Learning Curve

Well, today was my first day of work. Sebastian arrived at 8:00 am this morning to show me how to get to work. I had to pay very close attention to where I was going, because it is the last time anyone will be guiding me to or from the office. Also, driving in Chile is much different than driving in the United States. For starters, the way merging onto the freeway works is very different. You have to stop before you can merge onto the freeway and make sure you have room, because the merge lanes are extremely short, and people drive very quickly. Also, you have to drive at the right times, because if you get stuck in traffic, it's much worse than traffic in the U.S. Also, busses tend to do what they want and drive where they want without any regard for anyone else on the road. It's very important to watch out for them, because they are definitely not watching out for me!
After arriving at work, Sebastian walked me through the warehouse and showed me all of the different products that the company manufactures and sells. (For those of you who don't know, the company has three main categories of products: Barrels, Staves, and Substitutes. Among these, there are French Oak and American Oak.) After showing me all of the different products and explaining a bit about them, Sebastian showed me how to access the government's database on the imports of products. There are many problems with the database though, because the codes that they assign to imports aren't always correct. (For example, the staves that are used to make the barrels and the staves that are used for sale are sometimes marked as the same product and sometimes different.) Each product is assigned an import code. So staves have one code, barrels have another, and substitutes have another. These codes are the same for each company, but oftentimes, the codes are mixed up or products get assigned the wrong code. So, I'm going through all of the import data from 2012 for all of the company's products and finding where the codes got mixed up or incorrectly assigned.
After I finish going through all of the import data for the company, I have to do the same thing for their major competitors. (Hopefully by then I will have a better idea of what I'm doing, so it will go quicker!) Finally, I will calculate our market share.
For lunch today some of my co-workers invited me to have lunch with them. Claudio, Alex, and Jose. They were very friendly and took me to a local market to buy some lunch. I bought a cookie sandwich that had dulce de leche in the middle and one half dipped in chocolate. It was amazing! Tomorrow they said that we would go to a different market and get lunch there instead of just snacks!
Over the weekend, I didn't have much to do. Saturday was a day called "Holy Day" in honor of St. Peter and St. Paul. We didn't do anything special, but most of the stores/shops were closed, so there wasn't much to do. Yesterday was the primary presidential elections, so everything was closed except the places where people went to vote. Again we didn't do much, but I watched Pirates of the Carribean (Piratas del Caribe) in Spanish which was kind of fun :)
I know there were no photos in this fairly long post, so next time I promise lots. Today was pretty exhausting though, and I didn't have much time to take any pictures. Anyway, thanks for reading and keeping up with me. Love to you all, and I hope you have a good week! Feel free to comment below or email me if you want more information on anything or want to hear more!

-Ryan