Day 10 (5/13/13)-Group Presentations

Today was our day to present our group company presentations. The most important things I learned actually came from the questions that Jaimes (the university professor) asked us after presenting. He asked us things that got us thinking about the economy here in Chile and over the whole world. We found out that there are less amounts of companies here in Chile for most areas of products resulting in less competition meaning that many companies can choose to have higher prices for their customers. As an example, only a few phone service providers exist in the entire country and own most of the broadband so they can set higher rates and run away new companies from starting up. Although there are some government agencies working to prevent monopolies from controlling entire areas of services, many companies such as LAN and the phone companies have a lot of control over their area of service. As the Chilean economy is growing, companies are starting to join forces and merge into larger companies or expand where they provide services to. For instance, it is necessary for many manufacturers now to team up with larger distributors so they can keep up with other companies. However, a lot of companies are not embracing this trend for the main reason that it costs more money to change their brand name and advertise and expand than to just stay as they are and distribute to smaller stores. We also touched on how different companies (such as HELA) here have to import products from many different countries in order to manufacture the rest of their products but too few companies export to other countries, many just export to different areas in Chile. All groups presented on the five companies: LAN, Vina Indomita, Hela, Centauros, and Bosques del Mauco. After learning a little bit about each company and their business style, we left the university and headed over to the mall to grab lunch! Most of us picked up Burger King which may not have been the best decision since we had to play soccer right after! I got a cheeseburger with bacon and guacamole which is another thing that many meals come with in Chile. After we finished eating, we headed over to the futbol fields to play on the turf with some of the Chilean students! We played 6 v 6 games and it was so fun for everyone to experience one of Chile’s favorite activities. It was interesting to see that pretty much all of the Chileans were very good and obviously had prior experience since futbol is so popular in Chile whereas only a few of us Pitt students have played before.

Day 9 (5/12/13)-Free Day #2

Today was our second free day off and since I got a ton of sleep last night I woke up earlier and headed off to the ‘OK Mart’ to grab some food. Afterwards, Collin, Alex, and I went to the mall. None of us speak very good Spanish so it was extremely difficult going into stores since none of the people working in any of the stores spoke a word of English! We quickly realized that the clothes there are very very expensive in all of the stores. A t-shirt cost around $40-50 US dollars. We went into one store and the associate put a jacket on Collin that cost around $600…. We grabbed lunch at the food court at Mcdonald’s and I got a Mcwrap. Their fast food chicken here is not as greasy and filling as the chicken we get in the US. Afterwards, we stopped at a tent nearby that had a lot of vendors that make their own products. There was jewelry, decorations, knitted goods, soap, food, and many other things. The people working their seemed much more patient when talking to us than the workers in the mall stores. Afterwards we went back to the hotel for awhile before leaving for our big formal dinner along the beach!

We left around 6 and walked a few blocks to Tierro Del Fuego which is a really beautiful restaurant along the ocean. We were one of the few people in there in we had almost the whole top floor to ourselves! I ordered a tuna steak with a quinoa salad which was delicious.

It was a really fun night for us all to be together and bond after being here for an exhausting, exciting, amazing week already!

Day 8 (5/11/13)-Free Day #1

Today was our first free day off from planned activities! Most people took the opportunity to catch up on sleep since it feels like we have been going nonstop since we arrived in Chile! Once we were all up and ready, most of us headed to grab a big lunch along the stretch of restaurants by the ocean. I got a steak, bacon, and cheese sandwich and a few other people ordered a huge shared meal of chicken, cheesy mushrooms, and other small things. It was one of the few meals we had without Brice or Jorge so we were on our own for understanding the menu and communicating with our server which gave us all a chance to practice our Spanish and talking with Chileans who only know Spanish. After we finished our meal, we walked along the the beach and stopped at the local vendors to grab some souvenirs! It was a perfect day outside and it was nice to just leisurely walk and enjoy the scenery. After we had our fill of the beach, we headed back to the hotel and I took a nap and ate a sandwich from the local grocery store. I have not been feeling well (sore throat, fatigue, fever) so I took it easy tonight and have just been resting so I will feel reenergized for the rest of our time here! The long days and lack of much sleep has definitely caught up to me so taking the night off was much needed.

Day 7 (5/10/13)- Viña Indomita

Today we went to Viña Indómita! After a pretty long bus ride, we arrived at their winery which was enormous! We had one of the best views there from our whole trip.

Our guide explained to us the process for creating their wine and explained that in Chile, they can only have on harvest a year.

He took us to the cellar where they had endless lines of barreled wine and he explained that the conditions to create the perfect wine are very important including the temperature and amount of lighting. The barrels sat on rocks so if they needed to increase humidity they could just put some water on them and could better control the humidity. They use engineers to find which conditions are needed to create the wine and improve the process to bottle and age the wine so they can export more bottles at lower costs. Next we got to have a wine tasting while overlooking the entire vineyard! We were explained the that each type of wine had a different aging process and different types of grapes to achieve the different tastes including one type of wine which was explained to us as having a “chocolate and leathery” taste. After we finished at the vineyard, we got to go to Pablo Neruda’s house, we very famous Chilean poet.

We were served a great meal consisting of our choice of fish in soup or beef. It was one of the best meals we have had here so far!

After eating, we took a tour through the museum which used to be Pablo Neruda’s house which overlooked the ocean with an incredible view! We got to go climb around the rocks on the beach and just enjoy the scenery. Once we finished up here, we headed off to a very long dance class where we got to learn regatton which is the more modern dance that many Chileans dance to. This was one of the most fun experiences on the trip and we all had a blast.

Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel after a very very long day!

Day 6 (5/9/13)-LAN

Today we started our morning off with some more dance lessons at the university! We learned the Chilean national dance: the Cueca.  

It took us all a pretty long time to get the hang of it but it was a fun experience because many of the Chileans are forced to learn the dance and perform it throughout their years in high school. After we finished learning the dance, we were served empanadas for a snack. They had onions, chicken, and olives in them and tasted great, especially because we were all so hungry! Once we ate, we had about an hour of free time so we could all just relax before grabbing some lunch in the cafeteria. Today they served fish with salad and bread. After we ate we headed off to our first site visit: LAN!

They went over all of the different processes to check the planes after flights for any types of damage. Once something like a crack or unproperly sealed window is found, a team of engineers get together and assess the damage and figure out the best possible way to fix it. They use a lot of industrial engineers for all different kinds of processes including coming up with more efficient processes so planes spend less time on the ground, use less fuel, and carry more passengers. We also got to go onboard one of their newer planes: the Dreamliner. It was one of the nicest planes I’ve ever seen, they even had touch screen on the backs of the heads of the seats! We were even allowed to sit in the cockpit of the plane which we will probably never get to do again!

They went over some of the technology they implant to make their planes more comfortable for their customers including making the environment in the plane not humid while in flight so you do not get the feeling that you are in a plane. After leaving LAN, we were all starving so we got to make a pit stop at a gas station and pick up some food finally!

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.