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.