Middle School Cafeteria

So, I've been crazy busy all week and as a result haven't updated. Homework, exploring Santiago and eating too many sopapillas has been taking up my spare time. At some point this weekend I will hopefully get a chance to write a quick post but for today I just wanted to share a quick story:

Each building on campus has a cafeteria that us gringos heard had good cheap food, so today we decided to check out the one in the Medicine building since it was on a rooftop. A bunch of us piled into the elevator prepared to take the cafe by storm. The doors opened  and we all just stood there: it was packed. With Chileans. Speaking really fast Spanish. And they all knew where to go. We're used to that at this point, so we followed the crowd and ended up in line. So far so good. At the cash register we discovered it was only $2,000 pesos (4 dollars!) for a salad, an entree, bread, dessert and a drink. Score!

Jesse, Mark and I set off to find a table while everyone paid. "Finding a table" consisted of us standing in the middle of the rooftop patio with our trays and big gringo backpacks getting stared at. SO INTIMIDATING. I felt like Cady Heron in Mean Girls (see photo below).

Anyway, the only available seating appeared to be this bench in the middle of the giant patio thing. Not only was it in completely in the sun, but basically every person eating in the entire cafeteria was still staring at us. We all looked at each other, decided this was embarrassing but probably the only option and sat down. Less than 5 minutes later, this girl came up to us and asked us if we would rather sit at a table and brought us over to a table she where she was eating with her friends and there were extra seats. Moral of the story: Chileans are the nicest people ever.