Pow! Bam! Smack!

Sometimes I forget where I am because I can watch House and Law and Order SVU on the tele.

But then I am ripped back to reality when:

• all the public school teachers in the country go on strike for a week
• there are puddles in the classrooms because the glass windows are shattered
• I kill an insect in the bathroom that my family assures me is not a scorpion
• men ride horses down city streets alongside cops who look disturbingly similar to green storm troopers.

I'm in Chile afterall. The TV is heavily influenced by the US but the internal problems are all Chilean. This week has been marked by massive protests and marches in Valpo by over ten thousand public school teachers from around the country. The protests were in response to the Congressional vote on a new education law, the LGE (Ley General de Educacion), which would replace the LOCE. The LOCE is a law remaining from the days of the dictatorship which supports a private, merantile system of education.

Under LOCE, the poor attend public schools, don't get an education, don't get into college and remain in the same position. The rich (all the polititians) send their kids to private schools, get into the best private universities, and continue the system.

This is Chile right? Sounds like some problems are international.

The LGE was passed but the professors don't believe that anything will change. For now, classes resume and the future is uncertain.

La Radio

In the spanish language each word has a feminine or masculine gender, an incredible characteristic because some would argue that many human beings lack such distinctive qualities...

Most words correspond wonderfully and easily like the following:

la cama

la computadora

el rio

la musica

el auto

However, some words suck and break the rules:

la micro

el problema

la radio

For any and all that are interested, I am now writing on the WRMC Middlebury College Radio 91.1 Blog.

There is truely no one more excited about this than I am.

www.wrmc911.blogspot.com

It was Mr. Green in the kitchen with the rope

I feel like my internal clock is completely screwed. My body is craving the beach and the killer heatwave that the east coast is having but my mind knows that the ski areas of Chile are opening this week.


Recently I have realized why I haven't had work all semester. Apparently the end of the Chilean semester is a scramble to get all the work done that was put off while the students where marching in the streets and throwing rocks. Nonetheless, I am not concerned.


This past weekend Middlebury treated the students in the program with an all inclusive trip to La Cascada de las Animas in Cajon de Maipo. Though it is no Sandals resort and the temperature sure as hell did not coincide with Jamaica, it was great to have the whole group back together again, sans Ed Quish, the other token Milford resident in Chile.


The trip was marked by good food, a nice jaunt to a waterfall, a puma siting (possibly caged), and board games in spanish. When I learned that no one had seen the movie Clue I was deeply upset that they all had missed Tim Curry's performance of a lifetime.

I also spent the fastest 12 dollars I have yet to spend in Chile. The zipline across El Rio Maipo was only worth the incredible views in the middle of the river. The sun setting over the snow capped peaks of the Andes while the river raged 30 meters below was quite a moment.