Today was quite an adventure in learning our way around Santiago. This morning was the first day we have had a breather. We have 6 local leaders coming to dinner this evening and 8 Saturday night. This morning we are having our first leadership training and council meeting with our mission leadership team. So yesterday we decided we better pick-up food for the dinners and buy some needed items for the home. Well everyone has been telling me that Chilean Spanish is different than the rest of the Spanish speaking world. Yes, I have noticed some differences but so far it has not been that big of a deal. Well today that all changed as we were submerged in a different kind of Spanish. You see my Spanish vocabulary is mostly grounded in gospel topics. With a list of things to buy we ventured out to Los Condes, the largest mall I have ever seen. I was armed with my newly downloaded Google Translate on my iphone and ready to take on the retail world. Every single´item we wanted to buy as I confidently asked store attendant after store attendant where such ans such was they either looked at me like I was speaking Russian or I was drunk. After excruciating attempts to explain the items we were looking for we triumphantly conclude all our purchases and head to the parking garage with two grocery carts of purchases. Kathleen, ¨Where did you park the car?¨ Dave, ¨I can´t remember, I thought you were watching.¨ So after at least 45 min. of searching we finally found the car. We try to leave and there is now way to pay for the parking with a credit card. Load our treasure in the trunk and head for the exit. The machine will not take my credit card so I press the attendant button and I nice lady comes on speaking a language that is the farthest thing from Spanish I have ever heard. With cars backed up behind us and honking I have to ask them to back up so I can get out of line. I then flag down a parking security vehicle and explain our problem. They too begin speaking a language that I have never heard. We have been unable to access our an ATM because in Chile you need to have a national ID card or Carnet for almost everything. It will take up to 3 months for us to get our ID. I have no pesos and no way to pay the parking fee. The parking guys are looking at each other like boy to we have a dumb one on our hands today. I remember that I have the grand total of $10 USD in my wallet and ask them if that will work. After a lengthy conversation I figure out that I can exchange my USD for pesos back in the mall. The parking guy decides to take me to the bank rather than have me wander around the mall. So off we go in his little truck. I successfully exchange the USD and then learn that I need to pay for my parking at a machine. He kindly points out the machine and I insert my parking ticket and my pesos, take my receipt and start walking to his truck. As we are walking I ask if I have to insert my receipt in the machine at the exit to get out. He looks at me and says where is your ticket. I told him I put in the machine. At which he turns and runs back into the mall to the payment machine and retrieves the ticket. He drives me to the car where Kathleen and Spencer are waiting with our purchases. Again we go to exit were I attempt to insert my validated parking ticket ant he machine spits it out. Kathleen screams as if I were Frodo and had just lost the golden ring. So, I get out of the car, again cars are lining up behind us, and I search for the ticket. I find the golden ring and this time correctly insert it into the machine and successfully exit the nightmare. What was supposed to be a short shopping trip ended up being an almost 8 hour ordeal. We now have a total of 2000 pesos (thats about $4) in our pocket, until we can figure out how to get some cash. By the time we get home it is now almost 10:00p. So we have leftovers for dinner put our purchases away, have a talk and laugh at our adventure, then go to bed about midnight. As they say adventure is hardship remembered. The bright side is that we learned a lot of new words today.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 10:34:02 +0000
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