiful. When you get off the bus and look up, you can see a really majestic building that sits on top of a cliff and looks over the ocean - that is the university. The cliff part also makes it a bit of a hike to get up there (and I thought Pitt was on a hill). I finally joined the group as their first lecture was about over. Apparently, I didn't really miss much in the first lecture - an hour and a half on the geography of Chile. I think everyone was very ready for the break, which happened right after I came in. I'm happy because everyone has been really nice about me coming in late and it hasn't been a problem at all that I missed the first day. After break, the woman who gave the morning lectures, Monica Kunstman, had another lecture for us, this time on famous authors of Chile and more on the geography. I had only ever heard of Pablo Neruda (whom I had known was something of a national hero) and Isabelle Allende, so it was interesting to find out about other famous writers from Chile. I will admit though, that the lectures were kind of boring. After Monica's lectures, another man named Manuel Madrid came in and lectured. I enjoyed more his lectures; he seemed very knowledgeable and showed us interesting facts about South American countries. Particularly interesting to me was the bit about corruption throughout South America. It was fascinating to see where different corrupt practices are and are not acceptable.
After lectures were over, we had a bit of a break before our Salsa lesson. Jo had told me on our ride from the airport that the students from the University are protesting the buses because there has been a rise in the fare. Tonight, the students were holding a riot - something in which we were all very interested but that the Chilean students though might put us in a bit of a dangerous position. They told us all about the protests and the riot and were more than happy to answer our questions about what was going on but they wanted to make sure that we stayed away from the riot itself. We were fine with this and stayed in a courtyard until we went to our Salsa lessons.
The lessons themselves were a lot of fun. Our teacher was a student at the University who was an amazing dancer and she was also really funny and a great teacher. It was hilarious to see us trying to follow all of her moves and we had a great time. In the middle of our lesson, Arturo (one of the Chilean students), came in the room and told us to immediately grab our stuff and follow him. We all knew that something had happened with the riots but in that moment, no one questioned him - we just grabbed our stuff and followed him, which meant literally running out of the school. Once outside, we had the chance to stop and find out what was happening. Apparently, the police had gone into the university in search of rioting students and it was a big deal because police hadn't been inside the university in a really long time. We had to run out because we would have been in a bad position if the police had come into the room and thought that we were part of the riots, it was better to avoid them all together. It was scary though - seeing the remains of the riot, running out of the building and seeing police lined up, and having our eyes water up because of the remaining pepper spray in the air. At the same time though, it was all very fascinating, especially considering that I am not sure if the students at Pitt would ever get behind a cause such as raised bus fares as much as these students have. It was probably one of the best glimpses that I have gotten into the Chilean culture so far.
Since the buses probably weren't safe to take (considering that the students were rioting the buses), we took the train back to the hotel and got ready to go out with the students from the university. Now that we are back at the hotel, i can say that it was quite an interesting first day in Chile and what a welcome it has been!
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