Avocado, dogs, and the Egyptians

I think one of the hardest things to get used to for me is the fact that in Santiago it is never quiet. One would imagine that would be due to the cars, people, or traffic, but surprisingly enough the biggest noise factor is the dogs. Right dogs, no big deal, lots of people have them in the United States but not like this. Most households have at least a handful of outside dogs for security reasons, for example in my house they have 5. So lets say on average each house has 3 dogs. Multiply that by 6 and you have about the amount of houses on a city block. Now add one ambulance or car that honks its horn and you have 18 dogs howling in sync at 3 in the morning. I adore dogs, but this is something I'm still getting used to.

On another note, something that wasn't hard to get used to was all of the avocado!! Frankly the avocado that makes its way up to Minnesota is pretty nasty and finding a good avocado is like finding a diamond. I eat avocado nearly every day and I have yet to find a rotten one. Esto es felicidad. <3

This is kind of a hodge podge post so I might as well talk about the Egyptians as well. I recently went to an exposition at the Centro Cultural La Moneda in Santiago that was showing Egyptian artifacts. There were steles, jewelry and sculptures of a large variety of sizes. Here are some pictures...

The Journey to SCL

A 3:30 AM wake up time was the prelude to our 36 hour caravan to Santiago. Fernando and I hopped in the car to make a 6 and 1/2 hour journey to the Fargo, ND airport to start off the first leg of our flights. Right as we were about to hop on our first plane to Denver a travel notification arrived to my cell phone; our connecting flight to Houston had been delayed. This would cause us to miss our connecting flight from Denver to Santiago.

Upon arriving in Denver we sprinted to the help desk and were put last minute on a flight that was due to take off in about 10 minutes. We then sprinted to the gate and slipped in right before the doors closed. We sat down comfortably into our seats, but little did we know the complications had just begun. We sat down, then we sat some more, and continued sitting with no plane movement. It turns out that the Denver airport had been swallowed whole by a thunderstorm. After a few hours and getting on and off the plane a few times, we gave in and went back to the airline to reschedule our flight. 

Our new flight path would turn our 19 hour plane trip into a 27 hour trip which would have us stopping in Bogota, Colombia. Unfortunately a storm system had popped up in Houston as well, so we decided that beggars couldn't be choosers. We sucked it up, grabbed some food, and waited out the storm. 

After a cramped flight we made it to Bogota and Fernando sprawled out and got some much needed sleep. We grabbed some Dunkin' Donuts and got ready for our next flight while taking turns to walk around and look at the interesting shops in the Bogota airport. We later were excited to figure out that the Bogota El Dorado airport is the site of the show Alerta Aeropuerto. :) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C01TasZlUY>

After a calm flight from Bogota we finally arrived in Santiago. It was rainy and cloudy but we were greeted at the airport by Fernando's dad and Fernando's dachshund Nico. We then drove to his house and crashed after our marathon trip.

Nico was pretty tired too.