3/31/10

Today was an interesting day to say the least. I left my 10:30 AM class today and walked about four blocks to the bus station to take me to the next class. When I reached into my backpack pocket to pull out my Chapstick I felt around and realized that someone had stolen my iPod and cell phone right out from my backpack while I was walking. There wasn't anything I could do about it as it had clearly happened earlier and I just hadn't noticed.

We made it to the other campus a little late for our class and had to leave a little early to make a meeting for an internship (teaching English, super cool) and on our way off campus we saw a crowd. We assumed that it was the freshman hazing that goes on every year at U Chile. We had to walk by them to get to the exit and tried to get a closer look. We saw students throwing what we thought was fish (part of the tradition) at what we thought were freshman. Wrong. They were throwing rocks at a crowd of forty riot police who immediately began tear gassing all of us. My three friends and I joined hundreds of other students and broke into a run to the opposite side of campus. We found an exit toward the back of the school and they thankfully let us out, though they weren't letting anyone in. There were "guanacos," which is the slang for the giant tanks the police use for riot control, everywhere. There were piles of molotov cocktails and we had to walk through a cloud of tear gas to get to the bus we needed. We got out relatively unharmed and with a pretty authentic cultural experience under our belts.

Time for a quiet night, I think.