Tear Gas, yes it makes you cry

Remember a few posts ago when I wrote about the educational protests in Chile? This week there were multiple protests in different plazas all over Valpo and to disperse the crowds, the cops use tear gas. Yesterday afternoon, my first class got canceled and I was walking down one of the streets with a bunch of kids in my class and all of a sudden I start crying, my nose is on fire, and I absolutely can't breathe---we had walked right into tear gas. Granted, the protest had ended an hour or so earlier but tear gas lingers in the street for hours and sometimes days after it has been used. We were walking on one of the main streets and weren't "looking" for the protests at all, yesterday, they were just unavoidable. After a second in the gas we immediately turned around and walked as fast as we could the other way. I honestly don't know how the students stand that stuff when they are on the front-lines of the protests--it's awful! I'm sure while I'm here I will run into it again but I'm still going to do my best to stay as far away from the protest streets as possible!

This past week I also figured out my Google phone on my computer and was able to call all of my grandparents, it was so great to hear their voices--I'm used to talking to them around once a week or more. Also, my bracket for March Madness is doing alright...Marquette losing last night messed up my final four though--sad I was.

I also have started drinking the milk here. I learned that it's powdered milk that has just already been mixed with water so it's okay not to refrigerate it. I liked powdered milk when I was little, nothing's changed, I just drink milk that's bought off of a store isle instead of out of an ice box,

This weekend we will be going with ISA to the beaches in the north for the day Saturday and then Sunday our Chilean siblings are coming into town and we are celebrating Mama's birthday! Yesterday Julia and I stopped in a shop up the hill from us to buy a bottle of wine for our parents and we started talking to this Chilean lady who started telling us about crazy stories from an earthquake and some other things that we couldn't really make out. She kept asking Julia if she was scared and stuff and then when we were leaving she told us not to tell our parents what she had said...so of course we went right home and told Papa everything! Turns out she was telling us that our house was haunted and that spirits lived in the neighborhood. It all made sense at that point and we figured out we'd been talking to the crazy lady of the neighborhood--oh the life. Papa assured us that there weren't any spirits in the house, not that we needed assuring, and then we all proceeded to laugh at the absurdity of the lady's story.

This morning is super chill here at the casa, I think later today we are going to go to the beach--I love having free Fridays and absurdly long weekends, it will definitely be an adjustment going back to school at SEU.