CORRE RALFITO! TU PAPA!

It has been a pretty normal week except for the uproar at Parque O'Higgins on Thursday. Thousands of young people gather at the park on occasion to have parties and hang out together, but the police weren't really feeling it this time. I was there walking around looking for my Chilean friend Salvador, and there was a group of kids running through the park with a large smoking branch. The riot police didn't like that and told all the students to leave. My friends and I bounced out of there and went to a little park next door too hang out and play some guitar. We looked back into the park, and the riot police were GETTIN REAL with the kids.

The armored vehicles were out and the tear gas was flying. People started screaming and running out of the park, and the tear gas drifted our way. It was chaos for a while as people were running around the streets trying to escape it and I had my first taste of the tear gas. They picked the perfect name for it, because my nose was really itchy and my eyes started watering and a lot of people started sneezing. It was actually pretty cool to experience, but I'm very happy I only had the afterspray and I didn't get hosed in the face!

I laughed for a while when my Chilean friends made a joke. When the police were coming toward us with the tear gas, a Chilean friend yelled "corre ralfito! tu papa viene!" Which means "RUN RALPH YOUR DAD IS COMING!"

The kid's name wasn't ralph...so I asked Cecy about the joke, and she explained that the boy looks just like the character "Ralph" from "The Simpsons". I glanced over, and sure enough, the kid looks very much like Ralph (picture provided) from The Simpsons. And in the show, Ralph's dad is the police chief...I laughed pretty hard while we were all running for our lives.

Things got a little crazy, but it was time for me to go to church with Judith. I walked over to the Parque O'Higgins metro station, but it was closed because of the riot. There were hundreds of people waiting outside, and the bus stations were filled with the people who couldn't get on the metro. Luckily they were letting people off the metro one-by-one, and Judith emerged through the crowd.

She looked at the bus station, and realized there was no way we were getting to church on time if we waited for a bus, so we went to look for a cab down the street. EVERY cab was filled, but luckily, we found a bus down the street stopped at a red light. He must have felt sorry for us because he opened the door and let us on. As we were passing in front of the riot zone, someone threw a large rock at our bus. It crashed through the shatter-proof glass and hit a man sitting down. There was a little panic and everyone ducked down in the bus screaming to avoid other projectiles, but we got out with minimal casualties!

I tried to get a pic of it, but it's hard to see where the rock actually came through...but it was pretty crazy. I went to mass with my mom to calm down the night a little bit, it was very very nice. Afterwords I came back to the house, talked with my family a little bit, and went out to a friend's house-Gabriel. Gabo is a really really nice guy. He speaks perfect english (what else is new) because he spent a year in Australia. He has a really funny accent. I also met a Brazilian guy and another Chilean that I spent some time with to practice my Spanish. They were really cool. They had a guitar, a Ukulele type thing, a small piano, and other handmade instruments and we all jammed for a while Bob Marley style. American music is really big so they knew a lot of songs in English...we had a really good time. At around 4:30am we called it a night and I took a bus home to get asleep by 5...long day!