Day Uno.

Today we learned how difficult it is to function when you cannot speak the native language.

Before we made it to Chile we had to change planes in Dallas. The airport seemed nice and they had these cool vending machines with Ipods, PSPs, earphones (including Shure earphones, and they were $50 cheaper than in the retail stores), and other electronic gadgets. Every store had items for sale that either said Texas Pride on it or had the Texas flag.Our flight to Chile was descent but nowhere near as nice as Qantas. They only had one movie the whole flight and the rest of the time they made us watch horrible CBS sitcoms (with the exception of HIMYM). We didn't even have our own on demand screens! They had television screens in the middle of the aisles. We don't plan on flying American Airlines again on long distance flights. Here's a picture of the Andes out of the plane window. I also got to see the sun rise from 30,000 feet which was pretty cool.The confusion started when we arrived at the Santiago airport. We were happy to find most of the signs were in English as well as Spanish but once we got to customs we found we had absolutely no idea what to do. There were three different areas with lines and we weren't sure if we were supposed to pay the entrance fee then go through immigration. We guessed correctly and paid our fees then stood in a long line for immigration. We went through without a hitch. We're legal for 90 days! After that we have to leave the country for at least a day then return and they issue you a new tourist card for another 90 days.

The baggage claim was similar to any other baggage claim except that it was crazy! There were customs people everywhere and most had dogs sniffing out illegal imports. We had to read the custom laws a few times to make sure my White Cheddar Bunnies were allowed into the country. Luckily only fresh cheese is illegal.

In Chile they have many cheap options to get into the city. We went with the shared van shuttle. A guy helped us get our bags into our correct van then demanded a tip. We had no idea how much so we just gave him all our coins; about 300 Chilean pesos (clp). The ride into town proved to be very exciting. We learned that people drive worse than the Canadians! They are very impatient and honk almost immediately after the light turns green. The motorcyclists also weave in between lanes, which are already very narrow. We saw a car get rear ended. No one got hurt but the lady was crying when she got out of the car and people started honking at them because they were blocking the middle lane. Our bus driver seemed undeterred by the whole situation and just went about like it was a normal occurance. About a half hour later we somehow made it to our hostel, which was unmarked.

Charles, the owner of Hostal de Sammy, is an expatriot and is quite friendly. We got information about the subway to take to the mall so we could get a sim card for our phone. This proved to be incredibly difficult if you can't speak Spanish.

Some things we learned while trying to communicate:

• Never underestimate the power of pointing.
• Reading Spanish from a phrasebook is not the same as speaking Spanish.
• If you're completely confused just say "Si" and nod.
• "Mil" is one thousand in Spanish.
• Using automated telephone menus in Spanish is really hard. (It took us an hour to figure out how to top off our cell phone with a prepaid card.)

Besides the language we discovered some other interesting differences between the US and Chile. Luckily, we were prepared for some because we read that Culture Shock book. For example, they do not flush their toilet paper in most places. They have a waste basket next to the toilet and you put the used paper in there. Also, most of their bottled water is actually carbonated water or fruit flavored. One of the most disheartening things we discovered was that spaghetti does not taste the same. Their spaghetti sauces come in pouches, not jars, and the spaghetti tasted somewhat slimy and just plain odd.