Three Stories

One. Internet Struggles.
You should have seen us this morning. I got up bright and early thinking madre and I were headed to the Apple store at 10:15AM sharp, since the wifi technician determined last night that the problem was with my computer and not the wi fi. The man had given me kind of a bad feeling, like he wasn't really doing everything he could, but I'm no expert, especially when everything is being discussed in Spanish. So we trusted his advice and had looked up the nearest Apple store and what time it opened. But then! I'm sitting there eating breakfast and madre's brother shows up! Maybe he has a car and he's driving us? Oh, but!  He whips out his computer! So madre didn't trust the technician either! His computer wouldn't connect to the computer either, so we spent 40 minutes on the phone with the wi fi company, me still finishing up breakfast both of us sitting there on the corner of the dining room table poring over two laptops endlessly clicking the connect button hoping that maybe this time it would work. Meanwhile madre is going about, offering us coffee, an extra chair, a sweater, clearing the table bit by bit, being the gracious host that she is. Finally we got through, and it's been working all day, so I hope the troubles don't come up again. (Ha. The second I finished that sentence, the internet stopped working again. Mess.)


Two. Supermercado Adventures
Intermediate Spanish went on an adventure to the grocery store for our homework after class! We walked in and whipped out our course packs and pens as our backpacks cut off all flows of traffic through the bread aisle. We began browsing and making lists of snacks and prices. But then, Ellie and I were looking for flour to bake our hypothetical cookies and a security guard/policeman approached us and sternly began jabbering in Spanish. Ellie began trying to tell him we were international students doing our Spanish homework, but we were clearly struggling with communication. A Chilean woman who could speak English interjected, asking us whether we were writing down prices. "Yes, we are!" we responded, "it's for our homework!" No, she quickly told us. Always say no, it's illegal here to write down prices. You could be arrested and deported. At this point the security guard was feeling pretty left out and turned to the Chilean woman, asking her if we were writing down prices. "No, no, no" she said and he bid us a good day and continued on. We thanked the Chilean woman, and FLED the store, pausing only to find the others and ensure that they hadn't already been arrested.


Three. Cawfee.
A few days ago, I was telling my host mom about my day, and told her that I went to get coffee in Santiago, and she was surprised since I hadn't been drinking the instant coffee at the house at all. I tried to explain to her that I'm used to coffee from a machine... but. Today I came home and found a large jug of instant Nescafe decaf coffee. It appears we miscommunicated a bit. And she was so excited to show me that she'd bought decaf for me. And as padre pointed out, it was even an American brand, Nescafe! I told them that I'd be fine drinking it, since they bought it for me, I'd be happy to drink it, but oh my oh my. I had my first cup and it was drinkable, so I suppose we'll be getting by. I'm going to keep needing my occasional real cup of coffee though.