First Day of Class

Today we had breakfast at 7:30AM and we left from our hotel at 8:30AM.  We took a city bus to the Universidad Téchnica Federico Santa María for a guided tour of the university.  After the tour, we attended a lecture about the Chilean economy and government.  I was chosen to give our professor a thank you gift for taking time out of his schedule to talk to us.  After our lecture we got lunch in the university cafeteria.  It was a very different experience than having lunch at Pitt.  It felt like I was a freshman in high school on the first day of school because I didn't know where to sit.  I eventually ended up sitting with a friend from my group and a bunch of Chilean students.  It was interesting to observe how all of the Chilean students interacted with each other at lunch.  After lunch, we went on a city tour of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar.  The highlights of the tour were an incline that we took to the top of the city and a runner from Australia that has been running 33 miles each day for a month and he will continue to do this for another month for cancer awareness.  It was incredible that we were able to meet this runner by chance.  After our city tour we went for a snack and got empanadas.  I had two chicken and cheese empanadas and they were awesome.  I will probably be eating mostly empanadas the rest of the time on our stay.  After this snack we went back to the university for salsa lessons.  At first I was a little timid about the salsa because I have never danced like that before.  Our instructor was very good though and I feel like all of us picked up the basics very quickly.  At the end of out lesson we were all dancing the basics of the salsa pretty well.  Next week we will have our second salsa lesson and that one will be more advanced.  I'm looking forward to what tomorrow will bring.  We will be visiting the stock exchange and taking a tour of Santiago.  Talk to you all tomorrow!