Besides visiting Chiloé’s biggest attractions like city Castro, Museums, UNESCO churches or National Park, we did a volunteer work as well. We were painting classrooms in local elementary school.

The day started very early in the morning because we had drove to the school. When we arrived to school, we lined up and introduced ourselves and the states we are from. I felt some of the younger kids were very confused how we are all from United States, but we came from different states. The older kids were repeating the states after us. Then we grouped into four different groups (they had only four classrooms). We got the paint and all the equipment needed for the job and we started to paint. We were painting for about 2 and half hours. Then we took off for lunch. When we came back we painted the second coat. We also had a lot of candies and some students were not big into painting, so they played football (soccer) with local boys. It was greatly spend day and good feeling to help some few children at Chiloé Island.

I was in group with another Hope College student Amie Hixon ’18, so we took this picture.

Chiloé Island is in the northern part of Patagonia, but it is a birth place of potatoes. Experts say that from Chiloé, the small island very south of rest of the world, potatoes were spread around the globe. There is about 400 different types of potatoes in Chiloé. I had the chance to taste only 4 or 5, but the taste was extraordinary and completely different than the potatoes we are used to in United States or Europe.

Secondly, this island is know for its magical stories, legends and myths. Something like the Loch Ness Monster, but in much greater scale. There are tons of legends and myths about all different types of monsters.

Besides an unique and absolutely beautiful nature, the island has a lot of churches and few of them are under the protection of UNESCO. They were built in 18th or 19th century, and they are all wooden.

Lastly, the Choloé is extremely fertile soil and rich nature, especially sea food. They have saying that if one is starving in Chiloé, it is because one is LAZY. People in Chile are able to grow 400 different types of potatoes. Out tour guide told us, that if a person goes a off shore to the Pacific ocean. One does not need any nets. One can just grab muscles and oysters with bare hands.

I have not included many pictures to any previous post about Chiloé, because I wanted to put the all in one post.

Castro is the capital of the Chiloé Province in the Los Lagos Region and the largest city in Island. The city is about 165.1 sq. miles and it has population of 41,667 based on 2012 census. It was established in 1567 and is the third oldest city in whole Chile.

The city is interesting because of those few sights: The Regional Museum of Castro, Plaza de Armas with Gamboa (church) or Nuestra Senora de Gracia, which is a churched built in 1886 and is protected by UNESCO.

But the number one attraction or scenery is this following picture:

The contrast of colors is simply beautiful, people all around the world come to Castro to see this. Actually, if you Google “Castro, Chiloé” and you click on images, the first pictures that come out are these ones. Also, what is very interesting, despite that very extreme weather, especially during the winter times, all the houses are build from wood. There is not central heating system, so individual households are completely responsible for themselves.

The National Park of Chile in Chiloe is besides absolutely amazing nature and view, is also very well known for extreme weather conditions. Actually their conditions are so extreme that brands like Patagonia and North Face are testing their new gear here, before they start to sell it. These are the pictures from the park during a beautiful weather.

but with our luck, we get to experience why North Face and Patagonia tests their gear here.

It was not just raining, but the had very strong and cold wind from the Pacific Ocean. In November, this kind of weather normal, but I was walking with another student that studies in Michigan, and our conversation was as following.

“Do you also complain about the cold winters in Michigan?”

“Yes, but not anymore.”

The rain, temperature, and wind created really brutal conditions and some people say that study abroad makes people realize about what they want to do. Well, I definitely do not want to Patagonia or North Face tester and be send here during winter.

My next couple posts will be about our trip to Patagonia. Patagonia is very westernized and commercial term. When we spoke to the locals, they do not really recognize Patagonia, but here is the clarification from multiple points.

What is Patagonia?

When people, usually in Western World, talk or say they are going to Patagonia, they mean the region around Punta Arenas.

Where does Patagonia actually start?

In Chile, Patagonia starts by Chiloé island and ends around Ushuia. There is Northern and Southern Patagonia. For example Chiloé, the island where we went is in Northern Patagonia, but Punta Arenas is in the southern Patagonia.

In other words anything south of Chiloé island until the end of south America is Patagonia. It is in two countries, Chile and Argentina, and both are spectacular.

Lastly, I am not a big outdoor person, but I have to say that Patagonia is truly amazing and if you have the chance, than you should definitely visit it!

The grading system in Chile is very different than we are used to in the United States. The system ranges from 0-7, while 7 is the best and 0 is the worst. There are couple interesting facts about it:

• 7 is the best as you can get and it is very rare if someone gets. It is like getting A+ in United States.
• To get 6 is still relatively hard. 6 equals A- grade in United States.
• 5 is much more common grade than 6. A lot of students get 5, which would be B- in United States.
• 4 is the passing grade in Chile. Anything bellow 4 is considered as “not passing” or “failing”. It would be the C- or some case C range in United States.
• 3 is a very poor grade and not passing. 3 is like getting a D or D-.
• 2 is an F or E.
• 1 is also an F or E.

But most students do not get round numbers like 4, 5 or 6. They get grades like 4.8, 5.2 or 6.4:

• 7-6 – A range (6.5=A for example)
• 6-5 – B range (5.5=B for example)
• 5-4 – C range (4.5=C for example)
• 4-1 – C to F range.

Lastly, in a lot of classes, at least in my university, students do not start at 0 but at 1. So to give example, let’s say that your average grade is 4.8. But your final grade is 5.8 (4.8 + 1). It may seem like a big help, but professors in Chile grade much harder, so it is very common that the best grade is 5.2 a B- in United States.

This class was the most interesting I ever had. I had the class on Tuesday and Friday from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. and the whole idea was to improve local business. In the beginning we created groups of four students. My fellow group members were from United States, Czech Republic, Germany, and Belgium. We picked local restaurants for our company study. We went there and observed how things work, communicating, taste of the food etc. Then we met as the group and created about 40 questions and we went to to interview the owner and staff. Also we created a surveys for the customers and restaurant staff to fill out, so then we could compare the differences.

Next step was a presentation in front of the class about the problems we identified and how we plan to solve them. Since we had roughly 9 different groups and one presentation was about 45 minutes, the whole classes were only presentations. The next step to ways to solve the problems and create the final presentations about how much improvement we have made.

In our case, we gave the waitresses a presentation how the serve customers from different countries. For example in Chile it is normal to wait one hour and half for a bill when once ask for it, which is unacceptable in Europe or the United States. Also, we created an incentive program for loyal customers and customers that spend more than an average, because they did not have any. Lastly, we showed them the results of the surveys that the customers filled compare to what the personal thought.

I thought it was very valuable because my whole class was about communicating with Chilean business owner and just generally experiencing “real life” business culture. It was completely different business type experience than in regular business class where I would be studying formulas and reading a lot of books. It was very “real life” oriented class.

International Marketing was on Tuesdays and Fridays from 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. It was not the most convenient class, since I was living 25 minutes by bus from the school, so I had to wake up at 6:30 to get ready, eat a breakfast, shower, and walk to the bus station. I have to plan with an extra time because Santiago is such a big city, which makes it unpredictable, so sometimes the ride took 20 minutes, but many times even 40 minutes. Depends on the time of the day, but in morning it was usually 25 minutes.

The professor for the class has MBA from University of South Carolina and he worked in United States for Goodyear and Johnson & Johnson.  During the class we had:

1. 2 business cases (individually, 6 pages single-spaced)
2. 2 tests
3. Final Marketing project

The final Marketing project was very interesting. We had to pick a foreign product or service and make a plan, where we had to argue why it would have a big success on Chilean Market. Our group of 4 students (Czech Republic, France, Canada, and Netherlands) picked Lululemon, which was a great choice because Chile has a lot of different landscapes like mountains (Patagonia), beaches (surfing capital is in Chile), desert (Atacama), etc. And for multifunctional sport wear brand it is like a heaven.

The first class that I signed up for was International Business. I had this class on Tuesday and Thursday from 11:20 to 12:50 and we had “lab” on Wednesday from 9:40 to 11:20. The “lab” is very different than Biological or Chemistry lab. Usually, we had few speakers and the Teacher Assistants (TA) were explaining projects and cases. Most of the times the “lab” functioned as a class to go over technical things. Our Tuesdays and Thursdays we had our regular class, which included:

1. 8 business cases (6 pages long, single-spaced in groups of 6)
2. Executive interview
3. Chilean commercial project
4. 2 tests

Normally, the professor was presenting the theory during Tuesday’s class and then we had a business case due by Wednesday 9:40 p.m., where we had to use the theory. During the Thursday’s class we had a class discussion about the case and correct solutions.