Salsa, karaoke, lectures, and fun!

Hola mundo,

The past two days we spent most of our time at the Universidad de Santa Maria, a very beautiful private university with 6-year programs in business and engineering. We used the public bus, which is a bit different than buses in the States. Bus drivers here drive very fast, and open the doors before stopping. Sometimes they don't even come to a complete stop to let people off. The buses have manual transmissions, and some drivers even sort change while driving. They're also smaller than normal buses to make navigating the curvy roads easier.

Yesterday we attended lectures at the University regarding Chilean history, literature, music, and natural disasters. Today we attended lectures about international business and Latin American economy. We also took salsa dances the past two evenings at the university. The dancing is hard, and the instructor does not speak any English, but it's very fun, and I started to get the hang of some of the moves.

We also took tours (partially by bus and partially by walking) yesterday of both Valpariso and Vina del Mar. We rode an incline (like the ones in Pittsburgh), and stopped for empanadas. Most of the food I've had here has been very delicious. Although there are no choices at the college cafeteria, and the food today was a bit strange... I'm getting the hang of ordering food in Spanish though.

Last night we went out with some of our Chilean tour guides, who are all affiliated with the University, to a karaoke bar near our hotel. This was a lot of fun! The song list had mainly English songs, but the locals mainly picked from the Spanish selections. However, even non-English speaking Chileans often sing songs in English, because they are very popular. I was the first American to sing a song, David Bowie's "Life on Mars," and I later sang Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Maker." I was surprised many Chileans knew that song. I wasn't very good, but it was a lot of fun. I sang along with songs all night, even ones in Spanish I had never heard before. My voice was dead by the end of the night though.

Tomorrow we'll be visiting a Codelco smelting plant and the Centauro factory. Codelco is the government owned copper company, producing Chile's top export, and Centauro is a company that cans and packages fruits and vegetables. I have to get some sleep tonight as I've gotten very little so far... We've had late nights here, and were sleep deprived to begin with after the long flight here. But I've been having a great time and am looking forward to everything else I'll be doing here in Chile!

Buenas noches!