Robbed. But not really.

Usually when you get robbed your just grateful to come away unscathed. Things were a little different this time. Here's the scoop: I (a group of us actually) got robbed, but then we got our money back. Here's the story, and pardon my digressions.

Friday night I got out of my dictatorships class at ten and went to a bar near campus for a grappa miel. Grappa is something of a liqueur made from the crap left over after grapes are pressed to make the juice that becomes wine (skin, seeds, etc.). Throw some honey in it and it's a tasty way to start off a cold night. As we were paying our bill, we had amassed 200 pesos (ten bucks) thus far for our grappa miels and pizza, and a woman walked up to our table. I assumed she was a waitress as she was acting as if she was going to take a plate away, but instead snatched the 200 pesos and took off running. Actually, more like swerving. I didn't really want to follow someone who had just robbed me down a dark street, but my friend Mauricio did, so I followed Mauricio. We quickly caught up to the woman a block away as she was clearly on one or many substances, one of which was likely pasta base (side note- pasta base is a drug made from the leftovers of everything else (crack, heroine), mixed with household chemicals (ammonia, bleach, whatever is at hand) and turns your brain to mush in about three months. It's something of an epidemic down here.).

Mauricio and I each grabbed one of the woman's hands, and told her to give us the money back. We turned up a couple of coins in her pockets, but couldn't find the dough. The next half hour consisted of us and the owner of a small open air fruit market who knew her from the area asking for the money, while she would lie down, put her legs up in the air spread wide open, get back up, say she was getting the money and then lie back down again. At one point she suddenly lurched towards a bin a tomatoes from the market we were next to, grabbed one and crushed it with her hand as she bit into it, then threw it away and spat it out. The whole situation was a mess. Finally, when the police were about to arrive and the rest of the group had paid the bill and caught up to us, she reached down her pants, gave us the money and we were on our way.



The rest of the weekend was less eventful, minus an asado (barbeque) on Mother's Day (yes, it's down here too) during which I ate plates of sausage, ribs and steak, with leftovers for dinner (picture on left, my host Dad Carlos prepares the barbeque, on the left the first round of meats). One of the selections I think is called blood sausage in English, because when the slaughter the cow, they collect the blood, cook it down, mix it with some other stuff and form it into sausages. Word is that it's great for anemia! Luckily my physical for my soccer team included a cholesterol test and I don't appear to be in danger of a heart attack yet after vats upon vats of grease and deep fried meat, so I can continue with my Atkins-approved diet.