Today was basically a free day for my family. We didn't have school because there was a strike of public sector workers, which includes the teachers' union. That meant my host brothers and sister didn't have school, my host mom didn't have to teach and I didn't have to go to school because there were no teachers there for me to work with. This was nice for all of us, we went swimming. It was interesting though, because I talked to my host mom about the strike and why we didn't have school and the answers were pretty Tico.

According to my host mom, and some other teachers at the high school, the strike had to do with the government increasing taxes on educators' salaries. They also mentioned something about eliminating part-time teachers and raising the number of hours for full-time teachers from 40 to 44. Not everyone knew about this and when I asked if it was an issue, most said they hadn't heard about it. According to one teacher there is a two page list of complaints from the teachers' union, and that's what the strike is about. The only consistent answer I got when I asked about it was that it was something about receiving less money.

It turns out that it was a strike of all the public sector workers in the whole country over the new tax on their salaries. There isn't terribly good news reporting here, so that's all I've go so far. Oh, and that the march took up seven blocks.

What I found fascinating is that they canceled school for the day to go on strike, and presumably to the march in San José, but according to my host mom no one from our school went. I understand that you can go on strike and not go to the march, that's fine. The part that most confuses me is that they were on strike and they didn't really know why. Not that this doesn't happen in other parts of the world, but it's very much in line with the way things are here: we're not really sure why, but we get a day off...awesome.