Wednesday May 8, 2013 .... Day 5

Today was a very interesting day. We started our day at about 9:00 for a day of lectures with a worker from LAN, a Latin American airline company. His name was Jose and he was great. He was very interesting and kept the lecture fun. He taught us about the Chilean culture, business, politics, music, art, and how geography affects all of these. Chile was a pretty isolated country because a chain of mountains runs along the length of the country, making it more difficult for people to move in and out. This allowed certain parts of the culture to evolve much differently than its neighboring countries. Differences range from types of dancing such as the cueca and business practices such as trusting each other more easily. We took a break and got lunch at the school cafeteria. It is always really interesting going there because I cannot understand anything anyone is saying and not all of the students speak English. Finding a table where we can all sit together is near impossible but it does give us a few good laughs. After lunch, we had a few more lectures and then we were on our way back to the hotel. We had our small group meeting and then we went out to eat our favorite food here, empanadas. I have eaten so many empanadas since I have been here, it's probably pretty unhealthy. There are so many to choose from to. It is like going to a Peace-a-Pizza where you can order any kind of pizza you want. So far I haven't been to adventurous and have only eaten empanadas with chicken and cheese so I will still have to try more. Tomorrow we will have a company visit so it will be very interesting. This concludes my day.