It is Friday May 20 11:20 pm. I am up in the air over Peru headed back to Atlanta. Our time in Chile has expired and we now return to the States. We got about 7 hrs left till we tap down. I have a lot of time on my hands at this point. So today we all went to lunch together for the last time. I was kind of surprised that that was our only visit to that restaurant seeing as how we’d gone to other places several times. Anyway, the food was good, it was a beautiful day out, and before we knew it, it was time to go. We got to the airport around 4:45 pm and I have no clue what we were waiting on to check in but for some reason the line wasn’t open. The reasoning for this escapes me even to this minute. Once we got to the gate, we had plenty of time to sit and think… some of us completed our surveys we got prior to going on the trip. Others made jokes and looked at photos. Some even managed to do both in all of the 2 hours we had to spare!

Boarding the plane was a blast like usual. Boarding time was 7:05 and we didn’t get on till about 7:30. Lovely. Departure time was 8 and we didn’t take off till about 8:30. Even more lovely. I find it funny that nothing happens on time in Chile. I mean you’d think maybe a handful of things and people would be late, but it’s the whole country. Always approximately 30 min late. Never early and never on time. That’s just how things work here. No big deal right? Back to the plane ride, they showed “The Tourist” starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. I’d seen it once before in theaters with a certain special someone, but today it was in Spanish. It was good practice for me to improve my fluency. Now they are playing another movie that I’m not too interested in watching so I think it’s about that time to catch some zzzzzzzzz’s.

It’s Thursday May 19^th 5:45 pm. I like to call today activities day. I got a late start this morning. I ended up waking up around 11 am, which gave me an hour to get ready to be in the lobby at noon to head to the University of Santa Maria. I finally got to shower in water that was above moderate temperature with the help of a roommate. On the one hand, it was about time, but on the other it’s like “way to wait till the last day to figure it out Ry.” Anyway, we went to the University for the final time and listened to the experiences of a student named Stephanie who is from Belgium studying in Chile. I admired the fact that she spoke French, Spanish, and English. When I see things like that, I feel motivated to learn a second language because it could be quite helpful later on. Then we ate lunch at the University. My favorite part today was the bread which was quite tasty. We had an interesting conversation with a student at the table about career plans and such. It wasn’t the whole group this time, just the three of us who were at the table.

Then we left and went to go play soccer. We initially played country vs. country but that turned out to not be such a good idea seeing as how one side had been playing the game since they were kids and the other side had rookies. So we did a bit of mixing up teams and still gave one side a greater number of players. Now we had a game on our hands (how sad right?) Closely following soccer we went right into basketball. Now, you already know who would have won that game country vs. country. So we did a bit more mixing up and the game was pretty good once again. Today was a good day of exercise. Now here am back at the hotel doing what I do: relaxing, listening to music, Skyping, and blogging for my readers like usual. Tonight is our last night here, so you already know we are going in like a set of keys. I have had the time of my life here and the end is approaching, but I’m going to do me till it’s over. We are headed to eat pizza around 8 and afterwards to some club, not sure which one until we get there.

It’s Wednesday May 18^th 9:53 pm. Today was quite a long day to say the least. Out the hotel at 8 am and back at 7 pm. We went on our final company visit to Bolsa Comercio. Basically what it is is the Santiago Stock Exchange. It consists of buyers and sellers of stocks with third-party brokers who also are investors of stocks themselves. It was unfortunate that the floor where the transactions take place was closed due to construction. So we were only there for about 30-45 minutes. We then went ahead and decided to tour Santiago until lunch. We had a number of groups of students who wanted to take pictures with us. So we took Hollywood pictures for about 15 minutes straight and then left. We went into a museum afterwards and saw other student groups who were learning the same things we were learning. They took a similar route on their tours that we took and saw the same exhibits. My favorite part was the panorama of the old city of Santiago. But after that, we went to lunch and I had some combination of food that I probably won’t order together again. Not to say that the food was bad, it just didn’t work well together.

Anyway, closely following lunch, we went to the top of the nearest mountain, and we saw some beautiful views. The city of Santiago is quite big in fact. It is closed in on the eastern boarder by the Andes Mountains. I also found out, that Santiago is home to about 7 million people which is roughly 1/3 of Chile’s entire population. I even learned about which classes of people live in which regions of the city. We hiked the mountain to its highest point, and got as good a view that we could get. I got a chance to purchase a new type of ice cream that supposedly is new to the US. I heard it came out about a month ago, but also heard it has been popular in Chile for about 15 years now. But I thought it was pretty good. We soon left there, and got back on the bus for another hour bus ride to the hotel. We got back and decided that it was time for dinner. So we ordered two XL pizzas and called it a day. Then somehow when we got back to the hotel, my two roommates and I were locked out of our room for about an hour and then some. The key sat right on the table and we tried every which way to try and get in without busting the door down. Finally we were able to get the window open enough for someone to reach in with a pair of tongs and pull the key out. It was beautiful teamwork. From this day forward, we will make a conscious effort to make sure that the key is in our possession before the door gets closed b/c this is certainly not the first time this has happened. After having successful breaking into our own room, we decided that tonight was a good night to celebrate, although I’m sure we would have celebrated anyway, with or without the key.

Tuesday May 17^th. Today was another day of relaxation. We had to be up and ready to go around 10 am. We went to a spa that had several different pools to swim in, but all pools were a tad bit cold and required a swimming cap which cost money, except for the pool indoors, which we weren’t even supposed to be in. But we were there anyway and my boy and I had a nice little nap under the heat lamps. We waited about a half an hour for the lady to get off her lunch break so we could get our massages. But we slept 45 min overtime and she still never returned. So we had to accept the fact that we weren’t getting the massages that we had waited on day. Some of the group continued to pursue their tanning project while others ate ice cream and empanadas. This was a very nice place to vacation at. There were a total of more or less 7 pools that could hold quite a large number of people if it came down to that. This was quite a beautiful place to be in after a long horseback riding day yesterday. I must admit that I had different expectations of this place today but it’s not like it the place disappointed me. The lunch that we had was quite delicious. One other student and I even came up with a new and tasty drink called…. Well you’ll have to speak to one of us in detail about the ingredients so we don’t give away our ideas.

But after the long stay at the spa, we returned to the hotel. I got some sleep before we went out to Werner’s (professor at University of Santa Maria) place to eat a well-deserved barbeque. We did a lot of dancing at his place and even got to play some games that would normally not be acceptable. But the event was quite fun. The Chilean students taught us some of their traditional dances and we taught them some classic United States dances as well. When we came back to the hotel afterwards, most of us prepared to go out for the night while others decided to take a rain check. Either way, those who went out and partied had a good time as well as those who decided to call it a night I’m sure.  

It’s Monday May 16 6:32 pm. We woke up and had to be in the lobby at 9:30 am. We had one item on the agenda for the whole day and that was horseback riding. I hadn’t done it before today but I’m sure I will do it again one day. We rode over a wide variety of landscapes. We have plenty of pictures to show for today’s adventures through the dark and ominous forests, the hot and open deserts, and the windy beautiful beaches. Horseback riding reminded a bit of the movie Avatar in the sense that the horses weren’t machines that we controlled, but animals that we had to cooperate with so we could both make the best of the experience. We had to become one with our animals, or it would have been a long and gruesome voyage.

Like anything else, it took a bit of getting used to, especially for beginners and first-timers such as myself. But once I got a hang of things, I was ready to ride like the wind. I had a nice little black stallion. Black horse, black jacket, all black everything. The toughest ground to get through was going uphill in the sand because his hooves kept sliding and sinking. The only way to make it was to sprint. Me and horse Bovice almost knocked some heads off. I had to tame the breed for a second. At our pit stop in the shade halfway through, I had the best pineapple ever. How do I know? Because I didn’t like any pineapple I’ve ever had in the past. Riding on the beach was so smooth and relaxing and beautiful that I almost didn’t want to leave. But my horse had a tendency to run when other horses ran and I wasn’t complaining.

Afterwards we had some delicious barbeque. We sat outside in company of very generous hosts and a beautiful house with 14 cats! Several people had ideas of spending the night here, but we couldn’t take advantage like that. We came back to the hotel after we finished and then went to get ice cream and we watched the sunset right on the water’s edge. Today was a great day for Facebook profile pictures as you may see from the changes made by others in the group. Now we sit in the hotel once again, waiting for the night. Party time.   

It’s Sunday May 15, 2011 10:13 pm. We had another smooth day today. No plans until 6 pm dinner at quite a classy and elegant restaurant. But to start the day, I didn’t wake up until 2 pm. Late night last night I know. I woke up to only two other students being here while everyone else went either to the mall or to church or to both. The three of us were quite hungry and went down the street to find some food. There were two stores that seemed appealing, but we weren’t sure if we wanted to eat there, so we decided to leave and come back at a later time. We went instead to the flea market to buy some souvenirs. We stayed for about an hour and then went back to one of the stores that we visited earlier. The first time around, one of the waiters tried to get us to stay and we said we’d be back… Now that we were back, he decided that he wasn’t letting let us escape a second time. The first time he even came from around the back and spoke to us in English to try and make a connection. This time, he asked us to take a seat and he would serve us personally. We had no choice to but to respect his business tactics to make his paper. We sat down and placed our orders. He began to make conversation by asking where we were from and what we were studying. He even began telling us about himself and making jokes, etc. From a business perspective he definitely did his job of attracting customers, but it’s not like we didn’t know what he was doing. Anyway, the food was good and we left and came back to the hotel.

Not even an hour later, it was time to go to dinner at a place called Tierra de Fuego. It sat right on the beach’s edge with a beautiful view. As mentioned earlier, it was quite classy and professional. We all came in well dressed and had heads turning left and right (plus we are foreigners, so that didn’t hurt). We ended up staying about 2-3 hours and had one of our greatest dinners of the trip. We even managed to get a group picture on the walk back to top the night off.

ts Saturday May 14, 2011 9:57 pm. Today was quite a relaxing day. We have partied (or at least gone out of the hotel) every night this week. It was a well-deserved break for all of us. The only thing on the agenda for the day was attending the soccer game. But to start things off, most of us didn’t wake up till 11 or noon. I woke up at 10:30 am and got ready to go get cash with another student. But I think Chilean people time is sinking in because we didn’t go until about an hour after when we planned to make the trip. But anyway, we finally did go and when we came back, everyone was up and hungry. So we all decided to go to a restaurant that the two of us saw on the way back from the money exchange. After that we had about 3 hrs until the game. We watched all types of movies and shows in English and Spanish along with YouTube and World Star Hip-Hop videos. Comedy, comedy, comedy… and more comedy all day.

Soon after that, we left for the soccer game, which was about 20 walking minutes away from the hotel. Soccer truly is the world’s favorite sport (not including the US). The fans were on their feet screaming and chanting and singing and beating on drums all game. They shot off flares prior to the start and waved flags around everywhere. I’d say it was quite intense to say the least. We didn’t know who exactly to root for so we played it safe and rooted for whoever the crowd around us was cheering for. The food at the game was pretty good, especially considering it was cheap. Most sporting events in the US overprice their goods instead of under pricing them. I feel that since there was only one seller and tons of buyers, they basically were a monopoly and would have been much better off if they had just raised the price a little bit. But it is what it is. Now we are back at the hotel and I believe it’s about that time once again. It has come to be quite a routine for us these days. I shall return tomorrow.

Friday May 13. 9:36 pm….. That doesn’t sound good already. So you know today we had some bad luck. Well not exactly because today might have been the funniest days of 2011. It was just full of all kinds of inside jokes. We really had too much time on the bus, there and back. But back to the bad luck, we woke up early and had to meet at 9:15 am to go visit Isla Negra, a place about an hour and a half from our hotel. We didn’t actually leave until about 9:40 am, arrived around 11:15 am and we were 5 hours early. How about that for business etiquette and punctuality. So instead of going back and returning later because it would be a gas guzzler, we toured the area we were in and had thousands of funny comments during the ride. We went and visited a famous poet’s tomb in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea what the poet’s name is. After that we went to lunch for about 2 hours. We might actually have made it to CNN Chile because someone came in and starting holding a camera to the whole group as we ate. When we left here, we went and saw the world’s largest pool; 1000 yards wide, 115 ft at its deepest, covers 20 acres, and holds 66 million gallons of H2O. It was very near the coastline and we happened to get some good pictures.

4:30 pm came around and we went to the house of a second poet by the name of Pablo Neruda. He lived during the early 20^th century, so his house was old-fashioned, but quite nice. It was designed like a ship in some rooms and he was interested in statues. I wouldn’t mind seeing the view that he saw every sunset.

Following the house visit, we went back to University of Santa Maria and had our final reggae ton lesson. It seemed rather short, but it was fun. We are now back in the hotel, it’s Friday night, so I think you know what time it is…. Toodles.

Thursday May 12. We didn’t have any classes today, but we had two company visits: first to Vina Indomita and then to LAN Airlines. Vina Indomita is the company that my group did. Translated into English, Vina Indomita means untamed vineyard or untamed winery. I believe Vina had one of the best views of the entire trip, with its natural valleys and lagoons. Vina was born in 2001 and has two main locations: one in Maipo Valley and the other in Casablanca. We took a tour of the place and learned some good things about the company. Vina has differentiated itself in the marketplace from a business perspective by building a restaurant on top of its cellar and in front of the bodega. It has become quite a tourist attraction. Engineers are necessary to make the place more resistant to earthquakes and figuring out which temperatures the grapes need to be at which points during production to produce the best possible wines. We even had the opportunity to do some wine tasting. Not a bad way to start the day. We had three different wines to try out. Some were better than others but none of them tasted terrible. We had lunch between the two visits. We ate at a cool place designed and structured like a cabin but also comfortable. Then we went to LAN Airlines and had a chance to go out to the hanger and board one of the nicest planes I’ve ever seen. Seats reclined back, had reading lights, plenty of leg room, etc. It took a lot of work from engineers to design such an elegant plane. After LAN, we went back to the hotel and had a handful of free time until dinner. I watched some TV and wanted to get some blogging done but couldn’t because the website was down. After dinner (which was quite scrumptious by the way) we went to another party and didn’t come back until about 2 and stayed up until about 4.

It's May 11. 9:37 pm. We woke up and had to leave at 9:15 am. Normally we would go straight to the University of Santa Maria, but today we went on a company visit to lower  a company called Bosque, which is a manufacturer of mushrooms (possibly the only current manufacturer. A new company is supposed to enter the industry in 2 weeks, which would cause Bosque to lower their prices in order to try and be the low-cost suppliers. We walked through the entire factory and saw the routes that a mushroom would take to become a mushroom. We saw the manure that gets heated and cooled; we saw how the mushroom grows in the manure and sprouts up; we saw the pickers harvesting them; we saw how the mushrooms are stored in crates in different temperatures at different growth phases; how they are packaged, how they are canned, the whole nine yards. That was quite an adventure. Then our next company visit was to the number one tomato-producing company in Chile called Centauro. It is a family-owned company, and we met the great grandson who owns it now. I found it impressive that Centauro packaged their tomato sauce and their tomato paste and everything else they produced in both plastic cans and metallic cans. Cans make the food last longer but plastic is cheaper and doesnt give off a metallic taste once it is opened and eaten. Unfortunately for us, we came at the wrong time of year because for Chile, May is the beginning of the fall time and that is the time when crops don't grow as well. Chile is below the eqauator, and so their Spring is our Fall. As a result, we werent able to stay on the tour as long as we would've wanted to. But we learned much about the company regardless of how long we stayed.
dAfter that we all went to lunch and had empanadas. Quite delicious they were. Following that beautiful lunch we went back to the Unicersity and had lectures on the earthquakes that greatly impacted Chile and its music. The footage of the earthquakes were quite disturbing and intimidating and made me appreciate how fortunate I am to not have had to live through such catastrophic events. After the lecture, we went back to dancig classes. Today we practiced salsa agian, same as Monday. That was quite a fun experience. Following that, we went back to partying hard. The Chilean students don't have class tomorrow, so one of the girls decided to have an apartment party and that might have been the most fun yet. I'm off to bed now. I'll be back tomorrow.

Monday May 10. Today was a late day. We had a comparatively late start today as we woke up and had to be ready to leave at 10:15 am. We partied hard so that was quite fortunate for us. We went back to the University, the same place we went to yesterday. We had a lecture on the history of Chile. It was intended to be a brief overview on all of Latin America, with a focus on Chile in particular. We went to lunch after the first lecture, unlike last time, when we had lecture, a 5 minute break, and then another lecture. After lunch, but before lecture #2, we went to the computer lab, where we had to wait for a Chilean student to get us access to the Internet. It was somewhat difficult to adapt to the different setup of the Chilean keyboard. In most waays it was similar but to a regular keyboard but there were some key differences that got in the way. We discovered that the second lecture was going to be a bit longer than we expected it to be when our professor skipped about 70 slides, felt our anxiety and restlessness, and decided to turn the lecture less formal and more conversational. We found out much information about his personal life. Other than the fact that he is very fluent in both Spanish and English, he has done quite a bit of traveling. He is a very smart individual and he inspired me to try and learn Spanish.
After the second lecture, we had group presentations about companies that we will go and visit during our trip here in Chile. These are presentations that we have done before so it wasnt too bad. Then after the presentations we went to reggeaton class and had quite an interesting experience. According to one of my classmates, during the lessons, "the girls lost and the guys won. The girls got owned." After dancing, we came back to the hotel, went to get some food and went out again. Closely following that, we returned to the hotel and I came back to write for my readers.

Monday, May 9. We woke up very early. Had breakfast and left for the University. It was a very busy day for us because we left early in the morning and came back late at night. The University sits on a plateau, if you will, right on the beach with a beautiful view. It isnt the warmest of places to be right now because although in the US, where Spring is coming on strong, fall and winter are fast approaching in Chile below the equator.
We had quite a humble and warm welcoming from University staff and faculty before we began lecture, which included a tour of the campus. The professor's name was Jose Cortes. He sometimes went by the nickname Mimo. Why? I don't really know, but I went along. We talked about the geography, tourism, history, and literature of Chile and made some comparisons to those of the US. Something I found interesting that I never thought about before is that Chile is very narrow but very long. Its length runs north and south which means it has all the types of weather one could imagine, which has a very big impact on the tourism industries that each region of Chile is capapble of. As for the history, Chile had similar problems with the Spaniards in terms gaining its freedom as the US did with the British, although the Spaniards were a bit more brutal in their tactics.
After the two 2-hr lectures, we went to the cafeteria and had lunch with the rest of the Chilean students. It got awkward at times sitting with a group of people who all spoke in a different tongue than us. It made me want to become more fluent in the language.
After lunch, we went on a tour of Valparaiso and learned alot of new things. There were some beautiful sights and we took some great pictures. It will be interesting to see how I am supposed to get these pictures from my phone to somehwere more mobile. We had time to hit the flee market and purchase souvenirs and the rest. We would have made the tour longer, but one of the roads was closed off. We ate once more and went back to the University at 6:30 pm or so for our last class of the day: reggeaton. That wasnt too bad and I actually learned a couple moves. Im looking forward to going back to that class and learning some more as the trip continues.

It’s May 8, 2011 10:17 pm ET. We have been in Chile for a full day now. Chile has to have some of the highest mountains around because we when were flying at an altitude of 10,000 feet, the Andes Mountains were level with the plane. I have never seen that before today. The weather was quite peculiar when we first landed as well. The forecast was for 70s or 80s when we got what felt like 30s and 40s. There was heavy fog at that and we could see our breath in the airport! This usually isn’t a good sign but we were fine. It eventually warmed up as the day progressed.

Before we took off from the Santiago to Valparaiso, we all exchanged about $50-100 USD into pesos for spending purposes. The exchange rate was about $1 = 460 pesos minus some additional service fees, which means when you give up $90 in exchange for 40,710 pesos, you tend to feel like you are balling for a bit. One the bus ride to Valparaiso, there wasn’t much to see but mountains and farms. The hotel wasn’t quite typical Americans are accustomed to, but that’s part of the international experience. We went to eat at a local hamburger spot and practiced using Spanish for the first time on the trip. Afterwards we visited some other local stores and came across some humorous characters: a man in a nice royal blue suit playing music, doing bubbles, and selling candy; and further ahead we ran into a man suited up as the Night crawler, dancing in the street and looking for donations.

We couldn’t believe the number of stray dogs we saw. The number of stray dogs in Chile approximately equaled the number of leash-less squirrels in the US. They were lying around everywhere. One of them even decided to follow us all the way from the park to the sands of the beach. We named him Sergio. Sergio had our backs the whole time he was with us. He tried to get physical with one of the nearby bikers and a couple horses trotting the streets. That was pure comedy people.

Dinner led us to a comparatively Americanized restaurant called Peppers. It had an English name, it played American music from the 70s and 80s, and the menu contained English. We got some dessert at a nearby ice cream place and left quickly because the cold was starting to sink in.

After a long day of exploring we return to the rooms to rest for an early day tomorrow. It is unfortunate that my cell phone isn’t working. I can’t call or text anyone at this time. But don’t worry: I am safe and sound and fully-functioning. It would be a good idea to get my international plan checked out ASAP. I end here tonight and begin anew tomorrow.

Sat May 7. A whole day of traveling took place. I didnt go to sleep the night before because I was up all night packing. I was excited for my trip to South America. I had been looking forward to it for quite some time. I would have one flight from LAX to ATL for 4.5 hours and another one from ATL to Santiago for 9.5 hours. I would be in the air all day basically. That wasn't the fun part. I was simply waiting for the day we tapped down and began the voyage. Everyone flew in from different places around the country but I met up with the group in Atlanta and we all left together. Fortunately I got plenty of sleep on the first flight, but not so fortunate for the second flight. It was somewhat more comfortable in the sense that it was a bigger plane and had a bit more leg room. We were even provided with a blanket and a pillow, which didn't help much. It was still appreciated though. The food wasn't bad either. I always seemed to wake up at the right time to order a drink or some food. But I couldnt always go back to sleep. Or if I did, it wasnt for very long. I heard stories from colleagues of mine who sat in other sections of the plane that people were loud and fighting and it was freezing and the whole nine yards. Meanwhile I sat in the back where it was calm and..... normal.

It's May 6, 2011 7:19pm PT. I'm sitting in my room watching the NBA Playoffs and preparing for my departure to the Republic of Chile in the am. I'm kind of excited to embark on this 2-week journey that will be an experience of a lifetime. I'm disappointed that my Lakers are down 2-0 to the Dallas Mavericks, but it's all good because Dallas has shown in the past that they can certainly lose such a lead. I'm also testing Skype on a couple different machines to make sure it works before I go international. Still have a bit of packing to do, but that is ok. I have all night for that. I can sleep on the 9-hr flight from ATL to Santiago. I'm looking forward to this trip and have been for a while now. We have done projects on different companies that we will be going to visit, we have questions ready to ask of professionals on the company visits. Hopefully, we get the opportunity to travel and sight-see while we are there.

There are definitely some things I have learned about Chileans that I plan to incorporate into my life style. Knowing that I am on someone else's turf, I should be mindful of their rules and regulations. It would be wise for me to not draw attention to myself as I am a foreigner that could be taken advantage of. Not only that, but also with the recent death of Bin Laden, many countries are not on good terms with Americans. So this is only further motivation to be cool. But, to stay positive, I know right from wrong and I plan on making the best of this trip while it lasts. I probably won't get this opportunity again.