South America - March 6th - Santiago

Since this was an educational trip for Sara (and oh how educational it was) she had two meetings (the four spread out over the two weeks….you cannot even begin to imagine all the work) and I had nothing to do. Well there is only one place to go in a situation like that. Starbucks. Oh Nick, tell me you didn’t go to Starbucks, that is so American. First, South American’s consider themselves American so you have to say United States (as Sara reminded me continually) and second, I think it is really interesting to see how companies from the US do things in foreign countries. Anyway, back to the Starbucks. I walk in and it is EXACTLY like a Starbucks in the United States. Down to the music being in English. Well, besides the Spanish. No worries, I can handle this situation. Some could consider me a master of the Spanish language (my high school Spanish teacher is not one of those people) and besides Coffee of the Day is translated as Café de la Dia in Spanish. This was supposed to be a one-sided order though. So when the lady asked if I wanted milk I got confused. Then when she said milk in English I was like, “Leche. I knew that one. Dangit.”

After my trip to Starbucks I took the long way back to the hotel to walk around the parts of the city I hadn’t seen the night before. One thing that I noticed, and everyone was pleasantly surprised about, was how clean the city is. Sure there were the requisite stray dogs that Sara gave me the puppy face about every time she saw one (I got it a lot), but they all seemed well fed. The thing I love about stray city dogs is that they stop at crosswalks and walk when the crowd does. They aren’t dumb. At least there were no stray cows like in India.

Anyway, Sara and her group eventually came home. We went on a search for bottled water and killed time until dinner. That meant we had to kill A LOT of time. See, in Chile and Argentina they don’t eat dinner until after 9 o’clock in the PM. Restaurants don’t even open until 8 o’clock. If you wanna go out after that you better be ready for a long night because it isn’t appropriate to go to the bar until 1 AM. We chose this restaurant near the hotel that (as best as I can tell) a Chilean TGI Friday’s. Check out this name for a restaurant, Pub Licity. You realize very quickly in any meal setting that the South American concept of service is much different than the North American version. Our waitress was always on the fringes of our area but wouldn’t come to the table until we signaled that we needed something. She would give us our menus and then wouldn’t come back until we signaled we were ready to order. Another great thing about being in a foreign country is when you struggle to order something or carry on a conversation and then the waitress answers in much better English than your Spanish.

The food wasn’t that great, but afterward we took the party to the restaurant’s bar. This is where I learned a very valuable thing about South America. Be mindful of the mixed drinks. I wouldn’t even call them mixed drinks. I would call them death drinks. They give you a glass half full of whiskey and then a 12 ounce coke in a glass bottle. They pour so much that I was sure that they had to mix it with water. I revised this sentiment about two hours later. You’d better be careful or you’ll be down quick. I also had a Chilean tell me that I looked like John Denver. He then proceeded to sing me a song that John Denver wrote about Chile. It was AWESOME.