Day 1: Arrival

After leaving the University of Pittsburgh at 12 pm yesterday, we finally arrived in Santiago, Chile. Our journey began with taking Pittsburgh’s 28X to the airport. We flew straight to Miami and had a three hour layover where we went to a group lunch at TGI Fridays. Knowing we were going to be on a flight for eight hours I stuffed myself! The food was so good and this was one of our first bonding experiences as an entire group. I could tell I was really going to enjoy myself in Chile. This dinner took around two hours which was perfect because as we finished and walked back to our gate the plane was getting ready to board. Fast forward eight hours of me sleeping and I wake up to a breakfast on my tray table and the pilot saying we will be landing in 25 minutes. Walking off the plane it hits me that I am no longer the native. The first thing we have to go through is immigration and that was an experience in itself. Chile only accepts perfectly crisp and clean bills and this is something close to none of us had. A simple process was drawn out greatly due to everybody switching up bills with everybody else. I pass through and while getting my bag we saw dogs walking around by themselves. These were the most well trained dogs I have seen in my life. I was so surprised that they just let the dogs do the job of bomb security that in America also takes a policeman to walk around then with. As weird as it sounds, another thing I noticed different about Chile was the toilets had a trash can next to it. After finally translating the sign on the stall, I realized I had to throw out the toilet paper in the garbage. This is something that I would have to get used to soon unless I wanted to clog the toilets. We took out our first pesos and hopped on the bus for a two hour ride. I went to the casino to check it out. It seemed fairly normal. Something that was different from us is that they do not card pretty much at all. After talking to our Chilean student counter-part he agreed. Dinner was at a tiki bar and I tried to get an authentic dish. I got the Lomo a lo pobre which is a steak with a fried egg on top. In my opinion this was not the greatest of meals. My friend and I went back to the Casino to spend the rest of our free evening. After being up 80000 pesos, I got too greedy and tried to chase losses and ended up losing close to $30. All in all a fun night however and I am ready to head to bed to wake up for a 7:30 breakfast and 8:30 bus ride into the university to get a tour.