Catching up - Monday

So I've been slacking... we've been here for a week, and this is my first post. Anyway, Sunday was fun, but relatively uneventful. I got no more than half an hour of sleep on the plain, which was incredibly frustrating, so it felt great to finally arrive! I showered right when we got to the hotel, and then had the chance to chill for a little before some of us went to lunch. After wandering for a bit, we ended up at a place called Cafe Unplugged, where we had a strange, but good pizza. Dinner was all together at La Margarita, where I think we all learned to not trust the waiter when it comes to portion size - he kept telling us that they were small when people said they were going to share, and so they each got their own, and the portions ended up being huge! I got shrimp quesadillas that were pretty good, but a little bland.

The next morning we headed to the university for some lectures; the campus is right by the ocean and it's so pretty :) While there, everyone also kept commenting that all the students looked really put together - they weren't sloughing it in sweatpants like we sometimes do... We also noticed that they all seemed to have cute jackets for whatever reason.

After a welcome and lectures we ate in the student cafeteria, which was an experience, though not the best; vegetarian options were definitely limited, and the serving guy freaked out on me because I was trying to serve myself something that was out that I guess we weren't allowed to take (I thought it was a vegetarian entree since the line I was in said vegetarian on the sign, which turned out to just be no meat - shocker).

When we were done at the university, we had a tour of Valparaiso, which was mostly from the bus it seemed. We had gotten out to take one of the ascensores (hill elevator things) and the view was really pretty at the top, but the ride up was a little scary. At one point on the tour we were in Plaza Sotomayor, where the street is separated from the plaza by only a single, faded yellow line.

On Monday, we also saw more about what Jo was talking about in regards to the whole "lots of dogs" issue... they're all over! Most are fairly friendly, but you don't really want to touch them, which is hard.

One spot of frustration during the day was that the weather had definitely said 73 degrees and sunny, and it was definitely not 73 degrees! It was also sunny only after around 2:00.

Dinner was on our own, and then we went to karaoke :)