Estamos en Santiago!

After flight after flight after flight (cheaper tickets = more stopovers) we finally made it into Santiago International at about 6am local time. Vladimir and Werner were there to meet us and a friend of a friend had arranged for everything to run smoothly for us. This meant they met us at the plane practically and we had a personal escort through the diplomatic line for customs and then into a VIP suite to drink coffee and talk about our upcoming schedule for the next month. It looks to be pretty busy for us as we travel around the district. We then went to the Estadio to meet our host families. We are all in different places around the city, but we all got together tonight after a day of napping and sightseeing and relaxing in order to drink some pisco sours and vino tinto and to enjoy each other´s company. All in all, a wonderful first day. Santiago is very modern, clean and the cars are very new looking. Prosperity seems relatively abundant. Today was El Dia de Quasimodo where traditionally the priests would ride out on horseback to see their people and they would be accompanied by huasos (cowboys) to guard them against all problems. Now people tend to decorate bicycles and follow the priests in parades. We saw some of the trucks and bikes decorated on our way into town from the airport. I am going to head to bed now to try to catch up on all the missed sleep from the plane... Hasta pronto!