A Day Late. Whoops.

We piled up ready to go by 8 this morning. The monotony of breakfast has not been unbearable, but I think by the time we leave, it will be. We were all dressed in our business casual for our meeting with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. We had driven for a twenty or thirty minutes or so, when our fearless leader Dave announces that our visit with PWC has been postponed due to miscommunications; We are not going to visit them on Thursday, so our plans for Thursday were switched to today. Our original plan on Thursday was to go to some mining companies and see their operations, but that had also fell through earlier in the week. So our plan for Thursday that we switched to this morning (are you following?) was to tour Santiago and drop by the mall. So in our button up shirts and blouses, we sat very fancily on the bus and watched the barrios of Santiago whiz by. We stopped at a park that had a view of Santiago’s largest building and hung out for a bit. We fed some ugly swans, cool birds with green bills, and flamingos. I kinda liked the flamingos; they remind me of the lawn ornament flamingos we used to mark the flooding of the river in ’06. There were many dogs there, and once a female showed up, they went bounding for her. They growled and sprinted past Erin, who screamed and freaked out.

The park was followed by a giant mall, which happened to be the bottom 6 floors of the largest skyscraper. The mall was fun, but everything was so overpriced. We would peruse, trying jackets and looking for shoes and ties, but we would put everything back on the rack when we saw the price tag. We ate lunch there, which was also relatively expensive, and by then, it was about time to go.

The traffic in Santiago is horrible, so we were moving slow toward our next destination. We arrived at the Watt’s manufacturing facility, where we were greeted by a pretty woman who didn’t speak English. They had a presentation that explained their brands and some of their workings. Those of us in Vijay’s maymester class were furiously taking notes because we have 4 papers to write about our visits. Because we were uninformed about proper clothes for the visit (we needed steel-toed boots), so we had to go where the niños go, which was a box high above production where we could not see everything we wanted. We compared ideas about applications of theories from operations and scribbled more notes, then left after a semi-uneventful visit, although it was cool to see some of the models of the processes from the lectures. They took us back to the first room and presented all of us Mormons with a gift: a bottle of wine from their wine brand. Of course, we were all very gracious, but it was very ironic to see a bunch of Mormon kids pack wine home.

Can you see the giant spider???? Cooper and I found it just outside Shannon and Liza's room. Blaeahhh.

We arrived back at our hotel very early in the evening, something we have yet to do. We had to make a stop at the grocery store (which is generally closed when we get back), then we dressed down and set out to find dinner. We walked to the Plaza Del Armas de Santiago, where we walked around for a bit, taking in the night life and keeping an eye out for a place to eat.

This a pic of the cathedral in the plaza del armas, with Cooper's face as well.

Before I tell this next story, I must give some context. Everybody down here is dark haired, dark eyed. Not all have dark skin; some are surprisingly fair skinned, but all of them have dark brown hair. There are two girls in our group that are blonde: Aniko and Erin. They have attracted so much attention from weird guys on the streets and in the workplaces. A guitarist started walking by Aniko and singing to her, something that made us guys worry some. Brennon followed closely as Aniko and Natalie giggled awkwardly. A guy intrusively came right into Erin’s face to look at her eyes, then left just as quickly. We have had to keep close as they have gone out.

So we saw a large group gathering and watching some guy, so we wandered that way to see what the show was. I think it was a comedian, but the Spanish was too fast for me. Erin is semi-short, but she wanted to see the show, so she made Tyler, the tallest in the group, put her on his shoulders. The whole world stopped for a moment, because not only did the tall white guy from North America just become taller, but he put a blonde haired beauty on his shoulders, which drew the attention of EVERYBODY. It was probably not a good thing, looking back, because we put a giant target on ourselves. The comedian stopped, said, “Hola,” then suddenly found a new set of jokes, none of which we understood, which made the jokes even funnier. We set sail shortly after, and I was keeping a watch on anybody that might have been following us.

Upon a recommendation from Susana and other girls who had eaten at the restaurant a couple nights before, we stopped at a Peruvian restaurant to have dinner. We had eaten not to much before, so I was not that hungry. Every body else ordered fairly large meals, and I ordered papa a la huanchaina, which is potatoes smothered in huanchaina sauce, and I can’t really describe it other than that. I was good, but it is fairly bland and not necessarily my favorite. Although, I can see how if you ate that for a couple years, you would learn to really love it.

We had good conversation and a couple of good laughs, then walked back to our hotel. Some of the girls wanted to go out clubbing, but none of the guys especially wanted to go with them, so we were able to talk them out of going. We plan on going tomorrow night anyway. I stayed in my room the rest of the night, reading my book The Kite Runner, along with my roommate, Nate, who was listening to a book. The others got together and played poker and other card games, which sounded fun. But I got to bed at a decent hour, which I did not the night before. I fell asleep writing my journal entry, which is why this is a day late. I’ll be sure to get today’s up tonight.