The public service employees are on strike, and have been since about the 11th of this month. Unfortunately I don’t have any striking pictures of the street parades, piles of garbage (no collectors!), posters or blocked off public works buildings. Yesterday en route to class in the morning, the bus I was on had to take a completely different path because of the strikers on Pedro Montt (for the motivated googlers: he took Independencia instead of Yungay) which left me 20 minutes late to my English-Spanish Interpretation class. The class was canceled for some reason, but were it not I would have missed an important test, now scheduled for Tuesday.
Speaking of tests, I had one last night, I have one tomorrow (Portuguese), the DELE on Saturday, one next Tuesday (Traditional Dances), next Thursday (Basic Concepts in Cinematographic Language), and tests December 1st, 2nd, 3rd…and on and on it goes. I feel like whenever I open my agenda to see what is coming up I have a test the following day.
Why can’t half of the department classes have a heavily weighted final, and the other half a heavily weighted midterm? Maybe half of the classes could end a week earlier than the rest so that these exams don’t smother the students in a testy avalanche.
I ought to make mention that all of these nasty responsibilities: tests, exams and projects–are due at the nicest, sunniest, bluest-sky time of the year in Valparaíso. Today’s high is 81˚ and sunny. This is beach weather! Why I am I in computer labs reading research abstracts about the Rapa Nui language! I should be doing yoga on the seaside. My body and brain are in disaccord. One wants to take advantage of all of the educational opportunities available to me for the short time I have left at the Universidad Católica, and the other wants to enjoy the sunshine and pacific ambience of Reñaca, Caleta Portales and Viña del Mar.
