December 15,

We were up and about by 0730, having our javas with breakfast of oatmeal and yogurt. We then went out walking to get steps. We went to the metro and bought metro cards. We boarded the metro to a mall. This mall has a “Cinepolis”- a local movie theater. We wanted to buy tickets for the upcoming Avatar movie.

We arrived and found the movie theater. No one seemed to be there at 1030 in the morning, but a door was open. We went in and found a kiosk to order tickets, fumbling through the Spanish scenes with our google translate. Jeff got to the “credit card approved” screen and the “printing tickets” screen. But no tickets appeared. We finally found someone to figure out if we had bought tickets or not. This man got the manager, who did not speak English and was not wanting to deal with us- he kept speaking in Spanish not waiting or wanting to use the phone for translation! That was frustrating, but we finally managed to figure out to come back at 1200 when the theater opened. So we left the theater, walked around the mall until around 1100 (on a positive note, we did get most of our steps in this way!), then went to the grocery store in the mall. We went back to the theater and got in the ticket line. The young man tried but wasn’t getting the info from the computer so he went and got the manager- the same guy we interacted with before… Long story short, we got a printed receipt for the tickets after computer issues and more translating with a real live person (since the manager doesn’t like using the phone). It shouldn’t be this hard, but… Anyway, we will see on the 18th if it’s all right!

We left the mall now and went to our place to drop off the groceries then back out to get lunch. We decided on La Fonda Paisa Restaurante, a Colombian restaurant. We are having some difficulty finding Chilean places- except for stalls with empanadas! Anyway, we scanned the QR code for the menu. A waiter came over and took our order. We had an appetizer of Ripe Plantain with Cheese, and two mains: Bean Casserole- a “mini”version of bean casserole with rice, a plantain half, an avocado wedge, an arepas and Lechona (Suckling Pig)- a traditional dish from Tolima, a mixture of oven baked pork, rice, peas, and spices. All the food was good, but the Bean Casserole was awesome. I had a Pisco Sour, and Jeff had a local Kross Golden beer. The bill came to 39,930 CLP ($43.52) with an included 10% tip. Food seems to be a bit more expensive?? We’ll see.

After we finished we went back to our place. Jeff figured out a way for us to rewatch the first Avatar movie from eight years ago. So we spent the evening with popcorn and a movie.