Orientation 1

I got up early in the morning to get ready for the day I would start orientation. I checked out of the hotel around 8am and I needed to be at my other hotel for orientation at 9am. I hauled all of my bags out to the curb where I hailed a taxi. At first the taxi had no idea where I was going. He started talking to other taxis at the stop lights and finally someone knew where my hotel was, so off we went to the hotel.

On the way the Taxi driver and I talked about.... you guessed it politics. He informed me that Chile will have municipal elections during my semester abroad. It will be a neat experience to see what campaigns in Chile are like to compare them to the long, drawn out ones that we have in the US.

The taxi driver dropped me off at my hotel and inside I found a guy who was also waiting for the orientation. A few minutes later two other guys and a girl showed up. We were suppose to meet at 9am, but the hotel staff informed us that there were some problems with the airplane and the rest of the group was going to be late. They invited us to eat the breakfast that they had prepared for us. It was quite nice, much like the eastern European breakfasts I had in January of 2007 for my j-term in eastern Europe.

We chilled out in the hotel until they staff said our rooms were ready. I shared a room with Terrance, a student at Columbia University who lives around Chicago. Our room was huge and very nice! The hotel was four stars. I don't know if it was COPA's (Cooperating Programs in the Americas, the program I am studying with) idea to try and ease us in to the Chilean culture, but the hotel was very nice. The rooms were $180 a night, so that gives you an idea of how this hotel was.

After the entire group got to the hotel, we sat down and ate lunch. And what a lunch it was. It was absolutely wonderful and the food was excellent.

Lunch passed, and we had our first session where we were introduced to the program, the students, the staff, and a little about Santiago. In my program there are students from all over the US. The colleges represented include: Carelton, Macalester, University of Virginia, Emory, Northwestern, Wellsley,Gustavus, Columbia, Bates, and Amherst.

It is interesting to note the times that we ate meals in Chile. Breakfast was around 8-9am everyday, lunch was usually served around 1:30pm, and dinner was served around 8pm. These times all were a little later then we tend to eat in the US, so when food came around, we were all very hungry.

We ate dinner this night at 8pm. Again, the food was so very good and the dessert was great. The dessert was a play off of tres leches or three milks. Actually, Johanna, the bakery chef at St. Thomas' North Campus in St. Paul made something like this for the students last year. (A side note, when I worked at the Cafeteria on campus, my favorite part of the day was talking to Johanna. Whether it was 7am or noon, Johanna always had a good story to tell and a new amazing treat for me to try. I highly suggest becoming friends with Johanna if you work in the Cafeteria because she is fun and has really good sweets!)

Most of the day was spent relaxing and reading our really long handbook. I must say that the handbook was written in a way that made it really enjoyable to read. Also, it had a lot of really important information in it that I found very interesting.

I ended up going to bed probably around 11 or so. It had been a long day and the bed was so nice and comfortable that I snuggled right in.