Cueca and Airplanes

There's no better way than starting the day off with cueca, the national dance of Chile. Dancing cueca requires two people, a man and a woman. The man is supposed to win over the woman with his dancing, and the movements of the dancers are supposed to resemble a rooster and a hen. The typical costume for the woman is a floral dress and the typical dress for the man is that of a cowboy. Cueca was actually rather difficult to learn! The foot movements were easy, but you had to move dance around in circles and in different ways. Although it wasn't easy, I feel proud knowing that I can dance the national dance of the country.

After cueca lessons, we had lunch and then made our way to Santiago again. This time we were visiting LAN, the international airline and largest company of Chile.

The planes have innovative technology with computers that can sense anything that makes a plane not "flight worthy." I knew that maintaining the planes was a lot of work but I never knew that the planes had to go through three different types of checks! During freshman year, I wrote a paper on the production and use of biofuels as an alternative to petroleum based fuels. So when I heard that LAN successfully completed a flight from Santiago to Concepcion entirely run on biofuel, I was really excited! Another engineering aspect that I thought was really cool was the use of the graphite composite material in the new Boeing 787 Dreamliners, the newest airplane that LAN has. The composite material is very lightweight, which makes the entire plane not as heavy as the older ones. This means that more passengers can be carried, which was evident by the nine rows of seats. Also, the composite material makes the environment within the airplane more comfortable because it retains moisture so the passengers won't get as dehydrated. After researching so much about this company, it nice to finally be able to visit the company and see the planes for myself.

Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day, but I'm very much looking forward to our visit to Vina Indomita. I can't wait to try the very popular and supposedly very delicious wine!