Santiago is Still Here

I was running a little late today, so breakfast was quick, and we were out the door. Our first visit was to the Goodyear tire plan here in Santiago. It was a spectacular visit. We met in a training room where we were again informed we had improper shoes, but that they were getting special permission from the safety department to let us through. . We were offered coffee, tea, and cookies while we waited, then were shown a couple videos about Chile and about Goodyear’s expansion at that plant. The operations director, who is from New York, then spoke to us about what was going on in the plant and how special the Chile plant is. I’ll spare you the details, but in short, they are expanding the plant and upgrading all the technology. The whole process is mostly automated now, where in most other plants, most of the tires are made by hand. Because of the expansion, there are many places where there is downtime, which makes the process inefficient and more expensive. The expansion will soon be finished, and after the dust has settled, they can start to implement the elements of lean systems to reduce waste and increase capacity. Part of what has enabled them to build the additions was the economic downturn, which caused the factory to slow and made room for upgrades.

Anyway, we were split into the men and the women and were taken onto the factory floor. It was so cool! There were so many crazy machines, and although all of them were fairly scattered, we were able to follow the rubber from beginning to end. We weren’t in cages above the action either; the directors took us right next to the machines and let us watch them work. Dave said that this would never fly in the states, so it was truly a rarity to be that close to the machinery. We were able to ask the director questions the whole time about how the factory operates, how machines work, operation theory, and about other things we noticed. I also kept close to Dave and asked him what he saw. He was very insightful because we was an inspector for the Shingo Prize, which is an award given to businesses who excel in lean principles, and which is based out of the USU campus. We met back with the chicas after the tour and were taken back out of the gates to our bus.

It was about lunchtime, so we went back to the mall we were yesterday and picked up some food. The Hard Rock Café Santiago is in the bottom of the shopping center, so Nate, Dave, Brennon, and I ate there. It was my first time at Hard Rock, and it was an expensive lunch. The food was really tasty though, but I wouldn’t say it was worth the price.

We had a short time there before we had to meet to walk to our next visit, which was at the US Embassy in Santiago. At the front gate we were greeted by a nice lady who checked us off the list and let us enter. We were escorted into a small teleconference room, where the head of economics and politics (or some title like that) for the embassy presented a lecture. It was not long winded or boring, but it was hard to stay awake. I was interested because I had wanted to work for embassies as a Foreign Service officer, so I knew some background info for parts of the stories. We sadly were not able to see the rest of the embassy I am assuming because of the high security clearance needed to get to other places. We, oddly, did not have to go through any security at all. Dave noticed and asked about it, and she said she had pulled some strings for us to make it quicker.

After we returned to the hotel, we guys went out for a walk. We crossed a large puente and stepped into some sketchy residential neighborhoods. We did not go in too deep, but you could tell by the condemned buildings and the type of lighting that it wasn’t something we wanted to explore. I guess it only was about 6 o’clock, but it gets dark here about then. We ran into some street vendors and tried some of her fried delights. The empanadas were almost empty except for a piece of cheese at the bottom, but the other scone-like pan was pretty good. I stole one from Nate, who had put some salsa on it. The salsa had a bite to it, but it was pretty good. Unshowingly, I was a little worried about eating from a street vendor, but I kinda wanted to, so why not? It was fried and cooked, right?

For dinner, Tyler saw this Shawarma place, so upon his pushing, we all went there. The reason he was so adamant was because on The Avengers, Iron Man says at the end of the final fight scene that they should all go get Shawarma later, and Tyler didn’t know what Shawarma was. The restaurant was overpriced ($1.50 for a half of a can of soda!), and the food wasn’t especially good. Shawarma is Middle Eastern; they cook the meat on a kabob and serve it in a pita type sandwich. I first thought the white stuff was mayo, but they reassured me it was yogurt (it tasted way too much like mayo). The meat was covered with tomatoes, which turned out to be way too much tomato. All in all, I am glad I got the Chilean version of Shawarma, but I bet there are other places where the Shawarma is delicious!

The rest of the night was spent trying to figure out something to do. Some people came up with ideas, but there was never enough support behind them to act. So we ended up just chatting in Erin and Natalie’s room.

I really like our group; I’ve said it before, and I am sure it will not be the last time I say it, but we have a chemistry that is fun. Everybody is different, but we all have fun.