The Strike Continues

As I've briefly mentioned, the students at the University here are on strike to protest increasing tuition rates. The "strike" just means that the students are occupying the campus and forbidding the professors access to teach. After the strike is over their school year will be extended to cover the lost time. However, since we have a set date for leaving we can't really afford to wait.

So our professor moved our classes, first to two high schools in the city. On Mondays and Wednesdays we would meet at a school downtown, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we were meeting at a school near my house. Classes started at 5pm and went until 7 or 8.

As of this week we are meeting at called Club Nuble, which is mostly a venue available for rent. When my sister had her bachelorette party it was at Club Nuble.

It's a nice place, closer to all of our houses than the University was. We have all of our classes in the same room where we sit around a conference table. Classes now run from 9am to between 1pm and 2pm, and one day a week we return at 4pm for another class.

The whole experience with the strike has been haphazard. I'm impressed with how the professors and my fellow students have adapted to the changes. It's been 3 weeks since the strike started and it's hard to remember what attending the University was like.

It's beginning to sound like we won't be returning to the University campus before our term is over. Yesterday one of our professors told us that the situation has actually gotten worse. During a meeting between the students and administration one of the students nearly struck one of the faculty members.

The students take the striking seriously. Last week a bunch of them decided to WALK to Concepcion, which is an hour away by bus! It's a little further than what it would be to walk from Corvallis to Salem. It took them two days to get there. I also got to play guitar for a concert the students held. At the building were we performed the students had stuffed some clothes so that it looked like a person and hung the "body" from a noose out of a second story window.

The building was also covered in handmade signs. Students had blocked the main entrance by stacking up dozens of desk chairs so that there was only a small space to walk through. The students take turns watching the door. All of it is a little surreal but it's kind of fun too. Definitely something we don't see in the States today.

Playing for the concert was fun, too, although our set didn't go well. My friend Dave and I have been jamming with a Chilean friend we made down here, and we've just been learning popular songs and covering them. We played in a bar (La Biblioteca) a couple weeks ago, and this concert at the school was our second performance.

We played in an auditorium. The space was nice, but they didn't have a proper sound system for it. The guitars each had only one medium sized amp, and the vocals were run through the PA system in the house. The drums didn't have microphones at all. And there were no monitors. All of this adds up to us not being able to hear each other when we performed.

I didn't realize it until we started playing under these conditions, but when we play together we play by listening to each other. Sure, we know the chords and how to play the songs, but we truly feed off of each other and we need to hear each other to make the songs happen. As soon as the ability to hear each other was gone our songs suffered.

Three other bands played as well, and they didn't seem to have as much trouble as we did. But they had all clearly been together for longer than we had (we've been playing together for only three weeks). One of the songs we played we had only learned the day before. Whereas the other bands could rely on each member having his part memorized, we could not.

It was still fun though, and I learned a lot. And our last two songs actually went well, so it wasn't a total disaster. But I gained a huge appreciation for bands that are able to perform well consistantly under any conditions. I also gained a huge appreciation for monitors.

Next week is Thanksgiving, and our group will attempt to kill the missing-the-holidays blues with a little Thanksgiving of our own. We have one more week of all of our classes, and then a final week of Spanish 311 for 2 hours a day. Then I'll get on a plane and head back to Oregon.

The time really has flown, hasn't it? I'm ready to come home and I look forward to seeing my family and friends and taking classes at OSU. The strike is interesting, but I prefer the stability of our education system. Just one more example of the perspective I now have on life in the States.

If I don't write again before November 26th, Happy Thanksgiving!