A Hard Day's Off

If there's one things Chileans take seriously, it's soccer. Judged by the riots that broke out this weekend after "the greatest match in chilean football" ended in a tie, I learned one should stay off the metro on Sunday evenings. But if there's another thing Chilenan's take seriously, it's days off.

Thus I found an abandoned city on my walk to school this morning (more on the walk another day). I made it to the center faster than ever with traffic all but absent, and have spent the day getting my photos online (you'll notice the new shots with my entry on La Serena: "All Right Now"). I'll probably get somerthing up about this weekend's trip to Pucon later this evening, unless I choose to follow the Chilean example and just stay in my room and watch TV all day. We had classes off today, which is infuriating only because we DID have classes yesterday, which killed any chances of the dream 5-day travel weekend. Of course, several of my Stanford counterparts said "to hell with this" and went to Buenos Aires the whole time anyway. Probably a good call. But apparently the Chileans didn't even have class yesterday. What gives?!

To be fair, it is International Workers Day, which apparently is "international" everywhere except the good old US of A. As such, nearly every store, restaurant, and cafe is closed down. I'm going to search long and hard for a gringo sports bar to catch tonight's Warriors/Mavs game. Of course, I'll be pulling for the NorCal upset over Texas. Go Golden State!

With everything closed, we had to hunt to find food for lunch, eventually just going to get sandwiches from the nearby supermarket. McDonald's was open, but I'm trying to resist giving in to McD's for as long as possible (the rest of the crew already folded and got McFlurries, but I held strong).

As we were heading downstairs from the Stanford center, an odd smell was wafting up the staircase. At first somone said it was incsense, but it got stronger as we approached the lobby. There, as we left the staircase and passed the open door to the parking lot, sat the parking lot attendant, cheerfully smoking a joint right in the open--odd considering Chile's usual conservative sensibilities. While I thought my first encounter with drugs in South America would be with a Columbian cocaine warlord, this was more entertaining, as the attendant smiled and gave us a bigger-than-normal "buenas tardes" and wave of the hand.

Happy worker's day to you, too, sir.