Just another Saturday

Saturday is our day to go to church here. We always leave plenty early because it can take up to an hour to get there, depending on what we run into traffic-wise. Today we decided to take the Metro downtown. We can literally step outside our door, walk a couple meters and get on the train. It was packed right to the doors as usual but we managed to squeeze our bodies on also. Last week a friend had his wallet stolen on the Metro so we both held on tight to ours today. We went 2 stops down the line on our way to our destination. Everyone started pouring out of the train and we couldn't figure out what was going on. Then the conductor came and got in the opposite end of the train and started going back where we had just come from! We asked someone and they said we needed to get off and get on another one. They re-opened the doors and we jumped off. We waited forever and were going to be very late for church but finally asked again and someone told us to get on #3 and we'd have to get out and walk the rest of the way. We were totally confused by this point but got on the train and starting talking to a very nice university student. He told us that all the lines were closed below a certain station because there was teargas and police and all kinds of lawlessness. He got out with us and walked a long ways until we came to riot police and teargas and the whole bit. Young kids throwing rocks, fires burning in the streets, all storefronts closed and general chaos. We tried several different ways but kept getting turned back by teargas and mobs running away from it. We finally gave up and headed back to the Metro station to go home. You can see 2 guys riding on the back of the train in one of the photos. These were older guys but every train has someone on the back and some are 5 or 6 years old. It is really dangerous! I must say, it was good to come back to the safety of our beautiful home. Fridays & Saturdays have been crazy here for the last few weeks.