all inclusive

Last weekend, Tulane graciously paid for us (by this I mean they used our tuition money) to spend two days and a night at an all inclusive resort about 2 hours away from Havana. Veradero, the beautiful beachside town where we were staying, is a hotspot among the European tourists that come to Cuba. Now, this is not without good reason. The beaches here are GORGEOUS...I'm talking white sand, crystal clear water with no rocks or seaweed, uncrowded beaches, good (unlimited) food/drinks. Pretty hard to go wrong! That being said, it's pretty crazy to imagine that people come to these all inclusive resorts to spend 1-3 weeks here (according to one of our waitresses, most Europeans stay for 21 days) and this is the only thing they know of Cuba. The resort itself was situated in a very strange rip in the time-space continuum of Cuba, complete with bingo, dance lessons, water polo games, and "Cuban Tuesday" parties...it looked like it was pulled straight out of Cancun! So basically these tourists from Canada, or Germany, or Russia, etc. come to Cuba and spend their time sitting in a beach chair being brought drinks by the Cuban men and women who are lucky enough to get chosen for this high paying and enviable job.

It was a little like this scene in Wall-E...

Now, don't get me wrong. I had a great time spending a weekend here! It was a great way to relax after a hectic first month of school (more on this later). The people who worked there were friendly and helpful; many spoke 4+ languages and enjoyed practicing their English with us. It was, however, a little trippy to see bro'd out Canadians and seriously crispy Europeans lounging around the pool without a care in the world. It was especially strange to see that the five of us were some of the few people there that spoke Spanish, or even tried to speak it. I did, however, encounter one particularly large man from somewhere in Europe asking the bartender how to say "get drunk" in Spanish (emborrachar, for anyone who's wondering...the bartender was happy to tell him). There was a giant group of Canadian guys that looked straight of of the Jersey Shore (wait...what?) that enjoyed talking to us for a while. They were very confused that we were studying here for 4 months, and asked whether we came to Veradero every weekend, one commenting on the lack of air conditioning...if only you knew, bro. One of the few girls that was accompanying them was shocked to find out that there was such a thing as the Universidad de la Habana!

Storm clouds over one of the nine restaurants at the resort

It was really a kind of reality check for all of us, I think. Since we've been here for a month and a half we've gotten accustomed to living in Cuba, and most people don't have the chance to see what we see. Even the tourists that decide to come to Havana usually don't stray off the beaten path as far as I can tell. Living here as students (with a knowledgeable professor) gives us a different perspective than most people that come to Cuba.

Small sampling of the bottles at the pharmacy museum

Cannon and palms on the roof of the castle/prison.

Here are some other pictures from our trip to Veradero. Before arriving at the resort, we stopped in Matanzas to see a castle built in the 1600's that was used as a prison for many year. After that we stopped at a really interesting pharmacy museum...I think it was the first pharmacy in the Caribbean, but don't quote me on it. We were also supposed to go to a cabildo, "ethnic associations" (thanks Wiki)  that also served as centers of syncretic religions that developed from the African people brought to Cuba by the slave trade, similar to the social aid and pleasure clubs in NOLA. Unfortunately our cab driver decided that we would NOT be making this journey. He was very religious, he told us, and there was "nothing to see in Matanzas". Our professor got out to ask directions to the cabildo and apparently she was told that she wouldn't be able to get back in the car if she went into a house to ask! He even went so far as to hold up the bible he had stowed in his center console, essentially refusing to take us to a place where the Devil lived. Moral to this story: there are crazy religious people even in Cuba!

mis clases

Well, I know I've been a bit lax about updating my blog. It's harder than it seems! I'm planning on writing a big post (or two) tomorrow, but to tide everyone (read: my parents) over, here's what my schedule looks like while I'm here!

Purple -- Culture and Society in Cuba (Tulane class)
Green -- Tendencies of Contemporary Capitalism
Blue -- History of Cuba V (basically history of the Revolution)
Yellow -- Volunteer at the Convento de Belen
Orange -- Latin American Sociological Thought
Pink -- History of Cuban Cinema

My last first week of school ever...

In the middle of the traditional walk up the stairs

Sorry about not updating (again), but the first week was pretty intense. We started off our first Monday at the Universidad de la Habana with a walk up the stairs with the student body (er...that is, those students that chose to show up at 8AM). It wasn't very organized, more of just everyone kind of mushing together and walking up the stairs, but the effect was pretty cool!!

My first class was Cuban Literature III, where the professor basically told us that we should drop the class because we weren't Cuban and wouldn't be able to keep up with the readings. The other two Tulane kids in the class thought about sticking it out, but I eventually decided to drop it. Why take a class at 9:45 in the morning with a teacher who doesn't even want me there?

My schedule has gone through some other changes too. I'm dropping the History of Cuba V class (the classroom had half a wall that was shared with an unreasonably loud class next door, and our professor was getting pretty up there in the years and talked at an inaudible level). I'm replacing this class with another at the ICAIC (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry) on the History of Cuban Cinema. It seems like it will be really great! Last week we watched a movie called Historias de la Revolución (Stories from the Revolution) made by one of Cuba's first cinematographers. The building is beautiful -- it has a giant air conditioned theatre, a main house with great chandeliers and old film memorabilia, plus beautiful gardens with guava and mango trees. I'll have to see if I can take some pictures this week because it really looks like a palace! Best of all, the class will count towards my Spanish degree! I'd been contemplating dropping my minor, but with this class I'll only have to take two more classes when I get back to NOLA in the spring. I still have to pick one more class to take, unless I decide to just stick with 12 hours. Not sure what it will be, but I'm sure I'll include it in my next entry.

A little blurry, but here's the Tulane crew before the walk up!

Spending September 11th here was pretty interesting. There wasn't really any mention of it anywhere, other than on the American TV channels we some how get in our residency. On Saturday night, when one of our Cuban friends was asked about the upcoming day, he didn't even know what we were referring to. My friend from Tulane who was talking with him about it picked up on this and explained the significance of "9/11". He quickly realized what she was talking about: "Oh...the towers..." he said, and let us know that he was bad with dates. Kind of strange to see someone who doesn't immediately know what 9/11 was, but he explained to us that most of the younger generations here aren't really exposed to much news because so much of what is reported here is so incredibly biased. To most people here, September 11th is just another day that goes by, it doesn't hold all the emotion and significance that it does to everyone in the USA. That being said, I did watch some of the ceremonies and shows being played on CNN. It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years...

Bonus picture. Yes they are almost as big as the page, nommm

Tomorrow I start my first day of volunteering with the Convento de Belen. I know I'll be working with kids, but other than that I'm in the dark. I'm not sure what we'll be doing, but the Tulane students who have participated in the past loved it. I'm hoping it will be worth rousing myself out of bed at 8:30 and making it all the way downtown. Hope I don't get lost!

I'll leave y'all with this picture of the best avocado ever. We buy them at the agromercado here, 4 for 30 moneda nacional (less than $1.50 USD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). They are gigantic and perfectly ripe. I'll probably cry when the season ends because eating them with lime and some salt is arguably the best part of my day!

Pensamientos

[If you're looking to hear about my trip/see pictures, check out the post below!]

As for what I've been thinking since getting here, that's a little more complicated than a summary of all our outings. It's pretty overwhelming, in a word. We've encountered all sorts of reactions to our being here. For the most part, people are the exact same as any other place. The air isn't ~crackling with socialism~ or anything, but if you kid of dig past the surface you can see differences. Some people have expressed their unhappiness about their situations here, but their frustration is aimed more towards the inefficiency than the government. Cubans want things to work they way they should (be it plumbing, communications technology, transportation, getting groceries, etc.) and they have faith in the government here to make these things run smoothly. While some aren't 100% happy with the way things are, others we've talked with have expressed their love of the island and "El Padre" (Fidel), saying they never ever want to leave. All in all, I haven't really met anyone who has expressed unhappiness with the system or how it's run/who runs it. The Cubans I've talked with all refer to El Comandante with respect...one going even so far to use Fidel's name interchangeably with God!

That being said, my fellow American students and I have noticed some things that stick out. Primarily, the discrimination that can be seen in the people and ingrained in the society. Today one of my friends made the observation that the dual currency system really enforces a sort of discrimination in every day life. As obvious non-Cubans, my US friends and I are usually assumed to automatically be paying for things in CUC (the convertible peso that is used by most tourists, about 1:1 with the USD), everywhere we go. We're not being discriminated against with this separation, but when we walk into a restaurant that is in Moneda Nacional (the "local" currency, less available and desirable, I guess, to tourists...25MN:1CUC/USD), waiters will rush to seat us in hopes that we'll ask to pay in CUC and leave a big fat tip. The other day we were eating at a MN pizza place and our waiter flat out ignored a black Cuban mom and daughter that had been waiting for a seat before we even got there, refusing to seat them first when we pointed out that fact. She ushered us to a four top table and then went back and put the pair at a table with a stranger. It's a really complicated issue, since everyone is supposed to be equal, but we've definitely glimpsed some racial conflicts. I'm sure I'll have more (and better elucidated) things to say about it as I spend more time here.

The other day my suitemates and I watched an episode of Alias (which, if you're one of my good friends, you'll know is one of my favorite shows) that was set in Havana. After our initial excitement seeing our current hometown on screen (or a set of it, at least) I started thinking. I could remember watching the same episode in 2004 or 2005, thinking about how much I wanted to go there but it would never happen. But here I am...I did make it happen!

After lunch yesteray ($60 MN for a sizeable piece of pork, plus rice, potatoes, and a small salad...roughly $2.50 USD) I came back home to the costillar and split a perfectly ripe and amazingly delicious avocado with my roommate. We ate it standing on our balcony, watching people pass by on the street below. It was a beautiful day and you know...even though Cuba's not perfect, I'm perfectly content to be here for 103 more days!

Santa Clara, Trinidad, y Cienfuegos

Well, sorry for not updating for so long! I'm sure my giant fan base has been waiting with bated breath to hear about the past two weeks, so I'll try to give y'all a good rundown before really going into detail about what I've been thinking about my time here so far (meaning I'm going to write two entries instead of one giant one to avoid text overload.

We started off our five day trip on a bit of a bad note...about two hours into our three hour trip to Santa Clara, our cab broke down! We stood on the side of the road for a while before a nice Cuban family pulled over and decided that they would drive us the rest of the way to the Che memorial (our interim destination). So...we got to see a bit of the inefficiency common to Cuba (as the cab company wanted to send a new car from Havana instead of their offices in Santa Clara, only ~30 minutes away), but it was effectively countered with the arrival of this friendly family who took us to our final destination and then helped find a cab that would drive us the rest of the way.

"We want to be like Che"

"Until victory always!"

 We didn't spend much time in Santa Clara, only enough to eat lunch and visit the Che memorial, erected in Santa Clara because it was the city where Guevara's troops fought the final battle of the revolution.

View of the main house at the sugar plantation

Before arriving in Trinidad we stopped at an old sugar plantation and got to help make guarapo (sugar cane juice) from a hand press that had been around since the 1800s!

Downtown Trinidad

 

Trinidad was a relatively small and quiet town. Most of the buildings have been around for centuries, some even date back to the 1500's! We
spent two nights there. On the second night we went and listened to some music (rumba and salsa, mainly) with tons of others in a public square just a few steps away from the central square in the picture to the right. It was great fun, even though us students didn't dance much. It's hard to compete with our professional samba dancing professor!

Swimmers at Playa Giron

We spent two nights in Cienfuegos, but aside from a daytime tour we didn't doo too much exploring. Unfortunately, the travails of living in a new country caught up with us on the first night, and we spent the next day at home with stomach troubles. Plus, my camera was dying so I held off on snapping picture. On our way back to Havana, we stopped for a visit at the Bay of Pigs Museum. I'm sure they don't get too many American visitors, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. We visited Playa Giron afterwards...pretty weird to lay out on a beach with so much history. I just realized the other day that this year is the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion. After Playa Giron, we stopped by a weird zoo type thing where there were about 30 crocodiles kept in a large lagoon. I think it had all the animals native to the Zapata peninsula, the swampy area that we were driving through.

So really, that's about it for our trip! I did try to make it as succinct as possible because I know I can tend to ramble...we've been pretty busy since returning to Havana, plus I was feeling bad from a yucky cold up until Friday, really. We've been going to our one Tulane class, and on Wednesday we registered for classes at the Univdersidad de la Habana! I'm signed up for Cuban Literature III, Tendencies of Contemporary Capitalism, History of Cuba V (a class focusing on the revolution), Spanish Literature I, and Structure of Society and Inequality. Pretty cool! Classes start tomorrow, so I'll be sure to update again soon!

la vida loca

I made it! We’ve been in Havana since Friday night, and it’s been totally overwhelming since getting off the plane. We were greeted in the airport by a vintage episode of Inspector Gadget, then went through immigration/customs (fairly painless), got our bags, and set out towards what will be our new home for the next 4 months. The cosillar is beautiful…it looks like a Southern plantation home with pictures of Che and Fidel everywhere. Very cool.
 
There’s so much that I could write about! I don’t want to bore everyone with a giant block of text, so I’ll try to sum up what we’ve been doing as succinctly as I can…
Saturday we went on a walking tour of our neighborhood, then bussed it to Habana Vieja (Old Havana) and walked around for about 4 hours in the sweltering heat.

Bubblegum pink Chevy in Habana Vieja!

Our guide took us on a pretty extensive tour (but only of the parts of town that the government had restored) and by the end of it, us four students were pretty checked out! We did meet our first Real Cubano…a 30 something guy who was walking along the Malecón and took an interest in Noah’s New Balance tennis shoes. We got to talking and he eventually showed us an “authentic” Cuban bar that wasn’t overrun by tourists, but only after requesting that we walk behind him on the way there…it’s not unusual for the police to stop Cubans walking with tourists because they suspect them of trying to peddle wares or scam people out of money.

Directly after the rap battle

On Sunday my roommate and I went out on a trek for international phone cards, lunch, and a bodeguita (little corner store, basically) that sold toothbrushes since I somehow managed to leave mine in Miami. Thank god we were directed to a street corner with everything we needed! Later that night, we went out with a couple of guys that we met at a hip-hop concert the previous night. They took us to a great underground hip hop club (a rarity in Havana, I think)…and on the way home treated us to a pretty humorous rap battle in the middle of the street.

Malecón at sunset

Yesterday we had our first class…pretty tedious after staying up until 3AM the night before, but still very interesting! We had a lecturer talk to us about Cuban history in the 1960s, and then watched a (depressing) movie about life in Havana in the 1990s. Since it was Michaela’s birthday, we’d agreed to meet up with the same group from Sunday night at one of their houses for a celebratory pool party. WELL, it turns out that it wasn’t just any random house, but the home of a group of diplomats from Namibia and the Congo! One of our new friends was the son of the Congolese diplomats and he graciously let us hang out at their house. We had a great time swimming and drinking with everyone, but it took us way too long to find a cab back to our residency after the party had died down. The streets turn into ghost towns at night, with one car every 10 minutes or so. We didn’t make it back until 3ish, so waking up for breakfast at 8:30 was pretty painful! Tonight we’re all staying in to catch up on beauty sleep.
Here’s some good news: the food has been MUCH better than we all expected. Pretty bland for the most part, but we haven’t seen any questionable mystery meat and the veggies have all been edible. We have breakfast and dinner at the residency, so it’s been fun to go out looking for good lunch spots in the neighborhood.
I've been enjoying my time here so far. On Thursday we’ll leave for a 4 or 5 day trip to the middle of the country (Santa Clara, Trinidad, and Cienfuegos), but I’m going to try to make a post tomorrow with more commentary about the things we’ve seen and heard people say since arriving! This is a pretty basic rundown of our past few days, but I have much more to say about it! Stay tuned for more pictures, a story about the good ‘ole Comandante, y mas. ¡Hasta luego! 

tomorrow, tomorrow!

WELL, the big moment has finally arrived! Tomorrow morning I leave Miami to fly to Havana!

I've been in Miami with the other 3 people in my program since Monday...we've been busy all week talking with people in the Cuban community and eating delicious food (the well known Versailles lived up to it's reputation), but I think we're all itching to actually be there. 

Things I'm excited about: picking out classes, exploring the area around our dorm (aka the costillar), learning the strategies behind dominoes, making friends with students from the other schools, watching the Hogs dominate on ESPN that the residence miraculously has, running along the Malecón, improving my Spanish!

View of the Malecón

Can't believe I'll be in La Habana this time tomorrow! I'll update again after we get settled in. ¡Adiós amigos, nos vemos en diciembre!