Lack of lustre

When you live in a foreign country to begin with everything is shiney and new. Slowly it looses its lustre and everything becomes normal flat colours. It has taken some time, but Chile is down to normal colours for me. There are still things that surprise me, but last week I found myself writing an email to the teachers that suprised me for all the wrong reasons. Here is an extract from it:


As you are probably aware today and tomorrow are national strikes. This shouldn't affect us too much except for the normal problems of tear gas, water canons, barricades and transport disruptions. Tomorrow there is a march authorised from Plaza Italia down Alameda as far as Portugal (Uni Catolica) where supposedly they will turn off and go south. I suspect that may not happen and you should be prepared for severe disruptions all the way along Alameda (including in the metro). If you have to come into town consider using the Plaza de Armas or Bellas Artes metro stops. The march is supposed to finish near Parque O'Higgins so hopefully later in the day the disruptions for us will be minimal. Really, who knows!! I came across a flaming barricade before 8am this morning.... so it is impossible to predict.
Please allow enough time for disruptions in getting to class, and stay safe.


Now these events might seem surprising to you, but this in not what made me take note. It was the fact that I wrote 'the normal problems of...'. It strikes me as incredible that I see these problems as normal inconveniences now. I wrote about water canons not long after I arrived in Chile. I was impressed by them. Now I see them all the time and don't take any notice. A normal day can go: car, truck, bus, police horse (at which point I take a second glance as the police horses are beautiful), car, car, tear gas truck (run!!), water canon, car, car, hooded youth setting something on fire, police in riot gear, car, truck, police bus full of police in riot gear, car. 
I think you get the picture, it's all the same.


I do feel like I might be standing in the middle of a moment in history here. The eduaction protests, while they have quietened down for now, are not going away. They are beginning to build momentum in other countries too (Colombia has recently had hundreds of thousands of students in the streets protesting for reforms there) and there is solidarity between these two movements and burgeoning protests in Peru and Brasil. And yet I just see the inconvenience of getting tear gassed on a weekly basis, or of having to take the long way round the barricades to get home. I feel apathetic, but these things just annoy me now. Apparently my revoluntionary fire doesn't burn as brigthly as my ideals would hope.