A Night to Remember

With my brain cells dying in equal proportion to the strands of hair I am losing each day, I am starting to realize how important it is to write things down if I wish to remember them. Therefore, for the sake of posterity, before I begin with a description of the wackiness that was tonight, I need to jot down a few notes for myself.

This was the weekend that I…
1) Met Ursula – don’t get any ideas as Ursula is probably mid-30s and married (and I am no homewrecker)… There could be more on this story pending the results of an interview this week.
2) Dug a bunch of holes for the Mapuches, and my back is STILL sore.
3) Bought a desk at the Bio-Bio; thank goodness for overly-eager students.
4) Cooked some awesome Mexican food; thank goodness for overly-eager students.
5) Received homework from my new Spanish professor; thank goodness for overly eager students’ boyfriends.

Which brings me to tonight… I may or may not expand on the stories above depending on how motivated I feel, and how interesting I think I can make them sound. For now, though, don’t worry if you don’t understand what I am talking about… Most people rarely do.

So after a pretty lazy day of getting up, responding to some emails, preparing some coursework for my classes, and trying to get rid of a sort of lingering morning cold, I spent much of the afternoon coloring the dull grey of the overcast day with a little humor compliments of Jerry Seinfeld. Having witnessed the coming and going of both Heloísa and André in the chair next to me, I figured that it might be a good idea to get up and be productive (although, I never consider chatting with some of my friend from home as a complete waste of time). Nevertheless, I went downstairs to my room to study my guidebooks on Chile for a little bit, feeling that with all my travel I had neglected to really uncover the hidden gems that still lay buried in my very own Santiago.

Shortly after delving into some pretty captivating commentary on the central fish-market, an entourage comprised of André (Portugal), Francisco (Chile), Amaury (France), and a couple private investigators marched over to my humble corner of the house, and proceeded to attempt to break into Adam’s (Oregon) room, which is right next door to mine. According to their search warrant (which was allegedly presented at the door, but the details of which seemed shady at best), Adam was suspected of robbing a house in Los Condes, the wealthy neighborhood located in the North-East of Santiago. The investigators had a list of items that had been stolen which comprised almost two type-written pages. While the investigators had demanded us to grant entry into Adam’s room, Adam had left the house and locked his door because he had supposedly gone to Mendoza for the weekend (under the auspices that he had a tourist visa and needed to leave the country every 90 days in order to keep it active).

Wanting to be as cooperative as possible, we tried in vain to pick the lock to Adam’s room, first with a key, then with a knife, then by trying to climb in through the window. After a number of failed efforts on our part, the investigators simply shouldered the door open to take a look around. While his room is only about 10’ x 8’ the investigators took about 45 minutes to search around the place, taking numerous photos and jotting various notes on their “official police business”-looking clipboards. They finally left after confiscating about 3 items from Adam’s room (one of which was a jacket. The others, I am not sure about) and telling us that Adam was not in Mendoza like we had thought, but was actually already in police custody.

We still are not sure whether Adam ever even made it to Mendoza, or even whether he actually committed the crimes for which he was being held. Nevertheless, before leaving, the investigators apparently told André and Francisco that Adam already had a previous record of theft in the U.S. What exactly that means, none of us are quite sure.

Considering that Adam is the only other American citizen in the house, he lives right next door to me, and I have spoken to him more than maybe anyone else in the house, naturally, I was somewhat concerned about some sort of Korematsu-esque fallout from my housemates. Fortunately for me, no such detention camps were constructed, and we were all able to partially laugh off an otherwise pretty sordid and disturbing experience.

During the drama of the investigators’ forceful entry and subsequent search of Adam’s room, Marike and Mira, the two German girls (pictured above with Heloísa), stayed in the kitchen faithfully preparing homemade pizzas for the entirety of the house. Shortly after the investigators left, we moved the tables into the family room, and laid out place settings for dinner together as one big happy family, sans Adam.

Ever the idealist, I broached the topic of constructing a fire in the up-til-now-unused hearth situated in the center of the library. After a brief inspection of the chimney-flu, I convinced my colleagues that it seemed to be open and safe for use. We only encountered one small problem: lack of wood for fuel. “Not to worry,” I assured them as I proceeded to point out the numerous instances of old broken wooden furniture we had laying around the house. Suddenly motivated by the feasibility of my plan, Francisco and John (Australia) began to hunt down any spare pieces of wood that could potentially be used as fuel for our cozy fire. Before long, Francisco, John, and I were outside in the interior patio doing our best karate kid impressions as we twisted, kicked, and punched our way to a pile full of splintered wood to burn.

Before the pizza was out of the oven, we had all the tables set for dinner, full glasses of wine at each seat, and a roaring fire in the fireplace… And for the first time in about 3 weeks, the basement of our house actually felt warm for the entirety of the night.

After a delicious dinner of homemade pizza (accompanied with the oven-paper that was used to cook it), André, Amaury, Francisco, John, Mira, Marike, and I (Heloísa took off to meet up with a friend, Nayara left before dinner, and Nora was in Brazil) sat around a crackling fire laughing, playing games, and drinking wine until about 5 in the morning. To the right is a blurry picture of all of us sitting in the firelight.

It is now almost 6, and in a few minutes I will wrap up and head to bed. Because tomorrow is a national holiday, no one in the house (or the city for that matter) has to work, so I am hoping that even though I am going to bed this late, I can still manage to get a restful night’s sleep… That is of course, unless I have nightmares of Adam breaking in and robbing me, too.