...and now we're en toma...

Alright, so yesterday a bunch of chilean students were saying that the paro was going to end because Bachelet (the president) had made some sort of deal with the students and such. Well, I got a message this morning saying that the students had taken over our two main buildings at the university, so now we're in toma. I'm not exactly sure what that means for us since I've been staying away from the school lately, but at other universities when they went into toma, the students would riot and rush the school, and they'd go into all of the classrooms and throw the desks and chairs up against all the doors and windows and block the whole building so no one can get in. And I heard from some people that the students are trapping themselves inside of the building and not letting anyone past them. So, for all of the exchange students that are here, we still have to have some of our classes, so now they have us basically sneaking in to the back of one of the main buildings and we have to fit our whole class into a classroom that's the size of a closet. It kinda reminds me of Nazi Germany, and I sort of feel like a Jewish student trying to get an education...But anyways, last night I was sitting in my room talking on the phone, and all of a sudden there was a huge explosion outside of my apartment building and all of the power went out. Turns out that a tree branch had some how struck the power box that was on the power lines, and so it short circuited and it basically blew up. So my host family and I sat in the living room and told the stories of our lives while it was pouring rain outside. Finally after about 2 hours, the power came back on for about ten minutes, and then another huge explosion happened, this time even bigger than before, and we lost power again. Then some dudes came and clipped a bunch of tree branches off and everything was ok again. And THEN at about 3 or 4 this morning, there was a huge fire in the building across the street from me, and the flames were shooting up and there was smoke everywhere and sirens blaring and all these people were on the street freaking out. And I know it may sound like I'm being dramatic, but I prefer the term descriptive...just telling you what I saw. So anyways, that's all the excitement that's happened today. I'll let you know more later...and I HOPE I'll be back in school soon--we'll see :) Chau!