El Dia Primero!!!

View from the airplane

The wireless in Hotel de las Americas is not working so me, Brad, Caroline, and Megan went to the McDonalds down the street to e-mail family and update these blogs. The dogs are out and much more lively at night than in the day!!

So the plane ride to Chile went well aside from the fact that I couldn't sleep much. About an hour before landing, we flew over the Andes as the sun was rising so I took some awesome pictures of that! After getting to the Santiago airport I had my first trip through customs and passport check. That was quite the experience; all the paperwork and checkpoints were a little intimidating. The fee was $131 dollars and the tellers checked the money very very closely. Some people needed to get new money even if there was a tiny tear. I exchanged a little bit of money at the airport. I kind of felt ignorant because I had no idea how much to expect.
Our bus ride to the hotel was about an hour and a half. I managed to nap for the majority of the ride, but when we got into Vina Del Mar, I woke up and started taking pictures. It was beautiful! We immediately checked into our hotel. It is a little place, but it is nice. After putting our things away we went on our adventure. The beach had tons of little shops, and much of it had crafts made from the people nearby. Next we stopped for lunch at a pizza shop (not exactly authentic Chilean), however they didn't have crust on their pizza which is obviously different! We then took a bit longer walk to the local mall. We definitely stood out as tourists! I did however pride myself in finding the bathroom with directions given to me in Spanish!
Later we got a little nap, and got ready for dinner. We went to a place called Margarita and had a nice lengthy dinner! When we got there, I sat on a pepper! I don't know why; it just happened to be on my seat! I got chicken tacos and they were very good. The bottles here are sweet.. even just for water.

Tomorrow we leave the hotel around 8:30 to go to the University for the day. I am excited to see the differences between Universities in the United States and Chile.