Day 5 (5/8/13)-Chilean Culture Lecture

Today was another lecture day! We left around 8:30 and grabbed the crazy public bus to the university. Once we got there, we met up with our lecturer Jose Luis. He is an industrial engineer at LAN Airlines which we will be visiting tomorrow! We had the lecture until 6:00 and although it was extremely long, we learned so many interesting things about the Chilean culture that we did not know before! He started off with some basic history on Chile and learned about the founding of Santiago and the change from a military regime, to democracy, to a 16-17 year period of dictatorship, and back to a democracy in their political system here in Chile. We also learned about the things the current president had to encounter including the difficulty in changing from a leftist government to a rightist government, the earthquake, the miners’ crisis, environment issues, and the Hidro Aysch which is an energy generation project. We also learned about the literature of Chile including works from famous writers Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, and Nicanor Parra and were taught about other various parts of their culture and art and learned about the foods and drinks that most Chileans eat and drink. Next it was time for our lunch at the university’s cafeteria. The food there was not the greatest but Javier (the local student) told us they usually don’t ever eat there because they don’t like the food either. After we ate we went back to finish the lecture and were introduced to the behavior of Chileans and their views towards different things. We learned that Chileans tend to accept power better, are more chivalrous, they like to work in groups, they are very family focused, they have short term thinking due to the many natural disasters, they are very affectionate, and they are not punctual.  We also learned about their behaviors in business and learned about the inequalities between men and women in business. Once we finished the lecture and got back to our hotel, a few of us went back to the mall and finally got our adaptors! We were starving so we grabbed food at the food court.