Protests and Pasta

So, Thursday we got to Alberto Hurtado and there were students painting signs and had tables for petitions and other stuff going on.  There have been several things going on that other schools have been protesting, but this is the first school I work at that's had anything going on.  Currently the big problems are with proposals by the government to privatize all loans for university students, making the students unable to affordable university, and the building of a hydroelectric plant in Southern Chile that would destroy a lot of wildlife, both with the plant itself and the power lines that would have to run the length of the country.  It would also make Chile the most polluted country in the world (according to some of the students I talk to.  I haven't been able to find anything that confirms this, though.)  There was also a forum the students held on the oppression of the native people here.  According to my friend who attends UAH, they're known as the hippie university because they are really active about things like this, and there was a protest the day before where the police had sprayed the students with fire hoses.  There wasn't anything like that while we were around, and we were able to have really good conversations with some of the girls on campus.

The Forum about Patagonia

Students making signs.
Also, Alberto Hurtado is really pretty

That night at salsa lessons, we got to learn the Cueca, the Chilean national dance.  We only spent a little bit of the class learning this, so I don't really remember the order the steps go in, but it was fun.  The rest of the lesson was fun, and afterwards, all of the girls on the team made dinner for everyone.  We made pasta with chicken, marinara sauce and pesto sauce, green beans, garlic bread and flan for dessert.  The flan was made with too much liquid, so it was really soupy, but it was still good.

Friday, everyone went to Universidad de Las Américas.  I was walking around with one of my roommates, who speaks French, but I thought I could manage a conversation in Spanish on my own, since I've been remembering a lot.  This was untrue.  I thought the girl we were talking to was saying there were many ways and different things people had to do to get to God, so I was trying to tell her that all you needed was faith in Jesus.  After several minutes, she said that she thought good works were how we demonstrate our faith in Jesus, so we turned out to be on the same page the whole time.  I'm not sure why she didn't tell me that wasn't what she thought before that point, but it turned out okay.  After that, we had one of the guys who's pretty good at Spanish come with us.

That night we had a late dinner because we all wanted to get sushi, but there was tons of stuff going on during the evening.  Late for Americans anyway - the restaurant was packed when we got there around 10 because Chileans have their meals a little later than us and a large afternoon snack.  The snack is called "onces" or "elevenses", even though it's eaten around 5 PM.  I got salmon sashimi, which was great, and shrimp nigiri, which was a little lackluster.  They didn't have any tuna, which surprised me, but the salmon was good enough to make up for it.  On the way home, we played games and got stared at by the few people on the street.  It helped us keep warm while we waited an hour for the bus to come.  While on the bus, one of the guys with us thought someone tried to steal his wallet, but luckily, he had it in one of his front pockets.

Up next: Last weekend, including more sushi!