The "paro" is the reason for the delayed start of this semester at the university. Although it is almost the start of the first semester in North America, here it is winter, so all of the students are prolonging their winter break before the start of the second semester. They have many different reasons for protesting, some of which are explained by Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_student_protests_in_Chile
but other reasons are personal issues some students have with the educational system here, how it is manages, and how they use the funds they are given. There haven't been any demonstrations or protests in Valdivia that I have seen. They are happening more frequently in the bigger cities, Santiago and Valparaíso, and they are not very violent. However, they are making things happen, like a new education fund by the government and a significant delay in the start of this semester.
Other than that, life here is very peaceful. It rains very hard, but for very short periods of time, which the people here call "chubascos." Supposedly August is the month with the most chubascos, but then the weather calms down after that. Everything is green, green, and greener, even though it is winter. The grass is a bright shade of green and even the rocks and trunks of trees are covered in bright green moss.
Last night we went to a photo exhibition of the best photos taken of a volcanic eruption about a month ago. The ash didn't travel north to Valdivia or Santiago, but it did travel east to Argentina and west to Australia and New Zealand. Some similar photos are on this website:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/06/volcano_erupts_in_chile.html
After that we had coffee in el Centro (downtown). Something that surprises me is that many of the shops and malls play popular music from the United States most of the time. We listened to the same pop/rap that is on the radio all the time in the U.S. while we talked to each other in Spanish at the café.
The meals here are a little different as well, maybe influenced by the Spanish way of eating a huge lunch and then having siesta. Here breakfast is small but lunch is enormous, everyone goes home from about 1 to 3 pm to have lunch together. Dinner is smaller, and sometimes when it is later in the night they call it "onces" (which means teatime but literally translates to "elevensies"). The two things that are super popular everywhere are the rolls, "pancitos" and instant coffee, which we drink with every meal.
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