Burger King, KFC, Subway or McDonald's?

Well the title pretty much says it all! Today after class a few of us decided to kick off the weekend by going to the nicest mall in all of Chile (I don't actually know this for a fact, but if it is not I would be greatly surprised). It is pretty close to us and is called Alto Las Condes, located on Avenida Las Condes. That is basically how things run. If you know of where you want to go and see a street named after it you are certainly heading in the right direction. As mentioned, four of us decided to go to this mall to pass some time and grab some lunch. The mall is strikingly similar to any mall you would see in the US, even comparable to the West Towne Mall, except nicer. After passing by stores such as Lacoste, Tommy Hilfiger, Levi's, Nike, Adidas, Brooks Brothers, Polo Ralph Lauren and my mom's favorite, Kenneth Cole, to name a few, we made it to the food court. This is where we were encountered with all of our "favorites": the BK Lounge, KFC, McDon's, Subway, Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Hut. Not only are all of these very American fast food chains, which other countries love to tease us about, but they are located in the "food court" in the mall. The Chileans do not actually have a word for this; they simply call it food court. Apparently they lack a bit of creativity in this field so they decided to not only Chilenise our restaurants but also simply take the whole words for food court, mall, pub, smoothie, etc.

The way they have their restaurants "Chilenised" is that they have the same restaurants, but they have the famous italiano for everything--the McPollo (McChicken) italiano, the Whopper Italiano, and I am sure there is a Pizza Italiano with the Italiano toppings: Tomato, Avocado and Mayo. Their famous snack, the completo italiano, is a hot dog with these very ingredients, and after getting tricked into eating my first one, I'm in no hurry to have another (especially a McPollo Italiano...). The picture above is of one of the restaurants called Doggis which only sells hot dogs with any type of condiment you could imagine.

On a different note, I took a few pictures of our campus today so I can avoid being the total nerd that I am when classes start and there are actually people around. But here is a nice little shot of our courtyard. I'll write more later! Ciao, amigos!