Trying to get the full experience...

Well, so you know how a couple days ago I wrote about being told to "Ojo" all the time when we were walking in the city. Well, a couple of kids helped reinforce that lesson last night. Uruguay is really a safe place. Violent crime is not a problem, but petty theft is. And since I really wanted to experience Uruguay... I needed to have something stolen from me, right? So here's the story:

Rhonda and I were going to dinner around 9:30 (typical for Uruguay). The first restaurant was really full and we were both hungry (I had just come from aerobics) so we decided to walk to another restaurant. We were walking down the main street (18 de Julio) near the old city (which we know is a common place for purse snatching at night.) Well I was not ojoing, didn't think and took my hand off my purse. It is on a strap across my body and I usually carry it in my hand against my body. Well, I let go for a second, and a kid walked up and grabbed it. (I think he cut the strap, but I'm not sure.) My first thought was, "Well, great, there goes my purse." My second thought was, "My passport wasn't in there, was it???" So I decided to chase the kid and his friend. They had a pretty good head start on me. I didn't actually want to catch them, I just wanted to see where they dumped my purse. However, since I was half a block behind them I lost them when they rounded a corner after a couple of blocks.

A man "helped" me look for them. I'm not so sure he wasn't actually helping them by helping me so I'd quit chasing them. Anyway, another Uruguayan man saw what was going on and insisted we call the police. A lady at a hotel called for us. Meanwhile, I called back to the house and made sure my passport was where I keep it in the house. (OK... the reason I thought it might have been in my purse is that I had changed money from US dollars to Argentine pesos earlier in the day. I didn't know if I'd need my passport for that. I've been in countries where you do need a passport to change money, so I took it just in case. I got back to CasaACU and thought I'd better take this out it'd really be bad to get my purse stolen with my passport in it today since we are going to Argentina tomorrow." Yes! I had thought that through.) So Thanks to God! my passport was safely in my apartment!

OK back to the story... Once I realized the passport wasn't in my purse I really wasn't that worried about it. But Rhonda and I were indecisive about the police and since the locals thought we should talk to them we waited. While we were waiting, I decided to walk around the block checking trash cans. I'm pretty sure I saw the kids again on 18 de Julio. They didn't have my purse, but I couldn't find where they threw it either.

When I came back from the stroll around the block, we only waited a few more minutes for the police, which considering we were waiting for police in a major city, the 20 minutes total we waited wasn't bad. Now just so you know, by this point the whole thing is getting kind of funny... I mean you might as well laugh about it. So the two police officers (Juan and Nester, I think) put us in the back of the car and took us to the police station. You see I wanted to see everything in Uruguay... so my trip wouldn't be complete without a ride to the police station in a police car. On the way there, Rhonda who can talk people into anything, talked them into waiting for us and taking us home.

In the police station we had to fill out a report which took way longer than it should have, but these things always do. By this point its closer to 10:30 and we still hadn't eaten dinner and were getting a little slap happy. Rhonda kept giving the police officer taking the report a hard time, i.e. telling him it wasn't polite to ask my age. And when he asked my marital status (for the form) she told him I was single followed by "Que triste" (How sad!) So eventually we had the form filled out and could go. They called us a taxi, but Juan and Nester were waiting to take us home. Rhonda tried to get them to take us by McDonalds, but rather than focusing all her energy on that, she called CasaACU to tell the students that we were coming home in a police car so someone would take pictures. Which happened as you can see. The police officers laughed at us a lot... Of course I laughed at us too.

So here's what I lost: A credit card which has already been canceled and a new one is on its way, an ATM card that only goes to a little account and is really made to be lost, my drivers license which I can fill out paper work and get replaced, Rhonda's extra cell phone (whoops), less than $100 and MY AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIP CARD! Que Triste! But really, I had another credit card, another ATM card, and my real debit card all at CasaACU so things could have been much worse.

So that's the story, I'm really not upset, certainly not traumatized like the women on TV who get there purse snatched. And really its kind of funny. I mainly feel stupid because I was doing so many things that I know better than, i.e. I don't even usually carry my purse at night for that very reason, and if I do I hold on tight. I was just being careless.

I must thank my jogging buddies at home... I certainly wasn't winded from chasing the kids.

Now I know how fast rumors can get going at ACU... by the time I got home last night the story was that I had chased some men 5 blocks instead of two 12 year olds 2 blocks. By the time I went to bed the students said they were going to tell people at home that I had chased big burley men 10 blocks while wearing heels.

Also... since the pictures of us coming home in a police car are already on facebook... the other rumor could be that Dr. Collier and Dr. Sutherlin were arrested... THAT'S NOT TRUE EITHER!

OHHHH! I almost forgot the funniest end to the story. The police officers gave us their phone numbers! HAHAHAHAHAHA! See and you thought this was a bad experience!

We are heading to Argentina in an hour and a half, so I most likely won't be blogging again until Monday! Have a great weekend!