dr. starbucks, or, how i learned to stop worrying and just go there

First, by request: Reactions to my newly shaven face have been pretty much exactly what I expected, especially Alex's, which I visualized with absolute 100% accuracy before he saw me (I was pretty satisfied with my predicting ability afterwards). I'd try to describe it but it's a visual thing and wouldn't be funny anyway because you very likely don't know him. Unless you're Rosie or someone else from COPA. The general consensus is that I look younger--this consensus got most extreme with Luz María's repeated, "You look like a little baby!"--although Vale also told me that I look, "How you say, smoke hot." Then she told me she liked the beard better. People seem to have liked the beard, but I'm going to give myself a little change to air out, get a little color along my jawline and so on before I let it grow back. And I might not even do that. Who knows.

Now then, as to the title of this post, which was about as clever I could do on four hours' sleep and after a very hard test and then a debate project: I finally went to Starbucks yesterday. I loved it. I'm deeply crushed by this fact, but really, it's the only place in the whole city that I've found with a collection of comfortable reading furniture (i.e. comfy chairs), and that includes some furniture stores I've been to. I went because Katie, Alex and I had to meet to plan our half (Sara was with her parents) of our debate today and Starbucks has free wireless and was the most central place we could come up with. It was probably 70% gringos and 30% yuppie chilenos when I got there, although the proportion swung in Chile's favor as it got later. Also, the counter girl asked me where I was from because my accent didn't sound Chilean, but then was surprised when I said the States, so that was nice. People being surprised you're a gringo is a big complement. Also in the "Yay, I live here!" category: I gave a woman directions this morning as I was walking to the metro. Good couple of days for positive reinforcement of my Spanish.

Last night I studied and finished prepping for the debate until pretty late, then dicked around for a bit, and then Lincoln signed on and we got a chance to talk for a while, which was nice. It'd been a while since we last checked in for real, seems like he's doing really well and working hard and having a good time. Anyhow that combined with the spring forward on Sunday (we're now an hour ahead of EST) meant I didn't get to sleep until after 5 and then I woke up a little after 9 to study a little more and make sure I was totally awake for my test in Relaciones entre Europa y A.L., which I was, but was a bitch anyway. The profe wrote the wrong set of questions on the board at first, questions for a chapter we hadn't read, and then when everyone said, "Hey, what?" she acted all confused, then changed them to be all about HALF the reading we did and NOT the other half, and when everyone starting talking again she got all huffy, put up another question and told us to combine the four questions she'd written second into two and answer the third (eighth) by itself. It was really confusing and the questions were hard. I know for a fact now that I got at least half of one of them completely wrong. Guh. Oh well. The debate (which, in case I haven't written this already, was about whether Chile should have voted for Venezuela or Guatemala for the Security Council--I was pro-Venezuela) thankfully wasn't so bad, and Bachelet abstained like a little wuss anyway, so it ended up being pointless. Anyhow now I'm exhausted and waiting for MDJ to call, so I'm going to cut this short. One more thing: I found a really cool blog: Latin American News Review. It's by a left-leaning grad student at the University of New Mexico. I added it to my links on the right, check it out if you have any interest in the goings on down in these parts. Chao.