If anything in Chile is completely different compare to United States or Europe, then it is how young people get or “try” to get independent from their parents. In Chile it is normal or even I would say it is a standard that the children lives with their parents until one is 28, 29 or 30 years old. We, students from United States and Europe, were pretty shocked when we heard that.

Actually, people in Chile are not embarrassed for that, but to the contrary. One of the staff members that works for CIEE Center of Santiago, happily said that she lived with her parents until she was 30 years old. In Chile, people look at it this way.

Why should they move out? It is their home. They have safe and supportive environment. Mom does the cooking and laundry. They have a comfort at home that they will never have in the future. They can hang out with their friends and have great much stress less relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend since they do not have to take care of themselves.

Young people do not have want of being independent after college or living their lives on their own and financially independently. They like the comfort and benefits of living with their parents and the parents do not mind. It is part of their culture.

Valparaiso is a beautiful cost city in Chile only 1.5 hours from Santiago. It was founded in 1536 and it has roughly population of one million people. Valparaiso or Valpo is a very important strategic city in Chile because it has large seaport. Besides all these “boring” information, Valpo has an amazing view at the ocean, historic downtown, colorful buildings, is part of UNESCO World Heritage Site and Pablo Neruda has or had there one of his three houses.

The view of the ocean is just spectacular.

If you are a prospective student who would like to study there, CIEE has a program. If you are not such a big fan of city life and you would like to experience a true “Southern American” city atmosphere than Valpo is a perfect fit for you. I am not saying that Santiago does not have “South American” atmosphere, but it is huge city and in many ways it is affected by western world a little bit.

Here is a link for the program.

Does this yellow symbol remind you of something?

If not, then Walmart has the same symbol.

Lider was established as Chilean hypermarket chain in 1893, but in 2009 it was bought by Walmart and they very interesting “relationship”, which is very similar what I experience in Czech.

What Walmart does is that many times what they do not sell in the United States, they ship over to Lider (Chile) and they actually mark up the price as a new product or something special. So many times I walked and I saw products like hot chocolate. All labels are in English, there is just a sticker with descriptions in Spanish, but it Walmart product. It even has the label “Great Value”.

I do not want to make it seem as Walmart uses Chilean Lider as “dumpster”. They have a lot of Chilean products made in Chile or Southern America, but the amount of these unsold Walmart products is more than noticeable. Especially the products that can last for a while, like hot chocolate or Hershey.

In the Czech Republic the same thing happening, that chain stores from Germany or Austria (the western Europe countries) send unsold products and mark up the price.

My host family was only a host mother and she was great. I did not ask, but my guess would be that she is somewhere around her upper 60s, but she looked much younger. Generally, people in Chile look much younger than they actually are. That is probably all the sun and no stress.

She has a son, who is around 35 years old. He actually went to Boston University for four years and became a computer engineer, so she knew how American university system works. Right now he works in San Francisco as a computer engineer for Sony.

My host mom was very clean and organized. She cleaned the whole kitchen every weekend and the bathroom every other weekend. Sometimes she liked to boss around, but I really did not mind. I was happy she uses subjective in Spanish. I actually gave her nickname: Monica Geller. It is a character from TV show Friends. She loves it because she said she is like Monica.

She also loves to travel especially in Europe and cook healthy food. She is a big fan of politics and economics. Many times she asked me about something that happened in European political scene before I even knew it. She followed the American elections very closely and deeply.

Besides politics, economics, and order, she also loves blond hair actors. Brat Pitt, Matt Damon, Simon Baker or Kevin Costner. Unfortunately, George Clooney did not make her list of attractive men. Regarding her music taste, she listen anything from Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart (Baby Jane and Forever Young on replay for good 30 min) through U2, Coldplay to Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez. Simply she likes all type of music except rap.

If you get the chance to travel to Santiago, you HAVE TO go to Emporio La Rosa ice cream place. It is a Chilean company and their ice-cream is ranked in the best 20 in the world.

Their ice cream is phenomenal. They had around 40 different types of ice-cream and it was not too expensive as one would expect from place like that. Probably the flavor that surprised me the most in a good way was leché y arroz (milk and rice). You would think that this combination does not go together, but it was really delicious. Also, any other fruit flavors were amazing as well. They are not only making “regular” ice cream like we are used in the U.S. or like is on the picture above. They make these things as well.

It is their ice cream, but frozen on a stick. In my opinion this is even more dangerous because it allows them to dip their ice cream into whole types of chocolates and sweet sauces with fresh fruits. So basically, you have an ice cream that one for the best in the world, dipped in milk chocolate, with white chocolate stripes and pieces of strawberry on top of it. Luckily, I saw these stands only in shopping malls.

It is the highest building in South America and ironically it is located in Chile, a country with 500+ earthquakes a year. Costanera Center is truly an architecture beauty. Just look at it.

Costanera Center or Grand Torre Santiago is used for two purposes: business and commercial purposes. It has a six-floor shopping mall, which, by the way, already had Christmas tree days before Thanksgiving, and view point on the top. The construction ended on February 14, 2012, and it was designed by Cesar Pelli. Besides it being the highest building in the Latin America, it is the second highest building in southern hemisphere, behind tower called Q1 on the Gold Coast, Australia.

Talking about constriction in Chile, many experts and engineers say that Chile one of the best, not the best, country to learn about construction. Chile had 611 earthquakes in the past 365 and the building are undestroyed. The world as well as engineers can truly learn from Chile´s constructions. For example, Chile experience 8.3 earthquake on September 16, 2015 and the buildings were virtually undestroyed. Only 13 people died, 12 on the coast due to Tsunami and 1 in the city because of truly unfortunate event. 200 boats were destroyed, but 0 buildings. That is an impressive number for 8.3 earthquake.

Accordion is a huge part of culture and life in Chiloe. People play accordions in pubs, on the streets or at home. Big majority of traditional songs are perfect for accordions. It is very folk type of music, which perfectly fits in the overall folk and mystery culture in Chiloe.

As part of the excursion, we went to a museum of accordions. Believe or not, they had accordions from 1920s from countries like Italy, Germany, France or Czechoslovakia. Some of the accordions were 15 KGs (33.2 lbs) heavy, which is a lot of weight if you have to play for the whole evening and a night.

After presentation of accordions, one of the musicians played a short a short solo on the accordion:

Castro is the biggest city in Chiloé and on the last day, the sun finally came out, after three days of fog and rain. Because the nature is many times hard to capture just by picture, here are two videos of our walk on the beach on the morning before breakfast: