Día del joven combatiente

My intentions upon creating this blog were to post a new entry every day whilst travelling, and every other day otherwise. Well, I have not been keeping to that very well, have I? This can mostly be blamed on my string of bad luck with technology in Chile. On Sunday, while writing an essay due Monday on my semi-functioning laptop, the thing finally really bit the dust. Luckily I had my work saved on a disk. Nora got an ancient machine running Windows 98 out of the closet and I hooked it up. I finished my essay and went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up and turned on Nora's computer only to find that.....yes, it froze. I was incredulous. TWO computers have now died on me. Either I have the touch of death, or there's something in the air here. Luckily I had saved my essay on a disk. So off I went downstairs to the internet cafe. I inserted my disk, and POW! That computer froze as well! Whatever was bad on my computer or Nora's must have screwed the disk up, which in turn caused the internet cafe's computer to freeze! Grrrrrrrrr!

I called the person to whom I was to turn in the essay and quickly explained the situation. "Don't worry, you can turn it in on Thursday," he said. I breathed a sigh of relief, but quickly turned angry. I would have to start to write the whole darn thing over again.

Later that afternoon, I turned Nora's computer back on again. I figured out that whenever it locked up, all I had to do was unplug it then plug it back in. It started up all right and I accessed my essay on the hard drive. So in the end, I didn't have to write it all over again. I think I might turn into my father after this trip and despise computer technology for the rest of my life (joke!).

Autumn is definitely upon us in the Southern Hemisphere. This week the weather turned cool and cloudy, and it rained a lot on Tuesday. I discovered a delightful surprise: Santiago's streets do not have storm drains. When it rains, the roads turn into lakes. This could be very dangerous for pedestrians, who run the risk of getting splashed by cars.

This weekend, the program is taking us camping for three days. I hope we don't sit around a campfire singing "Koombaya" in Spanish. I will take pictures and post them at a later date, when my laptop is fixed and technology in general decides to co-operate with me.

The best for last: today is "Day of the Youth Combatant" in Chile. Only in Latin America would you have a day called that. In the days of the Pinochet dictatorship, two youth protestors were murdered. Today is supposed to be a day of rememberance, but it usually turns out to be a day of protests, some of which turn violent. Apparently the opposition in the government pays kids to wreak havoc, which is ironic because the kids who were killed by Pinochet's henchmen would have been protesting against the people who are today paying people to protest. It's all a big show to point blame on the current government. What do these people say, "Excuse me; I represent the right-wing of Chilean politics and I will pay you 5000 pesos to hurl a Molotov cocktail at that building."?

The news today was full of images of people getting sprayed by the guanacos (trucks with water-cannons mounted on them) and of the weaponry confiscated by police at the Universidad de Santiago. One group of punks claimed that the machetes the police found on them were for an "African dance troupe". Give me a break! Especially considering that there are no people of or events celebrating African heritage here.

The Universidad de Chile and the Universidad de Santiago suspended classes for the rest of the week to quell violence on campus, but I still had class at the Universidad Católica. The commute was interesting, to say the least. Half of the doors to my local Metro station had been locked, and the interior of the station was bedlam. It appeared that the area schools had decided to release the students early (why? so they could go turn cars over and light petrol bombs? keep the brats in school!) and everyone was trying to go home. Everyone was jumping the turnstiles and yelling. I finally got on a train. At the Universidad de Chile stop, a couple of people with really watery eyes got on. I thought that was weird until it hit me: "They've been tear-gassed!" The train suddenly stopped in the tunnel between stations. The driver came on the intercom. "It is recommended that all the windows be closed at this point," he said. There were scattered groans and laughs and I reached up to close a window. The train continued on and soon my throat began burning ever so slightly. I suppose that there had been a tear-gassing on the street above and that some of the gas had entered the tunnels through the air intakes. We avoided the worst of it by closing the windows, but I still started sneezing and people were coughing everywhere. I arrived at school without further incident, and the campus of U. Católica was thankfully sedate.

Out of fear of vandalism, the city bus operators chose to suspend services tonight after 7.00pm. The streets are deserted now, and it feels as though I'm in some sort of wartime curfew. I am excited to leave the city for a few days this weekend!

Two days ago, the BBC ran a story about the Transantiago fiasco. You can read it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6498445.stm