the nocturnal life

some more details on my first few weeks of the semester:

- witnessed various "initiations" of the freshman class, aka hazing. lots of poor little newbies drenched in water, covered in paint, and wandering aimlessly due to acidic substances prohibiting them from being able to see properly or running around asking people (myself included) for money

- showering at 6 am and going to bed, rather than waking up

- smelling like smoke - when your bra smells like cigarettes you know you've been up to no good

- midnight snacks at 5 am (the new midnight, since i turned nocturnal)
- truly appreciating how nice it is to not have to wash your clothes or clean your bathroom, thank you house keeper! more time to party.
- sleeping through an epic student protest, which my parents will be glad to hear i missed. here's a few pics that my friend Michael took from his apartment:

and my friend Andrea took these while running from water cannons

i'll get into details about what the student protests in Chile are about in a future post, but for now i'll just point out that this protest was ILLEGAL (the government never approved it) and therefore explains why there was so much violence - tear gas everywhere, water cannons, students attacking armored trucks with paint bombs, etc.

while these photos don't portray the reasoning behind the student movement, i would like to say that i fully support it and think that the University of California student body needs to get their act together and actually put up a fight against the continual tuition fee increases. I truly admire how politically active Chilean citizens are. Again, i'll explain this more later on!

now back to the fun stuff

- attending the welcome back to school concert at la concha acústica ("the acoustic shell") on campus. this concert featured a big time political musician Manuel Garcia, who i ended up loving! this show was awesome and a few things stood out to me: 

1. there were TONS of high schoolers. it was really interesting seeing how high school and university students attended the same concert and were all mixed in one huge group. i don't think this is a common occurrence in California. 

2. at one point the entire crowd was jumping up and down and chanting "él que no salta es Pinochet", which roughly translates to "he who doesn't jump supports Pinochet", who was a dictator in Chile for 17 years from 1973-1990. the effects of his reign are still extremely prevalent in Chilean society and there are a wide range of opinions about him. this instance reminded me of the movie "Machuca". if you really want a realistic idea of how life was like during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, WATCH THIS MOVIE! i've seen it twice now and it is extremely powerful.

3. selling alcohol at school functions is normal.

 

there were people EVERYWHERE 

some 90's rap band

- after this concert i made the mistake best decision ever of cramming onto the metro instead of patiently waiting for the next one. i found myself smashed against a bunch of Chilean students and it was basically a party on the train. everyone was laughing because we were all so close together no one could move an inch and at each metro stop there would be people waiting to get on the train but there was zero space so everyone started chanting "NO CABE! NO CABE!" ("doesn't fit! doesn't fit!"). and when one of the students had to get off the metro at their stop everyone chanted "SE QUEDA! SE QUEDA!" ("stay! stay!"). so i obviously started yelling with everyone. 

- also while on that very metro i was basically on top of this short girl and we both looked at each other and said "disculpa" ("sorry") AT THE EXACT SAME TIME. then we both smiled. 

it was so awesome.