A Canadian, a Brit, three (North) American girls and a Chilean.
On our first day of classes, they filled our heads with a all kinds of ideas about the various ways that Chileans would try to manipulate, rob and take advantage of us (slashing backpack straps with knives and snatching bags; throwing yogurt on tourists so that they will be distracted long enough for the thief to grab their wallets; lingering outside ATMs, ready to pray on unsuspecting foreigners, and so on and so on). Although I see the obvious necessity in being cautious, I'm not prone to paranoia and I don't intend to spend my entire time in Chile living in fear that everyone I meet in this country is trying to get me. I believe in a balance of being aware without being tense on edge all the tiem. Thus far, all of the Chileans I have interacted with have bent over backwards to help me out in any way possible. One man literally gave me his shirt (albeit not the one off his back) to help me clean up some orange juice I spilled in the train station. I have come to find that Santiagans are lovely people. All of them, that is, except a certain kind of Santiagan...the taxi driver. Now, to clarify, my experience with Chilean taxi drivers has been limited and I haven't completely given up hope that there are some perfectly decent and honest taxi drivers somewhere in this beautiful country...I just haven't met one yet.
Last night, we just barely missed the metro AGAIN and we're forced to take a taxi to our friend's apartment after we attempted and failed to figure out the bus system (which runs much later than the metro). I already learned (from our last experience) to always ask, "¿Cuanto va a costar?" or "How much will it cost?" before you get in the taxi at all. He told me that, for the three of us, he would charge $4000 (about eight dollars USD) for a ride from Bellavista to Provedencia. It seemed a little high by Chilean standards, but it was going to work out to less than $3 USD each so I wasn't that worried about it. When we got inside, we noticed that his meter wasn't even on. He claimed that it was "dead" but who knows if that was true or if he just turned it off so we wouldn't see how much the ride was actually suppose to cost.
When we got to our destination, we took out some money to pay and he looked back at us and said "Cinco mil"...five thousand. "No" I said, "You told us four thousand..." He started to argue with me, claiming that he had even been holding up five fingers at the time. Then, after sternly telling him a second time, "No, nos dijo cuatro mil." He finally threw his hands up, "Ok, cuatro mil.", as if to say "Okay, you caught me."
I guess living here will be a good lesson in standing up for myself when it comes to people (so far, just taxi drivers) trying to take advantage of the fact that I'm so clearly a gringa. I'm sure having my 6'4" tall roommate with me didn't hurt either. "I have a giant Canadian man...and I'm not afraid to use it."
The rest of our night was really fun, we hung out at a friend's for a while and then went back to Bellavista for drinks and dancing. We finally got home around seven this morning, just in time to catch a few Zs before forcing myself out of bed for farmer's market this afternoon, which by the way was AMAZING. Produce here is SO cheap, it is fabulous.
I basically spent most of my day laying around, eating fruit and messing around online. Oh yeah, and napping. I also started reading a book called The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner which is really great so far. Tomorrow, hopefully I'll be able to muscle out my entire lesson plan for my first day of teaching on Tuesday (eek!) and get all of my reading done and my visuals for the lesson made up. Time to get some rest. ¡Chau!
