So, Wednesday, Ryan and I went out to eat with my usual Grammar buddies — Nicole, Paula, and recently Andrea. We had been thinking of a Thai restaurant but it was closed so we went to a nice pizza place. Turns out it was Gringo Night or something because half the restaurant was filled with other exchange students and a couple sets of parents. We ordered two pizzas named “The Mountain Chain” and “The Holy Spirit” (roughly translated into English, of course), a big salad, and I ordered some gnocchi, which I had never had before — little balls of potato pasta…pretty good tasting for pure starch.
Anyway, the whole point of all this is that Paula’s computer bag/backpack was stolen by a Jukebox Bandit. She was sitting across from me, against the wall and beside an old jukebox and put her bag in the corner of the wall and jukebox, to the back and side of her seat. The waiter brought our pizza and set “The Holy Spirit” between the table and the jukebox — effectively blocking Paula and her bag. Or not so effectively. We were eating and talking about politics and this guy came over to the jukebox and seemed to be having some difficulty choosing a song but finally got “The Long and Winding Road” playing. Nicole and Andrea were bobbing their heads to the music and he turned around in his seat and smiled and said in English “Good song?” A short while later, the massive group of other exchange students left and the couple that had been at the jukebox, or the guy, anyway. And shortly after that, Paula realized that her bag was missing.
The owner’s wife came over and said that she thought the couple had looked a bit shifty because he very closely resembled someone who had been in the night before that they had called the police on because he was acting so suspiciously. They thought it might be a brother or cousin or some relative. So, she helped us look around for the bag and called the police and then Paula and the owner went out in the street to see if they had ditched the bag in a bush or trash can or something after taking the money out. She had her cell phone, about 20 bucks, a credit card and her Chilean ID in her bag as well as her notebooks for Grammar and her writing class. After filing a report with the police, she used the phone at the restuarant to call her cell phone and Jukebox Bandit actually answered the phone! The conversation was something like this,
Paula: “Hola, where are you?”
Jukebox Bandit: “Hola. Who is this?”
Paula: “Paula. Where are you?”
Then Paula handed the phone to our waiter…
Our Waiter: “Hola. Where are you?”
JB: “blah blah blah”
Our Waiter: “At home? Where’s that?”
JB: We’re spending the money!!
And hung up.
Yeah…poor Paula…although it could just as easily been any of us at the table.
Yesterday, Thursday, we didn’t do much. Went out for coffee and inflated Ryan’s soccer ball and I met with my conversation partner, Katya. She’s really nice. We have the same boots. 
Today I actually had class….for the first time in like, 2 weeks. Geography and Anthropology and they were fine…boring as usual. My geography proff asked to see my notes to remind himself of where we were when we left off 2 weeks ago and then some other student, an older woman, thought the proff was borrowing my notes to refer to them when he wrote the exam, so she wanted to make a copy of my notes of the days that she had missed. I was like, “No…he’s not using them…” in my broken, Gringo spanish but she still took the notebook and made some copies. Good luck, since I write in English when I can’t think of the Spanish words. I don’t think Chileans should have to be borrowing notes from a Nerd Foreigner. They need to pull it together, seriously.
Today it was cold and semi-rainy all day. Poor Ryan. He runs his little heater in his room half to death just to stay comfortable. While I was in class this afternoon he ventured all the way down to the Centro and to the grocery store to buy himself some snacks. 
There’s a grocery store not to far from my place, about 4-5 blocks, but he got a bit turned around and just headed to the Centro since he knew there was a grocery store there. I know this makes no sense if you don’t know the layout of Vina, but he done good.
Hope it’s nice tomorrow so we can find a park or something to do outside.
