Bustin Out the Flippy Floppies

Finally some pictures of my room!

The weather this week has been absolutely gorgeous! Breaking out the flip flops and t-shirts was so great. Unfortunately, the sun was only teasing and is going back into hiding this next week. I'm just finally glad that I'm beginning to see signs of the summer weather that I missed out on in California. On to more pressing news though, my school is basically going on strike.

My bed is to the left and the door is to the right.

This is the first time in a really long time that La Catolica is joining the protests. Each facultad, equilivent of "majors" in the states, voted to decide if they were going to be "en paro" or not. The facultads that vote in favor of the paro will not be holding class. I'm taking 2 poly sci and 1 spanish lit class, so naturally the political science and literature departments voted to go on strike. Wonderful! Basically what this means is all foreign students are screwed. Some of my professors are trying to find other locations to hold class and some are giving students all the materials to just study at home. Every week the facultads en paro will vote to either extend the paro or to begin holding classes. Maybe the government will actually listen when even the Catholic university has decided to mobilize. I fully support the efforts here to reform the education system and I want to be able to show my support, but I'm conflicted. I need to be able to go to school, I have credits on the line. Being here for a year means that this education business needs to be sorted out fairly soon. There is also the little tiny factor that if I or any other extranjero (foreigner) is caught participating in the marches we could be deported. That's right DEPORTED!

Yummy!!

On a positive note, whenever I come home after a stressful day of classes being canceled and running around campus to sort my life out, my host mom Gloria has wonderful meals prepared for me. Being the foodie that I am, I am super pumped to have a mom who is a fabulous cook! Her arabic heritage definitely adds to spice to the normally bland Chilean food. One of my favorite dishes so far: stuffed artichokes! I didn't know how one would stuff an artichoke, but it sure turned out delicious.