futbol, etc.

A couple hours ago I was walking to the bus stop and found a huge pile of wood in the trash so now i have lots of wood to make paintings on! It's kind of frustrating because tomorrow i would like to stay in my room in the sun and paint but I have class. It is so silly to be taking art classes so that I can do art but then when I feel like doing art I can't because I have to go to class. This morning I woke up feeling really inspired and excited to make things but then I had to go to ceramics and I couldn't translate anything I was thinkng about into clay and I didn't make anything all day except for plans to go to La Serena this weekend. Which I'm excited about because it is the beach! It's only five hours north and we can take a midnight bus and sleep on the way and arrive at sunrise and have a full three days there. But I'm really bummed out because Jenna and I had plans to go to Buenos Aires for a week in September when we have off for independence related holidays but it turns out that the facultad de ciencias has off the week before the holidays and I have off the week after them so now we can't go together and I'm not sure who I could convince to go with me. alone is possibly a bad idea. oh! I also went to a soccer game on Sunday which was crazy. It was a "clasico" which is when 2 of the 3 good teams from Santiago play eachother, in this case the Universidad de Chile vs. the U Catolica (which does not mean college soccer. They are Chile's professional teams, they're just owned by the respective universities). So obviously I was rooting for la U Chile and everybody was giving me shit for it and saying that they were really bad and definitely going to lose so I bet one of the Rafa's that they would win and I don't know what they were talking about because la Chile dominated the whole game and won. so now he owes me a beer. But that is not what's crazy about soccer here. What is crazy is that the stadium is full of carabineros (police) dressed in full head to toe riot gear with shields and some even riding on horses. The way you pay for tickets is based on whether you have to stare into the sun all game and whether you are behind the goal or by the sidelines. The super cheap tickets are behind the goals so that area is packed and a lot rowdier and that's where people are really into it. So the police just line up in front of those two sections and wait for people to start getting too crazy and occasionally they'll march in formation around the field while the game is going on. For me it was really strange, I guess we have security too but it was just so reminiscent of something from a military dictatorship that it was hard to feel comfortable around them. And then we left the stadium and started walking towards the metro but apparently a riot had broken out and the carabineros were spraying down people with water and then charging in on horses and motorcycles to disperse everyone. They were really scary, much scarier than the people waving flags and running in the street and throwing rocks. So of course when you start getting hosed down with water sprayed out of an armored truck, everyone starts running in all directions and it's total chaos and kind of scary especially for me since I obviously had no idea how serious it was or where I should run or whether my friends were still behind me or not. It's stupid because the police response just made it more chaotic and made everyone panic and run and all the rioters were doing was throwing rocks at the armored truck and so if the police hadn't been there "to keep things in order", they wouldn't have even been doing anything. Maybe that's not true but that's how it feels and the police make me really uncomortable. Also they wear ridiculous all brown uniforms that make them look like an army from the 17th century. But the Chileans I talked to are not bothered by it and say that that is just how it is at soccer games and that the people who attend them are kind of dangerous and uneducated. But it is not just soccer games. There was a student protest at Macul (my campus) on tuesday and the police response was the same. Granted the protest was kind of immature and it was supposed to be about LOCE and education reform but mostly was just kids throwing pieces of concrete at the armored truck but again, they wouldn't have been throwing anything if the police in riot gear and armored trucks hadn't been there to put down the protest. And the police shot potato guns back at the students with real potatos! and then they tear gassed them all! I feel like it's just really extreme and it bothers me that the instant response to any sort of demonstration is to disperse it and act really scary so that everybody runs away. That does not make me feel protected. Also they close down the metro stations when there is a riot. But they don't only close down the station next to the stadium, they close down the next three stations on the line, including mine. So after reuniting after successfully avoiding the cops we had to walk an hour to get home. It makes me feel like if i had tried to do something like that alone or without chileans, it would have been basically impossible. I'm feeling vaguely down on Santiago right now but I'll stop talking only about the frustrating parts because lots of good exciting things have been happening too. Today Jenna met a boy in her biology class who is going to New York in a few weeks and wanted suggestions for what he should do there so she took him to meet me and we all went out to a pub with some other chilean girls and I pretended that I knew all about new york and started telling him things to do and realized that I actually did know some things about it and it made me feel good to finally feel useful or knowledgeable about something. Maybe that's what's most frustrating here. There is obviously a lot that I don't know but even the skills that I do have, i am not really getting to share with anyone. . . whew, that was a long and unproofread post and I am going to sleep. Tomorrow I am going to train myself to wake up without an alarm clock since they don't work for me anyway and go see either a Brazilian performance piece at Bellas Artes or go to a park and draw in the sun.