im here, im alive.

well, here i am in antofagasta, chile after a long first few days. i arrived in santiago monday with a bit of a surprise waiting for me. upon finally departing the airport, i was stopped by an officer who told me in castellano, basically a more difficult version of spanish, that i had to go through a bag check. to my defense i had been on an airplane since six o´clock the night before, exhausted, thus failing to open my eyes wide enough to see the sign with a giant green apple and a red diagonal line across it. well, it just so happened that i had with me a braeburn apple in my backpack. the once kindly gentleman with the glasses much too large for his small frame became an man-eater as he peered enticingly over the glass. He left and returned 20 minutes later with my death sentence. 150,000 chilean pesos, approximately 300 dollars. one apple now the forbidden fruit. they asked me if id like to witness the execution of the trespassor. yes, of course i did after all the agony it had caused. their explanation of the execution included all of the gory details: first, a blue goo would suffocate the lawbreaker, it would then be chopped into bits and if said offender was still breathing, it would be ground up in a great vat and finally its shameful corpse would be buried with the rest. in my mind, i had already killed the apple, but i watched about to enjoy every moment of justice. the blue liquid wasn´t quite what i´d been anticipating, nor was the final execution; in fact, the moment passed as quickly as the executor held up the knife. oh, and grinding the apple to bits was apparently something they do later, because to be sure it was thrown in the trash with other assorted fruits. thankfully, the man had pity on me because i was an ignorant american, and fined me only 36,000 pesos, 75 dollars instead of 300.
if anyone was wondering, i still eat apples; in fact, they are more valuable to me than ever.