more from Santiago

Classes started last week at PUC, or Catolica as they call it here. The classes would not be very difficult if not for the language barrier, but I will have to work a lot to get thru the spanish part. The university is known to be the top in Chile, very demanding. I selected a few classes that I believe will work well, 1 in south american business law, 1 in marketing distribution channels, and 1 in marketing research. We will see how they turn out.

I went to Valparaiso on Saturday, which is a very nice place. It is a town on a large natural bay, similar to Monterrey, CA, but it has quite a bit of natural character due to all the people who have come and gone. It reminded me of San Francisco a bit - hills, full of old and colorful buildings, very beautiful but also a little edgy, and not at all bland or sterile. The only problem is that I went to the beach for a short while - an hour at most - and even with some sunscreen, I got scorched by the extremely strong South American sun. Today I am not feeling great, but I have bought the proper remedies and hopefully in a few days I will be back to normal.