Shopping time

The details of the trip my father and I are to take arrived at his address, since it was thanks to him (and his age) that we are eligible for it. He seemingly read all the information and told me in great detail where we would be going and when. He then did additional research to provide me with even greater detail on all the places we will see: one of the world’s largest penguin colonies, the official End Of The World etc. he did not however, read the small print in detail. So last night my mother calls me in my Santiago flat to ask if I knew about the formal dinners? How many cocktail dresses had I brought? “What!?!” I squawked back. No one told me I needed cocktail dresses for this! What on earth for? Being a meticulous person, my mother had gone through my dad’s forms and had discovered that, in addition to visiting penguin colonies, we would also have several formal dinners. According to the paper work, “cocktail dresses would be suitable for women.” Hence my mothers question. I asked what exactly a cocktail dress might mean, and my mother, a product of another society and era, claimed it meant “you know, what you were to a bar with your friends.” I refrained from telling her I often venture to bars in jeans, the poor woman would be shocked. Anyway, having established that I had only one debatably cocktail like dress with me, she ordered me to go shopping.
Of course I had no clue where one buys cocktail dresses in Santiago, but I figured francesca would know, as she knows everything about Chilean social life. So today we headed off to a shopping mall, on a mission. The mall was located next to the Chilean national military academy, which we had to walk around on the way. The soldiers were out doing various warlike things. Some were marching about (I never understood the point of endless practice marching!) while others were in small groups running around trees with machine guns in their hands. Despite the Chilean military’s dark and dodgy history, these guys didn’t look threatening. A lot of them were about my size (ie small). Just in case however, I refrained from taking photos, even though I really wanted to. Eventually we got to the mall. It seems Chileans are really proud of their malls, but I confess I struggle to understand why. The mall we went to looked exactly like any other modern shopping mall in Budapest, Moscow or Toronto. It had the exact same shops at the exact same prices (Mango, Diesal, Karen Millen, Benetton, Zara, Camper, Esprit). The only novelties were a shop called “London: urban style” and a Chilean department store called “Paris.” Oh, and the fact that those strutting around the mall in fashionable clothes seemed to be a skin tone shade lighter than those on the streets, as always seems to be the case in Latin American shopping malls. Needless to say I did manage to find something to wear. The real shock was when I wandered into a book shop. The clothing prices were almost identical to London ones, but the prices of books were absolutely astronomical. Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s latest autobiography was going for over 17 euros- I bought the same book, also in Spanish, at bookshop where I work in London for 9 pounds, before my staff discount! All the books seemed to be at least 15€, with some history ones more like 25€. I was really surprised. If you want to buy books, wait till you get to Argentina, was francesca’s suggestion.