The above pic reflects my love of my new fav restaurant, Liguria, but first I have to tell you how we got there…

Whenever we travel abroad, we are warned to keep a close eye on our belongings. Leave the nicer jewelry at home. Get a fanny pack. Keep your passport in the hotel safe. Don’t carry all your cash at once… We do this mostly because we think the caution will prevent the theft. Unfortunately, this advice had a big pay out yesterday for one of my new school friends when we dined at “Oh! Salad Garden” (the name is apt, as stumbling upon a hearty, healthy salad bar in the middle of Providencia and a stone’s throw from Mickey D’s did literally inspire an Oh! Salad! response from me and my lunch cohorts.)

There we were, upstairs, in a corner booth, literally suspended over the first floor. Our collective caution may have wained, as surely no one could do a drive-by bag-snatching from this vantage point! It wasn’t until we were gathering our belongings to leave that we realized someone had done just that — made off with my friend’s bag! But how could this be?! The party of three dining next to us didn’t see anything. No one pulled the ‘Oh, I’m sorry to bump into you like this (while I reach into your pocket and grab your wallet)’ routine. Sure enough, the second we went downstairs and mentioned bolso to the cashier, she nodded her head, gave us that knowing look that requires no translation, and inside of five seconds pulled up the footage of not one, but four security cameras. Looking like the unawares subjects of a “Candid Camera” episode, there we were paying for our meal. There we were taking our seats. And there we were putting our bags down (mine under the table, but my friend’s on the ground next to her feet.)

Oh, and there was that nice looking woman taking a seat just before the party of three sat down. Wait, she didn’t even have a tray with an Oh! Salad! on it. There she was taking off her coat and putting it on the back of her chair as she slyly sussed out of our table goods. There she was making her move, using her foot (Oh! Her Foot!) to ever so subtly hook the loose shoulder-strap and drag the bag under her own table like it was being heave-hoed by an army of ants. Within another minute, she was up, bag concealed, and on her way… It happened right before my eyes and I didn’t see a thing.

My friend, though shocked, kept her cool to an admirable degree. She lost a hefty wad of cash, a credit card, a driver’s license, a library card, a camera. But at least she wasn’t carrying her passport. At least her debit card was back at their apartment. At least these were just things that can all be replaced. At least this was, for all intents and purposes, a petty crime. But it’s a violation nonetheless, a theft of an extension of your body if you read enough medical terminology about peripersonal space.

She canceled her credit card and found out that our bolso thief had made but one charge in the meantime — to that same Mickey D’s down the street! For all of a double-quarter-pounder-sized fee of $9.01. At this, we had to laugh. Our thief stole a wallet from Oh! Salad Garden and headed straight to McDonald’s!?

We reported the crime to the school and went to the police station to write up a report, which had its own allure thanks to the pure novelty of it. What would a Chilean police station look like?! I imagine this is what first-time visitors to the U.S. might say about an opportunity to go to the DMV or the neighborhood laundromat. In other words, there wasn’t much to it. A few carabineros lined up, a ticket number to pull like we were in line at the deli, the Chile v. Peru game of the Copa América about to start on the mounted tele. And, even though our number was next to be called, a good long while to wait. But first we had to find the camisaréia de policía, which is always a little tricky when street signs look like this:

 

Then we did the only thing there was left to do — take my new friend for a glass of wine and a good meal, which we found at adorable Liguria in Providencia. There, we relaxed, caught Chile’s last-minute goal to secure a victory over Peru and chanting cheers from our fellow diners, and realized that while she may have lost her bag, at least she had the best excuse in the book for not being able to complete her Spanish homework that night. A bolso thief stole her homework — literally.

Today, I told my Spanish teacher what happened (as I may not have spent too much time on the future tense myself thanks to our unexpected adventure). Our incident was no surprise to my profesora, who shared a saying here in Chile that I like for many reasons: Tu ves caras, pero no corazones, which means “You see faces, but not hearts.” Wolves have a habit of dressing in sheep’s clothing in other words. That said, without exception, the people I’ve gotten to know here in Chile soon show helpful, open, smiling hearts, whether it was the director of the school who told us what to do or the guy at the police stall next to us who learned English at a German school once and offered to stick around and translate our story so the policeman could file the report (What? Bolsa del ella ropa doesn’t tell the story? Of course it doesn’t since that actually means “the plastic bag of the girl clothing.” (The verb I actually needed was fue robado, but I won’t be learning the past tense until tomorrow.)

So, I don’t share this story to make anyone weary of Santiago or Santiaguinos. I mean, the same crimes (and far worse) go down back home, back everywhere (coming out of the metro in Paris, a nice woman pushing 70 jabbered at me in fast French until I noticed her tiny hand was in my own bolso and on my wallet). Rather, this is all to say that by the end of a harried day, I had made two new friends, which is what I need more than anything here. After all, little did we know that when we sat down to lunch, we’d be sharing dinner a few hours later and would each be a key figure in one of those stories you just have to tell people when you get home.