Day 5: lectures, lectures, and more lectures

Today we spent the whole day at the university! We got there around 9:30 and had 2 big lectures on Chilean culture. The instructor for this lecture is an industrial engineer at LAN airlines, who was very funny and a great speaker. The first lecture was on the history and literature of Chile. The most controversial part of Chilean history is the dictatorship of Pinochet. This started in the 1970s and lasted for 16 or 17 years. During his dictatorship, Pinochet sent a few people to study economics at the Chicago School in Chile and they brought new ideas. The current president, Sebastian Pinera, was one of the economists. He also has a degree from Harvard. The second lecture was on geography, tourism and art. One thing that I specifically learned was that the development of a country depends greatly on geography because if you have many natural resources, petroleum, and more in the area, this bring in a lot of income allowing developments of the country. Chile is split into 15 regions and because it is so long, each region experiences different conditions and produces different products. The population is about 16.6 million and Santiago is the most densely populated city. There are many sites for tourism, including Easter Island, Torres del Paine, Salto de Laja, and many more. After these two lectures, we met up with students and got lunch. The lunch at the university isn’t too good, but we had fun hanging out in the cafeteria. Then we went back for two more lectures. The first was on social issues and society. We learned about differences in perception, attitude, and behavior between Chile and the United States. One thing that stood out to me was the Chileans are very unpunctual. It is normal for them to be late to everything. I would find this to be very annoying because I’d rather be early than late. Another surprising thing was that women have 2 months before pregnancy and 6 months after with full salary payment for maternity leave! The next lecture was on natural disasters and music. Natural disasters were the most interesting thing to learn about. Because of Chile’s location, they experience many earthquakes that usually lead to tsunamis. The one that affected me the most was the earthquake in 2010. It wasn’t the most deadly or the highest level, but because it was most recent and had the most pictures of damage I was able to fully picture that tragedy. This earthquake was rated at 8.8, killed close to 550 people, and affected close to 80% of the entire country. We went through pictures and videos of the disaster and learned what to do if we were ever stuck in an earthquake. The role of thumb is that if you can’t stand up during an earthquake, a tsunami will come in 7-12 minutes, so you need to run toward the hills. After the lecture, we all stuffed on a bus to go back to the hotel and get dinner. The Chilean students are coming to the hotel to get us in 30 minutes and take us out for the night!