Journey from Stanford to Santiago

So it was a long week. There was a lot of living in airplanes and airports involved. It is illustrated here:

I left Stanford on March 24th to stay in Mukilteo for a few days after feverishly packing up my life. It was then on to Boston through Chicago for three days to visit Lauren and Peggy. Sunday morning, April 1st (the day that I was supposed to arrive in Santiago), I left Boston for Atlanta again through Chicago. Upon arriving in Atlanta at around 4:45 PM local time, I discovered that cross-airline employee passes (ID-90's) are only valid on Delta for dependants under 21. Since I turned 21 on January 24th of this year, I was in Atlanta without any method to get on the Delta flight to Santiago that evening. The flights to Washington, DC, were all full, so with the help of my father I found a Holiday Inn, spent the night, and headed back to the Atlanta airport the next morning to fly to Washington/Dulles. I arrived there at around 10:30 AM to wait for the red-eye from Dulles to Buenos Aires, Argentina. 11 hours later, at 9:30 PM, I sat up against the bulkhead in business class as the airplane lifted off for its long journey south. I landed in Buenos Aires sometime in the morning there (9:30?) and waited until 2:30 for my flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago. I finally arrived in Santiago at 4:30 PM on April 3rd, 56 hours after leaving Boston.

The ticket agent in Buenos Aires had attempted to communicate something about the weight of my bags to me which I had barely understood. She told me my bags were in aggregate 6 kilograms too heavy, but then proceeded to stamp both and put them on the conveyor belt behind her. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I did not question her until I arrived in Santiago without one of my bags. I did what I could at the baggage area and moved on.
Upon leaving the security perimeter, the taxistas waiting for tired Americans/foreigners all pounced. They know that you're exhausted, they know you don't speak Spanish all that well, and they know that you don't have a great feel for the local currency. Most were easily dismissed with a "No Gracias," but one, Francisco, was persistent. He wanted it. He would not let me go. As he knew, I was exhausted, wasn't in great command of my Español, and didn't do the conversion of the Chilean Peso to the US Dollar easily. As I was beat after over 2 days of flying and was without a bag, I didn't really care at that point and accepted his badgering to the tune of $60. It should have been more like $30. But oh well, right? At the time, I was too tired to fight.

Later that night, my bag finally arrived. I and all my possessions had finally arrived in South America to begin their 10 weeks here.