La huelga

Well, a cold front hit soon after Carnaval - aka it was about 65 degrees here, and a nice break from the heat. It lasted a week, and while I was comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt, most Dominicans were really bundled up. I even sat next to one woman on the bus who was wearing a puffy north face-type coat! Crazyyy.

Art History Class Update: New teacher. Obviously. He seemed nice as he excitedly explained the syllabus -- no papers, no tests, no quizzes. He apparently gets called in by the university every so often to be yelled at for giving too many 100s as final grades, but maintains that if he thinks students deserve 100%, that's what he will give out. I do not entirely understand how he calculates these grades with no actual assignments to base them off of, but I'm not complaining! So we had our introductory class, and all was going well. We returned for class last Thursday, though, and were interrupted by strange sounds coming from outside. The Dominican students all looked extremely nervous, and started telling the professor that he needed to end class. I had no idea what was going on until someone told me that there was a "huelga" - a strike - going on to protest the costs of public transportation. The Dominican students told us not to leave the building because people were throwing rocks, shooting, and setting off homemade bombs! We stayed for a little while, until a Dominican student told us we could come with her and she'd show us how to leave safely. We booked it out of there, and lucky we did, because one of my friends who chose to stay was stuck in the building for three hours while homemade bombs were going off all around the area. We somehow ended up at McDonald's (obviously), where I ordered a Happy Meal. The strike continued into Friday as well - another friend of mine was riding a public bus as men were pelting it with rocks!

Anyway, after la huelga, the cold front ended. Now it's hotter than ever, and it's still "winter" here!