Quema caucho

Today was our second day of classes. I had literatura infantil (Children's Literature), Tropical Ecology!! and then linguistics. Tropical ecology is the only class I have that is not in spanish. I really like that course. Enrique, our professor, is hysterical! He speaks english with a spanish accent, so it's really fun to listen to him. After class today, we walked back to our apartment because it was only around 5:30. The sun doesn't set until 6:30 so it was still safe to walk home. Or so we thought......after stopping at Garzon (a cool grocery store!) to buy after sun lotion with aloe vera, we found both streets to our house blocked from student protestors. Quema caucho signifies a burning tire, which is what they always do in the streets. Not great for the environment at all. We didn't know if we could pass by. There weren't big crowds, just students on both streets leading to our apartment that were burning tires in the street. So we called my host sister to come meet us at the bakery nearby and walk us home. We got home safely and stayed inside the rest of the night.

Why did they protest?: Chavez closed a tv channel called RCTV that was apparently very important on saturday night. It was funny because I tried to watch tv saturday night and all the channels were fuzzy. I thought I bumped the cable and with my luck broke the tv or something. Nope, it was the government shutting down the tv channel. So the students from ULA protest against that as well as the rolling blackouts we experience twice a day. Furthermore, along with all the protesting throughout the city, it is also the season of the paradura del nino. It's when they pass around baby jesus and celebrate him. So up until February they light fireworks in celebration. It doesn't have to be at night either, which freaked me out the first time I heard it during the day. I thought it was a gun shot. Now I have gotten use to the idea that this noise is just the fuegos artificiales (fireworks). So the streets were filled with smoke, fire, yelling, dogs barking and fireworks going off all night. It was a crazy! Nothing like I had ever seen before. Somehow I fell asleep though.