Santiago Chile

I never finished the last segment about Estonia, but I am onto the next because it is more fun, interesting and recent.

I ran my first solo conference April 5-7 in Santiago, Chile.  Man was it tough! but boy do I love my job!  I am so lucky to have gotten the right job for me and very lucky for a certain special someone who helped me find my way to it.

After a horrible 9.5 hour flight from Dallas to Santiago, I looked out the window and was greeted with mountains, horses, field workers, sunshine and junkyards.  I knew that it was going to be a special trip.
 The first few days were filled with work, but this was my office.  Meetings, dinners, set ups, registration, classes, lunches, busses, patients, clean ups, presentations, transfers, paperwork, payments, etc.

This is my work all packed up and ready to go for one day.  Yes, I had 7 briefcases.  Now the truth is that I really make it sound like I'm important and the students do often think I'm a doctor, but I am not.  I suppose I am just trying to prove to the world that I was not playing during my whole trip and I DO work hard.

Anyways after 6 straight days of work, I was on vacation and Shea was down in Santiago, ready to go and planning our week long adventure.  Santiago was never on my radar previously, but I soon learned that it should have been.  I was only there for a short time, so I don't have too much to share about the actual city.  I am more left with a lot of curiosity and half answers.  I think that after nearly every trip I say "I wish I had known more about this place or done more research before I got here."  With google at my fingertips, I'll keep the same resolution in mind before my next trip.

However, not one trip will ever go by without important trivia. 

Hands down, one of the more important obvious facts about Santiago is that it is home to the tallest building in South America, yet at the same time it is also the cite of many strong earthquakes.  In 2010 a strong earthquake toppled an entire building.  

                                                                            

Aside from an obvious fact, everywhere has a shopping product.  Lapis and Copper are the important purchases in Chile.  I was on a quest to buy Lapis the entire trip, but I failed.  I was found running to the airport on the last day of the trip.  No Lapis in hand.    

                                                        

The next obvious cultural exposure is food.  Along with all sorts of food, Razor Clams are noteworthy in Santiago and we kicked out trip off with beer and a tray full of clams.

For the Santiago portion of the trip, we headed off to a famous hill/mountain in the city.  The hill has a cable car that goes up the side to a statue of the Virgin Mary overlooking the city.  Halfway up the hill there is a zoo.  We walked the first half of the trip up to the zoo.  They had all the usual animals, but it was very interesting because the whole zoo was on the side of a hill that went straight up.  

 Since the zoo is on a hill, you can see the Santiago skyline behind the animals.  I don't think that they appreciate the view very much, but it is pretty unique.  In addition to the uniqueness, it was 100% not handicap or stroller friendly.  Everyone was basically carrying their strollers up hills and stairs.

 After the zoo, we rode the cable cars to the top of the Mountain where there was a giant statue of Mary overlooking the city.  We hung out up there for a while and took in the view.  The city was huge!  Santiago has a population of 6,000,000.  Milwaukee has a population of 600,000. Whoa!

 After finding our bearings and learning the currency and dialect in Santiago, we headed off on a 3.5 hour bus ride to Pichilemu, a small surfing town on the coast of the Pacific.  There we would fulfill the great Blue Crush inspired childhood dream to learn to surf.