My First Fairly Scary Expierence

Today i left my work an hour early, i was in the classroom and i think the class got cancelled because no one informed me, or maybe they where somewhere else, i am not sure. So, i left around noon, decided to try to beat the rain and get a little extra volunteering done. When i left i heard all these comotion and didnt know where it was coming from, until i got to the street. Upon arrival i saw a large march walking south bound on 7A, towards Candelaria, mostly young people, waving Colombian flags, and i thought to myself how cool, its like a presidental march, so i walked across the one lane of traffic and joined the march, naturally. People where shouting up to people on balconies that where showing support, ¨come join us, come join us¨and people where running from apartments down in to the street to join, how cool, my first Colombian presidental rally, i heard them many times from the window when i heard people yelling DOWN WITH URIBE. It was all fun and games, and than it started to get a little more serious. About 10% of the population where young men, with cloaks, bandanas, and masks over their faces. And i saw one of them run up to the Citi bank, which i was planning on using, and start spraying some jargon on the front window, the crowd started whistling and the boys packed up their pant and ran because cops where approaching. I man that actually needed to use the services just walked by the young men spraying the paint as if they where just pigeons nodding their heads while saunteering around the sidewalk for crumbs. So than the same boys, directly in front of me, and carrying gigantic sticks like baseballs mind you, started yelling at two lonely police in the median, the police advanced the young men proved overpowering the police actually backed down! I walked by another building, this one most have been more important, because the entire stairway was protected by police, standing shoulder to shoulder across the entire building. About 40 cops in all, and dressed head to toe in this black bullet proof material, they looked like robocop, you could have shot these dudes in the belly with a desert eagle and it would not have made them even move their feet. Than after 38 police at the end their was two cops that most have been short on the SWAT budget, because they where dressed in these old army green pull over vests, that had been used before, the evidence was in the holes where former police had been shot. Needles to say, the last two cops, looked the most frightend. Wow, this is what i was thinking, wow. Then we got to a skywalk, so people could cross the road, because 7A is a busy street, the young man in front of the rally ran to the top and started waving his Colombian flag, everybody went crazy, and naturally so did I. After that he was followed up by two other young men, who than unrolled a homemade American Flag, hug it off the crosswalk, let it on fire, and watched it burn. The crowd scream even later. At this moment it accured to me, this isn´t a Anti-Uribe Rally, this is an anti U.S.A. rally, my immediate reaction, looking around me and being in the center of this mob, was, SHIT. My next thought was dont open your mouth, dont open your mouth, dont open your mouth, and my third thought was, cross the street and watch with a buffer of three lanes of heavy traffic. I did just that, running to the other side, when i got to the other side i saw the police move in on the boys that i had mentioned, the ones with the grafitti and sticks, and the boys started waving their sticks and one pulled out a homemade nailbomb in a Pony pop bottle, the cops backed down. Again i thought to myself holy moly, i need to work on my spanish a little more so next time i join the right rally. Peace from Bogotà.