Sit Down Gringo!!

Today was quite a day for me! Tonight there was a big celebration downtown involving a light show. Tens of thousands of Chileans showed up and let me just say I have never been so intimately connected to humanity as I was tonight. Starting on the train. We got on a train that had zero space for anyone. What you would do was to wait for the door to open and then a mob would rush and push themselves into the at capacity train. I was lucky to be in the front so was just shoved in and stuck amongst throngs of people. And there were still three stops to go! Everyone was taking the train as close to downtown so at each stop along our way there were hundreds of people trying to shove their way in. It was nuts.

We got down into the center and took our place amongst the throngs and waited for the show to start. I’m thankful to the Chilean people because their average height is several inches below me so I was able to see quite well. Of course, some wily young men picked this up and started to yell at me (slightly good-naturedly, slightly maliciously) to sit down. Nothing came of it, but after the day I was having – who knew (see below post).

The show was amazing though! Incredible. It was all projected onto a big building, but they were able to make 3D images on the façade. The entire building was rippling at one point and at another, Easter Island Heads were emerging from the flat wall. Mind blowing stuff.

I’ve never been in a mass of people that large before. I got a sense of how small I really as a person and I had this feeling of losing all individuality for the mentality of this crowd. We were all here to support Chile. I’m sure that same guy who tried to rob me was somewhere there as well. But it didn’t matter. We were just part of a massive outpouring of people. It was so anonymous. It made me kind of understand how riots can begin when so many people are there. And yes, I was planning my escape strategy if a riot did begin (although how do you escape being in the middle of 30,000+ people?). But through all of this, there were no problems. And afterwards, everyone just walked back to the trains. It was incredible.