Monday

It was Santiago today! We had to get up early, which was a little rough, but there was time to sleep on the bus, and I definitely took advantage of that fact. Our first stop in Santiago was the company visit – the Santiago stock exchange. Our speaker kept apologizing for her English, but I thought it was fine; I guess she hadn’t practice in a while and she hadn’t found out that the presentation was in English until a few hours before. The presentation was good; I enjoyed it because it was much more business, as opposed to the engineering focus of some of our other visits. The trading floor was really pretty, but it was almost sad that there were only three people there since pretty much everything is electronic nowadays. After the stock exchange we went to see La Moneda, which is kind of like the White House. Then some people took pictures with a friendly policeman and his dog. We continued on to the Plaza de Armas, which was a big square with vendors selling paintings, some statues, and a really pretty fountain. A big group was gathered around this one guy that was trying to be funny; I wanted to watch, but I couldn’t really see. For lunch we went to Mercado Central, which is this fish market area. We got all these different types of seafood, only to find out that they were only the appetizer! I think there were four kinds of fish to follow all of that, so there was definitely more than enough food. Luckily, all of it was very good. Finally we got to go up this huge incline for a view of all of Santiago. It was really beautiful, but because of smog we couldn’t see the Andes very well. Apparently, it’s a pretty religious place so there were a lot of religious symbols, including a statue of La Virgen. When we got back down we went to a little shopping area that seemed pretty upscale. There were a lot of jewelry places and this frozen yogurt place called Yogen Früz. It was really neat because you got to choose a fruit (or a mixture) and then you chose chocolate or vanilla and they had this machine that would make it right there! I got chocolate with raspberry, which was undeniably delicious. I slept most of the way back, which was good since Mamma Mia was playing.