Purple rain

Why purple rain, I hear you ask... Well it's not as interesting as you might have been hoping for. There is a weird purple light on the street outside my room, it's tipping it down and it reminded me of the song. Creative right? The locals call Concepción 'Tropiconce', because the weather here can change in an instant. This week we've had rain almost every day but also sun most days too, you can be sat in a classroom and within one 45min session you've experienced two rainstorms and three brief interludes of glorious sunshine. It's like the city is trying to trick you into leaving the house in shorts and a t-shirt just so it can laugh it you when it pours down 10 minutes later and you don't have anything vaguely waterproof on you! (Sadly, this is a situation I find myself in all too often!)

It's fair to say that Conce is a city full of surprises. Every new part of the town I explore I find something interesting, weird, funny, creepy. On Wednesday on the way home from work we got stuck in a long queue of traffic whilst on the bus, since it wasn't that far from home I decided to get off and walk the remaining 5 minutes home. Turns out the long queue of traffic was due to some protestors starting a massive fire in the road and stopping all traffic from passing, they were protesting rubbish pensions which seems to be a very common thing here. Protests are way more common here than they are in the UK, happening once or twice (potentially more) a week! The best advice I was given was that if you see the police turn up with the water cannon, RUN! I've seen them use that thing and they don't hold back. Tear gas, fire and missiles (no, not explosives...) are not uncommon.

ComBUStion issues... (Maybe I won't use puns on this blog again...) 

"Selfie at a protest? Probably not appropriate, best stick with the standard photo..."

Even the university system here is characterised by the regular political activities of its students. There are two stages to university protests, as far as I'm aware. Stage 1 is called "En paro", which kind a means a pause in studies whilst the students protest (I think). The second stage is the one I know I little bit more about, it's called "En toma" and it's where the students break into the faculty at night, occupy the building and don't let any staff or officials in until they've got what they want or reached some resolution. It's really common here. In fact, the first week I walked around the UdeC (Universidad de Concepción) campus, most of the faculties were 'en toma', and some faculties won't start classes until Monday due to the protests! I find it fascinating that we know practically nothing of this in the UK and we don't realise it really exists in Chile because it's so normal here that nobody documents it, the same goes for other street protests. I'm thinking it might be interesting to do some kind of film or photography project that would give a bit more of a creative insight into the whole protest culture out here to foreigners.

Don't mess with armoured police single decker buses!

"Escuelita en toma" one of the many UdeC faculties affected

The doctors are at it too!

I'm off to bed now because I have to be up early tomorrow for what will hopefully be a whole weekend of whitewater paddling about 3hrs South of here. Stand by for the update!