As my parents dropped me off in the Philadelphia airport, I knew it was going to be a long day. I meet up with five other girls at the Philly airport, and luckily together we could navigate the way through the Atlanta airport when we got there. At the Atlanta airport, the 5 of us met up with the entire group going to Chile. Our flight to Santiago was at 10 at night to 7 the next morning! That was my first overnight flight, it was harder than I expected to sleep on an airplane. The flight did not drag on or seem to take that long because i was so tired, but i probably only slept in increments of 30 minutes at a time. When we got to Chile, we had to get visas and check through national security. Then we finally got to the bus to take us from the airport to the hotel, we were all very tired. I wanted to stay awake to see my first view of Chile's beautiful scenery, and what i saw of it it is very gorgeous, but I could not keep my eyes open. From what I did stay awake to see, the scenary was different than I expected, there was no grass but rather dirt and trees. On the mountains their were white letter signs telling what city we were in, such as the "Hollywood" sign in California. The Spanish signs also intrigued me, I tried to read and figure out as many as i could (before my weariness took hold of me).
When we finally got to the hotel, we found out our roommates and headed to our rooms. The room was smaller than I expected, but not that bad. The only major shortcoming is no heat, because it is fall in chile and getting rather chilly! After we got to our rooms we all gathered for lunch, we walked around town till we found a lunch spot. The menu was all in Spanish and proved difficult for a lot of us to understand. Hearing people try to order was funny. Hey, we tried. I am starting to get very used to saying "gracias" instead of thank you. After lunch we explored the area. My first observation: DOGS! Soooo many dogs everywhere... and stray dogs at that. Also, a lot of horse drawn carriages, but mostly dogs all over the place. One certain tan stray seemed to find a liking to us. He stayed with us the whole time we walked around, always keeping up with us and stopping with us when we stopped. We named our stray "Sergio". :) Many of the strays are hurt and ill, but do not really bug the people, they will walk with you but always keeping their distance. I honestly feel bad for these animals, and wish someone could help them.
The scenery I come across in Chile was very different than America. The palm trees are beautiful and the ocean is breathtaking. Also, something I very much liked was how on the rocks near the ocean, there was 'graffiti', but the graffiti was beautifully written, inspirational quotes and meaningful bible verses. All the quotes were in spanish, but i could pretty much understand everything they meant. My favorite was " keep looking it up to the sky, not down below."
When we finally left the beach, we had some free time, and then reconvened for dinner. For dinner we went to a Mexican place, but this time the menu had english underneath the items so it was much easier for everyone to order. I had two steak "medallones" one with mango sauce and the other with hot chili chocolate sauce. The chili chocolate sauce was delicious. Then we got gelato from a local shop. That was also delicious! Overall, today was a great day(with many eye opening events) and I am excited to see more of Chile and it's culture tomorrow!
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