Our Tour Guide Through Chile

As soon as we got to Chile we had no idea how it was going to compare to being in Argentina. We walked off the plane and saw a woman holding a sign that said Bryant University. This was our tour guide Francisca! Before we started any of our adventures we got to learn a little bit about her background. She was born in Arlington, Virginia and moved to Chile when she was about eight years old. She learned a lot of her Spanish from speaking with her parents but she also went to an elementary school in a Latin neighborhood so she was able to learn a lot through going to school. She was influenced to learn about the history of different places in Chile because her mother was very into it. She has never done any classes for tourism but has been in the industry for two years and does a lot of research through taking tours herself. Her biggest reason for knowing so much was that she had a lot of pride in her country.

Francisca always kept us moving around the city. From the beginning we were doing walking and boat tours around the city. Through Viña del Mar and Santiago we did many activities that everyone enjoyed and did not have much down time to be bored. From speaking with a few of the students on the trip it was easy to tell that we would not have been able to travel and learn as easy as we did without Francisca. Dustin thought she was very enthusiastic and enjoyed learning from her and asking her questions. Michael loved that Francisca was so informative and could answer any question that she asked. Liam though she was very helpful in getting us around the city and always making sure that we were having a good time. Although we were always on the move and may have just wanted to spend the day sleeping, we were happy to have all of the experiences that we did while we were here. 

              Everyone has enjoyed their time with Francisca and we will be sad to not only leave the city but to leave our tour guide that has helped us had an amazing time while in Chile. She allowed us to learn about her country in a way that made us wanted to stay here and that made some people even think about studying abroad in Chile for a semester. We thank her for everything that she has done for us and hope she gets to continue doing what she loves in her city.