Saque un número...

Okay, so here's the deal with the photos on the blog: they won't appear until at least the 14th. That's when I am reunited with my laptop and camera cable. Until then, I guess I will have to "paint with words" or something like that. Not that I could do most of the things I've seen justice with words; I'm no Charles Dickens (or perhaps, more appropriate to my geographic location, Pablo Neruda).

I felt proud of myself today after tackling the bureaucracy - the Chilean "man", if you will. I could not, however, have done it without the advice I received in the program office. They told me exactly what I would need to obtain and what I was to do when I got to the various offices.

First, I had to register with the national police. This required taking the Metro to a part of the city I had not been to yet and crossing the filthy Mapocho River, its grey/brown waters swirling furiously in its concrete channel as it still possessed the speed gathered from its run out of the Andes. At the police station, I had to pay a fee (800 pesos; not even 2USD) and was given a number. I sat down and watched as numbers appeared on a screen. I only waited about 15 minutes before it was my turn. I was given a form to take to another office in another part of the city to obtain my national ID card.

Alas, I was not finished at the police station. A careless immigration officer had failed to stamp my passport with the official date of entry stamp - something absolutely necessary to obtain the national ID card. I had to get my passport stamped, so I took yet another number and waited and waited and waited. I chatted with a Peruvian living in Santiago who had worked in various Peruvian embassies around the world. He seemed to be something of a savant when it came to cars; he claimed to be able to tell a Ford from a Chevy from a European car based upon the sound the engine makes. He lamented over the fact that most new cars now sold in Chile are of Asian origin, and told me that he thinks Ford makes the best cars.

After about an hour of waiting, I finally got the passport stamped, a process which took about 1 minute. Then I had to frantically rush to get to the Registro Civil to file for an ID card. It was already past 1.00pm and the office closed at 2.00. I made it on time, only to find a line much longer than the one at the police station. I took a number - C61- and waited. Soon 61 appeared on the screen, but then I noticed it was B61, not my number. A hundred people were waiting before it was to be my turn! A girl about my age and her mother started talking to me. They must have felt sorry for me, because the girl gave me another number they had (C22). Apparently the system worked liked this: you took a number, then someone else who had been there before you gave you one of their numbers (they had probably taken two by accident), then you passed your original number to someone else, and so on. I waited about an hour with the new number. Thank god I had gotten the passport stamped, as that was the first thing they asked to see. I have to go back in a few weeks to pick up the card when it is ready.

Now I understand why there are shops advertising fotocopias everywhere. People have to make copies of everything to satisfy the bureaucracy. I would have thought the carbon copy was a thing of the past until coming here, where even the purchase of a bottle of water will get you a carbon copy of the receipt.

I wish I could put photos up now so I could show you what a "monkey puzzle" tree looks like. It looks as bizarre as it sounds.