Purple Addiction

Aladdin pants update: I just bought a pair in purple. You know how I can´t resist anything in purple. In related news, I also bought another purple shirt the same day I bought the pants - it´s an addiction, I know. Aladdin Pants Count is now officially 2. Purple Clothing Count is uncountable.

Canceling Each Other Out

Scratch my direction-giving glory. I went out to dinner with my mom in the Los Leones region of Providencia (one of the few regions that I actually know pretty well in Santiago), and I got tipsy/drunk off of a mere Pisco sour and a mojito. With food in my system, mind you. I wasn't kidding you when I told you I was a lightweight. Because of this, me and my mom embarked on a huge drunken loop to search for the 104/212 bus stop, even though it's on one of the main streets, and basically, impossible to miss. What should have taken five minutes took twenty. Also, my mom wanted to put a little bit of money on her Bip! card, and couldn't fully communicate with the lady at the Metro, and I had to do it while I was tipsy. And if you think my Spanish is lacking sober, it is a nightmare with a few drinks in the system. I ended up not hearing basically anything/if I heard something, I couldn't understand it. So what could have been a simple, "Señorita, your mom needs to put a minimum of 1000 pesos on her Bip! card" turned into a Qué/Otra vez/Repite porfa marathon. 

Tonight was not one of my proudest nights, let's put it that way. And yes, you can cancel out the epic direction-giving moment I had last week. Chucha.

Look Who's Giving Directions Now

Last week, two women came up to me and asked me for directions. I couldn't believe my ears - someone was asking me for directions?? It's usually - and by usually, I mean always - the complete  opposite. I have two theories why these women decided to trust me as their impromptu GPS:

1) There was hardly any one else on the street, and thus, they had no choice but to ask me.

AND/OR

2) I was wearing my Aladdin pants, which automatically makes me climb up three points on the Chilean look-alike scale.

Not only did they ask me for directions, I actually knew where they needed to go. One of the few areas of Santiago that I actually know. Directional competency is such a rare event for me, and thus, always a huge treat. It's like the eclipse of the moon. Or a four-leaf clover. Or getting more than a microwaveable rock (from Barnes and Noble, always) for Chanukah. Or seeing the Tooth Fairy. This was huge.

"Sigan al derecho, como una cuadra o más," I told them. "Después, hagan una izquierda en Regina Pacis, y a la derecha en Jaime Guzmán. Caminen una cuadra más, y estarán en Elecer Parada." 

Now I know I will still constantly continue to get lost in Santiago, but I will always have that day, that small victory, that one tiny boost of the navigational ego. And no one can take that away from me. Unless I forget about this moment, which, knowing my memory, is entirely possible. 

Commonalities and Universalities

So even though I'm in a foreign country, there are a few things that remind me of home:

1) At night in Viña (a cute beach town 2 hours out of Santiago), when I look out onto the ocean and the houses, it looks like the San Francisco Bay at night.

2) In Providencia, a part of Santiago, there is a man on the corner that I've seen waving an ambiguous-looking book and shouting various incomprehensible things about whatever organized religion he belongs to. This instantly makes me think about Yoshua (and many other characters) at Berkeley. By the way, I still can't believe he wears the same shirt every day with his name on the front (in English) and back (in Hebrew) - he either has about 20 duplicates of this shirt or a really efficient laundry system. 

3) Awkward-looking tweens trying to dress and act cooler than they actually are. But then again, that's pretty much a universal occurrence.

Speaking about universalities, I've realized that no matter what country I go to, I will always see at least one old man (most likely with chicken legs) jogging on the street with horrendously short and tacky sports shorts, circa 1982.  Important note: 92% of the time, this combats any sort of homesickness that is in my system at that moment. Home sweet home, baby. 

Retainer? Check. Rain Jacket? Fuck

So for the first week of vacation (last week), I went to southern Chile with some EAP-ers (Tessa, Cara, Cassie, and Sonya) to see what it had to offer. And man, it didn't disappoint. We stayed in Puerto Natales for the first few days, which is a cute town that kind of serves as a launching point for everyone that wants to see Patagonia. On one of those days, we hiked up Torres del Paine (about 9 hours roundtrip), and although it was definitely strenuous at times (my joints would occasionally engage in screaming matches at me, especially the last hour and a half on the way there, where we had to continuously climb up these big rocks), it was all worth it for the view at the top. It was definitely strange going from one extreme climate to the next - in Santiago, it's so hot that my face is starting to look like a Before person in a Proactiv commercial, because my constant schvitzing is making me break out like no other. In the south of Chile, it's cold, rainy, windy, and unpredictable. Which means that your rain jacket is your best friend. Unfortunately, because we had to wake up at 4:45 AM to do the Torres del Paine hike, I was still halfway between dreamworld and reality, and thus, forgot to bring my rain jacket. Twenty minutes into our 2 1/2 hour ride to the start of the hiking trail, I realized that I had left it at home. By then, it was impossible to go back because a) we were on a tight schedule and b) that would have been annoying as fuck. So the whole ride, all I'm thinking about is that I'm going to be cold and wet and freeze my ass off while hiking. Fuck. Shit shit shit. Shit fuck. Fuck shit shit shit. Is all I'm thinking to myself. And you know when you do something so flaky, all you can think about is how dumb you are? And how easily it would have been to just have your shit together? Not good for the self-esteem. Which, in related news, I bought tickets to Buenos Aires the 27th (after my parents leave Santiago) to the 1st (when all the EAP-ers have to be back into Santiago), thinking that I would have a good 4 or 5 days there. Cara soon wisely and intelligently pointed out to me that the month of February doesn't work like that. And then it all hit me: February does not have 31, does not have 30, does not even have 29 most years, days in the month. So now I have to re-schedule my tickets on LAN for another date so I don't lose some money. But I digress. 

So recap: I forgot the most important item of clothing one could take up into the mountains. Then, ten minutes after discovering that I left my rain jacket, I realized that the ziploc bag that had my toothbrush, paste, and retainer in - the bag I was holding right before the shuttle came to pick us up - was in my backpack. So, I realized that in my moment of utter and complete disorientation and stupidity at 5:30 AM in the morning, I had somehow packed the most random thing you could ever pack up for a trek up the mountains without even realizing that I was wasting space in my backpack with something I didn't even need. So the joke of the trip revolved around the fact that I brought the least useful thing ever for a hike up Torres (a retainer) and left the most important thing at home (the infamous and absent rain jacket). So when you see a picture of me tagged on Facebook holding up a retainer, you'll know it's not because I'm a strong advocate of orthodontia. I ended up surviving the hike because the driver was nice enough to lend his own rain jacket to me, which I am forever grateful for. 

Oh yeah, and I got to see penguins (allegedly about 150,000 that live on the island) the last day of the trip. It did not disappoint.

For those of you guys too lazy to read this whole blog entry (hell I can understand, I've been known to be quite verbose sometimes) my trip can be summed up in these words and phrases: cold, rain, wind, early mornings, long days, beautiful landscape (¡paisaje!), amazing views, clouds, a present retainer, an absent rain jacket, a borrowed rain jacket, wine, pasta, macaroni and cheese that I thought was bomb after our hike because I was so hungry, actually upon second thought mildly disgusting, Pisco sours, chocolate, waterproof pants that made me look like an oompa loompa with a bubble butt, realizing brown and red articles of clothing don't really match that well, penguins, sunsets, a bus ride with a horribly mediocre Vin Diesel movie, damn it feels good to be a gangsta, "subiendose las piedras como arañas," enjoying the Torres del Paine view for only 10 minutes because it got so rainy and windy all of a sudden that we had to climb down before the rocks got too slippery, cute, warm, and friendly hostels, meeting a David Beckham look-a-like, packing the equivalent of a 15-year-old teenage boy's lunch for the hike (chorizo, salami, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, jugo, trail mix, breakfast bars, crackers galore), glaciers and  their respective moments, red onesie space suits, cute stray dogs, bus rides, boat rides, a zodiak ride, and reveling in the beauty of Patagonia.

Cultural Immersion

I feel like one of the reasons that people like studying abroad is that it is socially acceptable for them to wear ridiculous clothes under the pretext that they are truly immersing themselves and trying their best to get to know the culture.

Why does this come to mind right now? Because I'm wearing a South American version of what looks like a sweater your grandma would knit for you for the holidays (my mom just gave it to me from Ecuador), and I own one pair of new-age Aladdin pants that are all the rage right now. I've been eyeing the purple version of these pants for quite some time now, so why don't we just go ahead and make the Aladdin Pants Count two.

Studying abroad: Where the Worst-Dressed List becomes the Most Culturally Saavy List. Hey, I'm a fashion disaster anyway - I'm not complaining.

¡Pokemones, Emos, y Góticos, oh my!

There are various types of young people in Santiago. Here are some groups/categories:

1) Los Pokemones: They´re basically like punks/hipsters/scenesters, etc. And yes, it does come from the word "Pokemon." Don´t ask me why they chose that word to describe themselves.
2) Los Emos: Pretty self-explanatory. "La vida es tan cruel blah blah blah."
3) Los Góticos: Goths. Although I still feel like they're pretty similar to emos. Yes, I know, the main stereotypical difference is that the emos are more depressed, and the goths are more angry. Anyway, it doesn´t matter, if I could venn diagram the two, I´m sure there would be a huge overlap.
4) Los Cuicos: Rich, stuck-up Chilenos.
5) Los Flaités: If someone is flaité, that means that they´re gangsta, but not in the same way it means in the U.S.: "Hey I'm a white person from the suburbs and I want to dress like I've have street cred and I've been through shit. Do you think this new Sean John outfit from his spring collection that I bought with my mom's credit card makes me look legit?" Flaité has a more negative connotation here. 

Speaking of Pokemones and other groups, me and some EAP people went to a punk club called Blondie´s a few weeks ago (unfortunately, not the same as the Bay Area pizza joints). There were different dancing rooms to different music, but what was most fascinating and amusing to me is that most of the people that went to the club were punks, but in the dancing room that we were dancing in (the biggest dancing room in the club, and totally packed), they had no shame, and in fact, reveled in, dancing to Madonna and other 80s and 90s-tastic artists. My favorite song of the night that they danced to? "I´m Too Sexy." 

They would totally be disowned by the punks in the U.S.

Google Maps That Shit

One of the many important things I learned here is that of all the people in Santiago, it´s the Taxi drivers that are the worst at directions. They´re even worse than me (and it is basically genetically inscribed in me to not know how to get somewhere). You think that of all the people in Santiago, it would be the Taxi drivers that know where they´re going. Unfortunately, this couldn´t be further from the truth. I´ve lost count of the amount of times the driver has asked me where my destination is located, pulled out a huge booklet of Santiago to study the various maps inside, gotten lost, or pulled up to the side of the street to ask other locals for directions. And it´s not rare if they do this all in one ride. When they ask me where my destination is located, I just have to shake my head and laugh, because I can´t help but think that that´s like a doctor asking you what you think is wrong with you after you´ve layed out all of the symptoms for them. It´s a good thing I have a sense of humor about this (although with a much emptier wallet then before), because otherwise me volveré loca.

Igualmente

So I was talking to some girl in the EAP program about the whole shenanigans with the taxi driver, in which it cost 2500 pesos, and he didn´t give me change for a 5000 peso note. And she told me that she realized after a while that the reason she didn´t get change back either is that they don`t really believe in giving that much change.

Mystery solved.

And then a couple of days ago, guess who ends up being my taxi driver? The old man I was arguing with a couple of weeks ago! "Well this is awkward," I thought. And it definitely kind of was. Because he without a doubt remembered me. And I remembered him. Silence. "Treinta cinco cero nueve Holanda," I tell him in my best version of Gringa Spanish. He nods. But I could tell he was thinking,"Yeah, I know. And you could have told me that correctly last time!" Silence. Driving. More silence. Dogs barking in the streets. Driving. More silence. Finally, we get to my apartment, and I hand him exact change. I was so proud that I had it. And I say, "Gracias, señor. Que tenga una buen noche." And he says "Igualmente." We both smiled. And it was just this moment of tacit truce and mutual respect. Ok, maybe not mutual respect, but definitely truce. From that moment, that it would be tranquilo having him as my taxi driver again.

Love!! What is it Good For?? Absolutely Something

So when I realized that South America had opposite seasons than the States, I was ecstatic for 2 very important reasons:

1) I would get to celebrate my 21st birthday twice
2) I would get to skip Valentine´s Day, aka ¨Hey pathetic, lonely single person! You don´t have a significant other to spend the day with?? That´s so sad! So what is it about you that makes people want to stay far away from you? What´s your love repellant? Here, have a chocolate my boyfriend gave me (He´s so sweet by the way, we´re totally going to get married! We met last March at a softball game...), it will totally make you feel better!" Day.

Two weeks before I left for Chile, I brought up these two very exciting prospects to my mom, and she turns to me and goes,¨"Hon, they have opposite seasons, not opposite months. That´s not how it works in the world."

Damnit.

It wouldn´t have even mattered anyway what months I spent in Chile because there is so much PDA here that every day IS Valentine´s Day. So, with that being said, Happy early Valentine´s Day, everyone. And if you´re single, make chocolate and cheap champagne your boyfriend or girlfriend for the day - it totally worked for me last year.

And to end on a deep note, there's nothing more important than loving yourself. There´s something to be said about finally believing in yourself, as well as coming to the conclusion that you are kind of a big deal. It´s a beautiful feeling. In fact, I`ve tested this hypothesis "Jenn Lerner is really cool" quite a number of times, and it´s been proven so much that it`s literally now scientific law. So this year, I'm toasting to self-love. And yes, I understand that you can take this stream of thought straight to the gutters, yuh pervs.

Winning the Lottery

My daily life in Santiago right now consists of:

Waking up at the ass crack of dawn (ok, I'm a drama queen, 7:00 AM) to go on a run because it's so fucking hace calor here, hearing chiropos (whistles) from the construction workers going to and from school (I actually get offended when they DON'T whistle to me because I wonder what it is about my look that day that isn't up to par), 4 hours of Intensive Language Program (half of it spent daydreaming about either taking a nap or eating manjar...or eating manjar AND then taking a nap), not doing the ILP homework and hoping my teacher Sonya doesn't cold call me, trying to finish all the rica comida my host mom feeds me, drinking water, riding the micro and/or the metro (¡Tarjeta BIP!), walking a lot, sweating, applying deodorant (all natural no-aluminum baby), drinking water, sweating some more, washing my face, realizing that washing my face is a completely useless activity because I sweat so much anyway it doesn't even matter, talking to at least 5 chileans to try to figure out how I can get to the place that I need to go, eating helado from one of the roughly 8 million mini-markets here (it's all about Danky's Blanco y Negro), drinking water, sweating some more, camping out at a local internet cafe, or going over to someone else's house to mooch internet, wanting to carretear but not having time, looking for a new house/department to live at, planning for vacation, trying to look like an authentic Chilena by wearing new age MC Hammer/Aladdin pants that are all the rage right now, learning as many Chilenismos as I can, and overall enjoying my crazy adventures in Chile. :)

Also, when I'm riding the micro, whenever I get to sit down, I feel like I've just won the lottery.

Trein.....ta y cin.....co, ce.....ro nue....ve"

I took a taxi home a couple of days ago, and it was only natural that the necessary shenanigans ensued. I told him my address (Treinta y cinco, cero nueve Holanda) literally 8000 times, and my accent must have been that horrendous, because he kept asking me to repeat it. Literally, so many times. So many times, in fact, that you could have made a drinking game out of it. It would have gotten you drunk in under 5 minutes or less, money back guranteed. Finally he stops and says "Ya." (which kind of means, "This is it/We´re here," if my gringa translation is correct). The house was definitely not my house. "Treinta y uno Holanda" ("3100 Holanda) he says to me. "God, how fucking shitty must my Spanish be?!?" I thought. So I have to tell him one more time that it´s 3509 Holanda. Finally, he gets to my house, and the pay meter says $2500 pesos, so I give him $3000, and he doesn´t give me any change back. (In Chile, you´re not supposed to tip the taxi driver). So then I tell him that he needs to give me change back, and soon a mini-debate/argument ensues. I wish I could tell you what he said to me, but he talked so fast that I had no idea what he was saying. And I kept repeating, the same thing in Spanish, "But I gave you $3000 pesos, and it cost $2500!" And he kept saying what sounded like the same thing in Spanish. Back and forth. Back and forth. Like a tennis match. A shitty ass tennis match. A shitty tennis match with incomprehensible words. So finally, I give up, and say thank you, have a good night, etc etch, and he´s just shaking his head as I´m getting out of the cab. Obligatory Gringa Moment Count: 26.

Speaking of being a gringa, there are 2 things that I am ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS at (but slowly improving upon) here. They are:

1) Numbers: Since the peso is so devalued compared to the dollar, things here usually end up costing a few hundred pesos. You try understanding "Tres mil, ochenta, siete y cuatro" at the drop of a dime. No pun intended. So, especially in the beginning, but a little less now, I would just give them the next higher bill for what the ballpark figure for what I thought I heard, and hope that they don´t rip me off. I´m sure it´s already happened a few times though. Hell, it happened with my fucking taxi driver, and I actually was aware of it!
2) Directions: Oh directions. Directions are confusing enough in English: ¨You walk 4 blocks down, take a soft left, cross the street, go down one block, and find the blue building next to the coffee shop. Go to the second floor, walk down the hall, and the thrid door to your right is where you want to be." Try doing that in Spanish. Not to mention the cruel fact that ¨Derecho" ("straight ahead") sounds almost the exact same as ¨Derecha" ("To the right"). So I usually end up asking roughly 5 people every time I´m lost where I need to be, with the hopes that if I ask enough people, I will be able to pick up enough important words from the conversation to put the puzzle together.

Qué lindo.

"We´re Not Going to the Beach"

So back to Viña. I went to "the beach" last weekend, but in fact, never left Chancho´s house at all. Everyone ended up hanging out at the beach house all weekend so we never ended up going to the playa. Lucho, one of Cassie´s neighbors, end up driving me, her, and her other neighbor Aníbel to Viña, and we sang random songs all the way there. What´s embarrassing is that they know more American songs than both me and Cass combined. Aníbel would be playing a song on his guitar in the car, and then would tell us to start singing, and we would both sheepishly say, ¨Lo siento, solamente sé el coro" ("Sorry, I only know the chorus"). One of the songs we sang was "Billie Jean,¨ and when I sang the part that goes, "And the kid is not my son!" Aníbel asked me, "What exactly is Michael Jackson singing?" and when I translated for him, he said, "Oh, it sounds so much like "Quieres una manzana!" ("You want an apple?"). And when I sang it back again, I have to admit, it kind of does. Check it out. Also, in one of the Grease songs, ¨You´re the One that I Want,¨there´s a part in the chorus, that allegedly, according to Aníbel, sounds like they´re saying ¨Suck my dick" in Spanish, so when a DJ plays that song in the club, that part of the song has to be censored. That story completely made my day.

The first day at Viña (Saturday) consisted of...surprise surprise, fabulously slacking and hanging out in the house. We barbecued in the afternoon, and then a few hours later, some of their Chilean friends came over. Before the Chilean friends came over, Aníbel and Lucho asked if we wanted to play Pictionary, and we agreed. We would give them English words to draw, and they would give us Spanish words to draw. Naively, I thought it would just be a cute little Pictionary game, but immediately, they were like, "If you lose a round, you have to take a shot of Pisco out of the cap." Later, I learned that Pictionary is a pretty popular drinking game in Chile. What an intelligent drinking game, right? All of the popular drinking games in the States live up to the dumb American stereotype in comparison. Beer pong and flip cup apparently doesn´t cut it in Chile. The only problem with this game was that overall, me and Cass´s comprehension of Spanish was better than their English comprehension, so they would reject some words that we gave to them, and we would have to give them an easier word. So, literally almost every round, me and Cass had to take shots. After a handful of rounds, I had to stop, due to the very grave and serious condition of "Lightweight-itis.¨

So their friends came over and we stayed up pretty late - well, I should say THEY stayed up really late. I went to bed at a mere 3:30 in the morning, which apparently is considered "muy temprano" (very early) in Chile. Seriously, I´m not even kidding you, they stayed up until about 6:30 in the morning. Apparently, Chilenos take a nap from like 10-12, and then go out and party for the entire night. When I told all of them that parties in the States usually end around 2 or 3 in the morning, they looked at me like I was crazy. "Qué raro" (How strange) one of them said to me. At one random point during the night, Fona (Chancho´s girlfriend) called out to us: "Gringa Crew! Wake up!" The name immediately stuck, and now we are officially known as "Gringa Crew." I love it. The next morning, or should I say afternoon, most of them got up around 2 PM. A couple of hours after we got up, me, Cass, and Aníbel were sitting together and talking, and Aníbel turns to Cass, and says in English, with perfect delivery: "We´re not going to the beach." It was truly an epic moment. It was like hearing that Santa Clause didn´t exist (well, metaphorically for me - many scientific studies show that Jews are born hardwired with the knowledge that Santa Clause is a figment of the imagination...allegedly): Someone else had to tell you to make it official, but you always knew in the back of your mind that that was really the case.

Nonetheless, it was an amazing weekend, and I had a lot of fun. In fact, one of my favorite things about the weekend was teaching Cassie´s neighbors some English phrases, and them doing the same for us in Spanish. For example, "Ni teni ni un brillo" (literally translated as "You don´t have any shine") basically means you are really boring and don´t have a personality. "Filo" means "Never mind." Which they definitely used a lot on me. The conversation usually went like this: Jenn: ¿Espera - que pasó?" ("Wait, what happened?"). Aníbel and/or Lucho:¨Filo." "Bacán" means ¨Cool.¨And the most important one - "Huevón," means something like "Fucker." They call each other that all the time. It´s so endearing. We taught them stuff like, "Fo sho!" They LOVED that one. They also liked saying the phrase, "What the fuck?!?" and said it pretty much all weekend. We also taught them the words "Ice," "Crib," and, "Bachelor pad."

What can I say, it was cultural exchange at its finest.

Bra Nostalgia

So I went to Viña del Mar this weekend, but don´t ask me how the beach was - I didn´t go. I know what you´re thinking: how the fuck can someone go to a place as beautiful as Viña del Mar, and not go to the beach even once?!? I know, but I can promise you, it was an amazingly fun weekend, and I don´t regret it one bit. I ended up going with Cassie, her host brother Chancho and his girlfriend Fona, and her 2 neighbors Lucho and Aníbel (as in Hannibel Lector...what a, badass name). Viña´s about 2 hours away from Santiago, and let me tell you, those 2 hours make a difference. It was so nice and cool there - I actually had to put on some pants and a sweatshirt to, I don´t even know this concept after spending a week and a half in Santiago anymore, ¨keep warm.¨It was strange. We just ended up carreteando the whole weekend (Saturday and Sunday) - I literally didn´t leave the house once. I showed up to Cassie´s house on Saturday, hyper-enthused and ready to go what I thought was ¨the beach,¨dressed in the obligatory ready to swim outfit - bathing suit serving as the bra and underwear, with the tank top and shorts over it. And I didn´t even have my lame ass bathing suit that I had to buy in Santiago (because of the whole lost luggage situation) the week before! Oh, you want to hear this story:

So as you guys know, last week, I was sin maletas in the beginning because American Airlines and Avianca exhibited the mental capacity of a four-year-old in getting my luggage to the correct place. That first weekend, all the EAP-ers went on a weekend retreat to this mini hotel up in Maipu, where there would be swimming, hiking, orientating, and relaxing. Since I had literally no clothes that week, and because each day before the retreat, I kept getting promised that my luggage would come, I held off on buying a swimsuit. When Friday came, I was promised that my luggage would be in Santiago at 6 AM in the morning, and would be delivered to me by noon, about 2 and a half hours before I was supposed to board the bus to Maipu. 12:30 arrives, and I realize, like in past days, my luggage wasn´t going to come. So I book it to downtown Ñuñoa (about a 5-10 minute walk from my house) to go to a place that sold swimsuits. I try on a couple of them, and I see that all the tops are flimsy ass string bikinis, which were so crappy that even with my boobs, I knew there would be trouble in keeping those babies in. So I´m desperately searching for something secure, and the only thing I see is a tacky light blue top that literally has the same exact design of the first bra I ever bought. You know, the 12-year-old trainer bra. Kind of like the tricycle equivalent for lingerie. Girls, you know what I´m talking about. It has that mini-camisole type design, with no padding whatsoever (cold days really sucked back then), and skinny spaghetti straps. It was semi-disgusting, but I was desperate. So I go up and buy this light blue 12-year-old hot mess of a top, and a navy blue bottom, Old Navy style - mix and match, was THE SHIT back then. Hell, it still is. Any store that condones not being able to match your clothes, and in fact, encourages such activity, is my kind of store. And the lady goes, in Spanish of course, ¨You can´t buy that - you have to buy swimsuits in a pair.¨And I am desperately, and gringa-ly, pleading with this saleslady who was not having it, ¨Please, I´m so desperate, just let me buy these." And I can tell from the look on her face that she is thinking ¨They are not paying me enough to deal with this dumb extranjera." The pleading isn´t working, so I finally say, "Fine, I will buy the equivalent of 2 swimsuits, because I really need this swimsuit." All of this exchange is in horrendously broken Spanish of course. And then she looks at me like I´m fucking crazy, but you can´t argue with profit, so she decides to let me go through with this ridiculous transaction. So I buy "2 swimsuits" to get the equivalent of one shitty ass swimsuit, and because of that, I looked like a gross 12-year-old all weekend. It was a sight for sore eyes. Ay mamí is right.

Ok, I´m at an internet cafe, and it´s getting dark, so I should leave now so I don´t get mugged walking home. Oh the beauties of Santiago. I promise I will get to the Viña story next time. Ciao.