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!