The Hills of Valparaíso

The Industrial Engineering building

Today, we had a short orientation and Q&A session in our classroom, then we set out on a tour of campus and later Valparaíso. Our school's name is Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (USM), and it is located on the coast in Valparaíso, Chile. It's an old, beautiful set of buildings with lots of ivy growing up the walls along with other plants in plazas as decoration.

A plaza in the middle of campus

USM is a highly revered school for engineering and other technical majors. Chilean students have to be in the top 5% of the country to enroll. The student body is made up of 78% males and 22% females. However, if you attend any given social event, you will see a 50/50 distribution because the majority of guys that attend spend all the extra time in the library or sleeping, so they have no social life (according to our tour guide Andres, who works in the international students department while studying Business Supply Management at USM).

After lunch, we toured Valparaíso. And by "toured" I mean walked all over the city for four hours minus two bus rides and a boat ride. We were exhausted by the end of it, but the city was enchanting. We took a small boat out on the bay where we saw "sea wolves" and Andres told us about Chile's history, exports, and imports. I don't think any of us saw the sea wolf think coming. We went by some sort of buoy that had half a dozen piled on top of it. We were close enough to touch them, but Andres advised against that because apparently they bite (maybe that's where the wolf part comes in?). 

The steepest asensor in Valparaíso

Sea Wolves

After the boat ride, we set out for the hills that are the home of so many residences and businesses in Valparaíso. After a little walking, we arrived at the "asensor" which is like a combination of a ski lift and a trolley that serves as an elevator. They're in pairs and run opposite directions, side-by-side taking people up and down the hills. We rode the steepest of them all for our trip down. But between those two rides, there were so many beautiful buildings and pieces of art. There are many stair cases and alley ways to take people a more direct way up and down the hills rather than the winding roads that meander through the hills.

A hill in Valparaíso

Piano stairs

I could probably go on, but I should really go to bed. I may come back and do some back-logging later if there's a day that's not very interesting. Till tomorrow!