Saturday, February 28, 2004

Taking Care of Business

Ok, the partying has been great and all (hey it is summer time down here- what else am I supposed to do?), but it is getting down to that time for me to take care of business and do what I am here to do...

I went to my first Rotary meeting on Wednesday. It was the Vitacura club in Santiago- it is an all-mens club who also happen to be ex-Pinochet army men. Very interesting. The first thing I was shown when I walked into the Military Club (a building that was built to be Pinochet´s house but never was because he got booted out of power) was a huge painting of the man himself. (Pinochet vs. Allende is a huge topic here and no one is hush-hush about their opinion...but that is another blog entirely.) Of course, he was topic of conversion at some point in the night...

But back to the meeting- it wasn´t really a real meeting, it was more of a Welcome Dinner. Decent food, great dessert, nice men, but the best part about it was the view from the Military Club. The night was surprisingly clear and all of Santiago was visible. It was breathtaking. Too bad I didn´t have my camara. Too bad I haven´t used it once because I haven´t read the manual yet.... I know, I know. I work on that this weekend.

Anyways, there was supposed to be an exchange of Rotary club flags, but there wasn´t really since I didn´t bring mine (I didn´t know I was supposed to). So I just got a flag. (This is a Rotary traditional- when there is a visitor from another Rotary club, they exchange the club flag as a momento of who came or where a person went.) I am sure that by the end of the year I will have many.

Next week, I will go to the big celebration of the 99th birthday of Rotary. I am sure it will be a pretty good night...I´ll let you know.

Short Blurb About the Culture

Chileans have a habit of saying they will do something (because they really do want to do it) but then not telling you that they really can´t (because they really don´t want to not do it). They are actually a very diplomatic culture- they don´t ever really say no straight up. It´s interesting.

posted by Rebecca @ 2/28/2004 10:27:00 AM