Ben Traveling around the World: The first days

The last couple days have been great. I realized that our orientation has been more of a Santiago familiarization more than anything else. Tomorrow we start doing some more Chilean Spanish work, and next week we are trained by the college to do our teaching. I've been told it is very intense, perhaps even too intense.
Yesterday we walked around Barrio Lastarria, a bohemian, cultural part of town and had lunch there. Lunch consisted of pisco sour, then a salad bar, then an entree of spinach stuffed chicken with bacon covering it, and some wonderful creamy sauce on top. Then we had a creamy orange/caramel cheesecake for dessert with coffee after. After it was all said and done it was a 2.5 hour lunch. (So far the food has been fresh and tasty. A couple of us are planning on going to the markets on Sunday and loading up on fresh, inexpensive fruits and foods).

The chicken (pollo) lunch plate.
Then we walked to La Chascona (the home of Pablo Neruda's house). Pablo Neruda was a very important poet in Chile. After the tour a couple of us stopped walked back and had a few liter's of Escudos (Chilean beer). Later six of us had dinner at a Chilean time of 10:00 PM, followed by a little karaoke. I mean, what better way to break the ice than singing songs in front of new friends and strangers. Tom Jones was on the played.
Today we took a trip to the Mapuche Center on the outskirts of the city. It was an eye-opening experience to see what the people have gone through, and it was inspiring to see the younger generation of Mapuche very involved in their culture. I understood most of it, but there were sections were I was completely lost in the Spanish.
Now we're all hanging out for a while until dinner. I think I will wander around the neighborhood in a little bit. We are in a great part of the city and the accommodation's are incredible. I left a pair of pants on my bed on accident and when I got back yesterday, they were folded.
That's all for now. It will be interesting to see what happens when more and more of the instruction is conducted in Spanish. I am going to look for a place to stay next week where I live with some Chileans.