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As we near the middle of the semester, I am becoming more and more reflective of my experience here. I have developed a healthy addiction to watching Grey’s Anatomy and The Sopranos (on at 10 and 11, respectively, Tuesday and Thursday night). My friend Brigid and I have a running date to chill out in her room on those nights and watch those shows together, so you can imagine that I was very very surprised last night to find that Grey’s had been moved to 11!!! Explanations that Brigid and I reasoned out: Cuban tv programming hadn’t been adjusted to accommodate daylight savings time (we move our clocks back a week ahead of the US here), or had been adjusted to accommodate ads supporting Camilo Cienfuegos, a Cuban revolutionary whose birthday (I think?) was yesterday. I love Cuba.

Ale, or Alejandro, the carpetero who works at the front desk, speaks English, so he often shares in my frustrations with Cuban life. Linda, our program director, was able to buy a dial-up internet connection, which is really slow but cheap (80 hours/month for 60 dollars, compared to two hours for 12 dollars at the hotels!!!!), and Ale was telling me how awesome it is that we can open up more than one internet explorer window at a time, because Cuban internet is SO SLOW. I cannot wait to get back to pervasively extensive wireless internet access at Harvard (I could probably get internet access in a school bathroom, it’s that extensive). Gosh, that seems so many worlds away!

In school news, I recently got my first grade on a paper (eek!) which was a four (out of five!) for a paper I wrote on Karl Marx’s Eighteenth Brumario of Louis Bonaparte. It was a ridiculous 86 page document that I found online in English, and I wrote a seven-page paper on it in Spanish. I’m just so happy I did well! (Thank God!!!).

As far as the beautiful weather goes, it has been delayed temporarily due to a cold front that came in. It’s basically 70 and breezy, but Cubans are freezing. I just laughed, thinking of how it was like a New England fall and was NOTHING to a seasoned Bostonian. No ten-foot snow drifts?? No problem. : )

Anyway, things are going pretty well and I’m starting to miss home more as we reach the halfway mark of the program. I can’t wait to get back to my family, singing with the Callbacks, working with the library, and visiting all my friends on campus. It’s crazy that I have already been here so long, and gotten so used to Cuban-style living. I’m just craving highly capitalist products, such as Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Barnes and Noble, etc. It’s funny what almost two months without chain stores signs does to one’s psyche! There are definitely the beautiful parts of the socialist system, don’t get me wrong, but I still miss the ability to have access to any material that one wants without having to wait for it to be in stores.

Sometimes, I really want a certain item from a store, such as the lemon-lime national-brand soda, and it won’t be available in stores. Or, sometimes the power just goes out for indeterminate amounts of time. The resources here are very limited, and cut out without explanation or knowledge of when they will come back. I like the surety of the US’s supplies, and appreciate a smoothly-functioning system even more now!!

Take care you all, and God Bless!! : )

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Hey there everyone! I just got back from a lovely weekend in Santiago de Cuba, one of the most important Cuban cities in terms of both the revolution and general culture. Basically, Santiago is where the Revolution started, so there’s a ton of museums and a giant cemetery hosting Cuban greats such as Jose Marti, Mr. Bacardi, and musicians from Buena Vista Social Club. It was great to get to see another side of life in Cuba. Santiago is different from Havana in that there are more jineteros (because Santiago is not as comparatively “wealthy” or big of a city as Havana), and there is more “culture” (meaning starving artists and more flavorful food).

We met up with a Harvard grad student named Grete in Santiago, who is studying the Haitian population in Santiago, and showed us around her stomping grounds. We all stayed in casa particulares located on the same street, which were REALLY nice and decked out with tons of goodies like antique furniture, toilet paper, and beautiful gardens. A “casa particular” is basically somebody’s house that has rooms for rent. It’s the Cuban version of a bed and breakfast. Many Cubans seek extra income by renting out their rooms to people, but these enterprises are heavily regulated and taxed, so many people can’t afford to keep up the business. Plainclothes inspectors come to casa particulares all the time to make sure that the houses aren’t filled up over capacity (owners are only allowed so many guests), and ensure that everything checks out. Also, houses that can’t afford things like toilet paper, fruit, hot water, and various other niceties that foreigners look for cannot compete with other casa particulares who offer these goods. It’s crazy how all the things that I took so much for granted in the US are considered to be luxurious commodities in Cuba!!!

The casa particular I was staying at was beautiful – giant ceilings (as is typical of Cuban architecture, but well maintained, which is not), beautiful beds, a polished China cabinet, photo frames, air conditioning – it was a PALACE! The woman who Bolaji and I lived with treated us “like daughters,” and spoiled us rotten with good food and great hospitality (said to be a very Santiaguero trait!). We had [what had to be black-market!] eggs for breakfast, pineapple, a kind of weird sweet-potato-like reddish fruit, guava, warm, soft bread rolls (with butter!!), JAM!!!!!!, TEA!!!!!, HONEY!!!!, and milk. It was crazy-luxurious, and I enjoyed that mint tea like nobody’s business!!! It was so satisfying after having craved tea for so long! One can develop an addiction to Cuban (read: STRONG) coffee, but tea is still my favorite!

The best part about Santiago, though, was the sightseeing (outside of our casa particulares, of course!). We played tourists for two days shopping at bookstores, looking at artwork, and meeting awesome Cuban experts on culture and history. We met up with the city historian for Santiago, who gave us a great tour of Santiago and explained some of the history behind the city. We also met with a woman who specializes in “artes plasticas” in Santiago, with an artist who is one of the most famous poster artists in Cuba (he did a lot of political posters, painted by hand, commissioned by the government!), and with a man who is an expert on the history of the town of Cobre, where there is a shrine to the Virgin Mary, which I’ll go into more detail about later. It was totally enlightening and, honestly, refreshing, to meet such genuine people!

As for our tourist-y roundabouts, we visited the cemetery of Santiago, where we saw the tomb of Jose Marti, which was a BIG DEAL and has guards to watch it that change every half-hour similar to the tomb of the unnamed soldiers in Washington DC. He’s HUGE here, so his grave site is really extravagant – you can probably tell where he’s located in the cemetery from a mile away. We also got to see a museum located in a working school where there was an invasion at the beginning of the Revolution. For some reason, most Cuban museums are obsessed with displaying blood-stained clothing and showing gruesome pictures of dead bodies and torture devices, so that was, as always, a rather disturbing part of our visit. Although, I did find it quite comical that the “bullet holes” on the outside of the museum / functioning school (it still is a working school and there were kids playing soccer outside when we visited!) were actually conveniently added onto the building for dramatic effect. Gotta love those Cubans.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was visiting the tiny town of Cobre, though, which is just outside Santiago. History has it that two fishermen got caught out on a tiny boat during a storm off the coast of Cobre, and the Virgin Mary appeared to them on a board saying, “Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre.” When the men returned to shore, they built her a church, and the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre became Cuba’s patron saint. The church was absolutely beautiful, but it was so strange to see the people selling beautiful bouquets of flowers in roadside stands that would probably go for 15 or 20 dollars back home, selling them for the equivalent of US $2.50. Cobre is a pretty poor-looking town, but then again, so are most small towns in Cuba.

The entire week, I have been struggling with two pretty difficult realizations that have been cascading down on me constantly. One: Cubans are ridiculously poor, and the fact that I can go to fancy schmancy restaurants and afford (or, Harvard can afford to pay for) a $15 plate of food feels so guilty to me. I realize that giving away money won’t solve the problem, but how does one even begin to tackle the realization that the only way to get more money to Cubans is to drop the embargo??? It’s sad, really, that our countries can’t even talk to one another, which brings me to my next realization. Two: Cubans are inherently continually disrespectful or discriminatory against foreigners. I am not by any means a forceful person. But, what upsets me the most is when Cubans behind the counter hand you back the wrong amount of change, or ask you to wait in a line you already waited in, and hand what should be your ration of food to some Cuban who came after you did, or give you an up-and-down when you ask for a discount on something because you are a Cuban university student, and present your carnet (ID card).

At the airport (where, by the way, we waited for around 9 or 10 hours for our plane to arrive after its scheduled departure time at 9:30 am – we got on at around 7pm-ish), one of the members of our group forgot his paper ticket, and the airlines forced him to purchase an entirely new ticket for $116 CUC. He was listed in the computer as having purchased the ticket, under his name, but the airlines wouldn’t have it. There is no customer service here because people are their own bosses, but there was no recourse for us as foreigners trying to get back to Havana. It was so frustrating, and I guess that’s just the general theme of Cuban life. It’s frustrating to be treated differently because of who you are, but I suppose that’s what immigrants in the United States go through on a daily basis.

In a way, I’m glad to be experiencing the discrimination that I am. It’s a lesson in patience, most definitely, but it’s also giving me a brief glimpse into a world that most people find too unpleasant to even think about. I never understood before the feeling of not belonging, and here I most DEFINITELY do not belong. Although most people are not blatantly and openly prejudice against foreigners, there’s a sort of disdain (and not unmerited, in my opinion) for somebody who can blow a month’s salary (about 15 bucks) on toilet paper, or a couple of drinks at a fancy hotel. Cubans just can’t mess around with that sort of thing.

Alright, enough philosophical ramblings – I’m going to go read about US-Cuban relations for my Spanish class. It’s a sixteen-pager in Spanish – wish me luck!!! : )

Be safe, be well, and God bless!!! : )

She works hard for no money... da-nuh, da-nuh!

Sorry for the lack of postings lately!!! I have been busy with school, meeting new people, attending social events, and doing trabajo voluntario, or voluntary work, to help the farmers in Pinar del Río, a largely rural region that was struck very hard by both Hurricanes Ike and Gustav. We got up at 5 am this morning to get on a guagua (bus) leaving at 5:45 from the FEU center (basically the student activities center), and took the two-hour bus ride to San Cristóbal. They had done a great job of cleaning up after the storm, but still needed help taking care of the “agricultural rebuilding” aspect of the aftermath.

Because Pinar is a largely rural area, most of the land there is used for agriculture of some kind, growing avocados, potatoes, etc. When the storms hit, a lot of the plants were uprooted, and farmers lost their crops. This area is NOT rich, trust me – most people live in what look like one-room bunkers, and a lot of people can’t afford the sturdy building materials of concrete or cinder block, so their wood houses get torn down during storms.

Basically, our job today was to help farmers plant boniato plants (a type of sweet potato). The farmers had assembled cartloads of seedling plants, which we laid into rows of earth, and the farmers plowed over with cow-led hoe. It wasn’t really hard work, but the process was fascinating. It was basically like a service project at school, and there were a lot of foreigners there (apparently foreigners are the only ones they can really convince to sign up for voluntary work, because we’re suckers for these kinds of things).

After we had planted about half of the field, we stopped working and ate lunch (they gave out lunch and water), and then headed back to the central plaza in the town where students with megaphones were shouting out how awesome our solidarity was and how important our work here was. Then students started shouting “Viva la revolucion!” and talking about capitalism and I remembered where I was.

In addition to working, though, I have been meeting a bunch of new friends from the University. It’s starting to get easier to feel like I’m kind of fitting in, and even though I obviously stick out, it’s easier to make friends now.

Love you all and miss you!!!

My Cuban love interest!

Alright, so it’s finally happened. I am officially in love with a Cuban. He’s about three feet tall and turned five years old today, and his name is Antony. This child is precious, and is the son of one of the waitresses at ANAP. He reminds me of my cousin Olivia, because he’s just so darn cute, even though he is QUITE the handful (in addition to being extremely precocious). He also loves Transformers, and has memorized the entire beginning to the Transformers tv show, just like a certain Anthony I know…

I kept on telling him, "Entonces, somos novios, Antony?? Eres mi novio??" (So, we're boyfriend and girlfriend, Antony? You're my boyfriend??); and he kept on saying, "'Miga, es que, pues, somos AMIGOS. Oiste? AMIGOS" (Girl, it's that, well, we're FRIENDS. You hear me? FRIENDS.). Oh my goodness he's so cute. Then one of the cooks, Pablito (who is the sweetest man on the face of the earth) asked Antony "estas enamorado con Christina? Christina, pienso que el este enamorado contigo!" (are you in love with Christina??? Christina, I think he's in love with you!!) and Antony said, "Nooooooo, somos AH-MI-GOS!"

I was supposed to read a social anthropology reading last night, but Antony ended up coming into my room, and I ended up playing with him (of course). A much better pasttime, if you ask me... :)

My friend Christine took some pictures of us together, two of which are on my Flickr site (link is on the left).

In other news from ANAP, there is apparently a famous Cuban actress staying with us in ANAP, the lead from the film “Lucia.” I just saw her at dinner!

Additionally, I just wanted to point out that there is now a links section on the left-hand side of my page with links to my Flickr account and to my roommate’s blog, for another perspective of our lives in Havana. Be sure to check them out!

Good times never seemed so good… SO GOOD, SO GOOD, SO GOOD!

October 4, 2008

Adjustment time is officially over now, and I’m starting to really be able to enjoy all my experiences here! Classes are getting more regular, although the schedules still continue to change. Cuban students, when they enter University, are in what they call “carreras” here, or “tracks.” They specialize in a certain “facultad,” or division of the University, such as Artes y Letras (Arts and Letters – languages, sculpture, etc.), Historia y Filosofia (History and Philosophy – social sciences), and Derecho (Law). When a professor changes around class times, it doesn’t usually affect Cuban students, because their carrera requires that they stay in the same classroom from 8 am to 1 pm and just take whichever classes are in their carrera’s curriculum for their specific year (first year, second year, etc.). So, when a professor switches classes, it’s with the understanding that the students will have no conflicts. Foreign students, however, can take classes from different facultades, thus making it much easier to have conflicting classes when a profe decides to switch up the days and times of class meetings. This would be potentially disastrous, were it not for the wonderful and extremely caring Cuban professors.

Such a scheduling fiasco occurred the other day when my profe for History of Cuban Culture moved our class to a time when I had to go to another class, Sociology of Work. He told me not to worry about it – that he would give me a personalized review session of what he went over in class, and that it would be – this is the best part – IN ENGLISH. I thank God SO SO SO SO SO SO much for placing this profe conveniently in my life!!! He sat down with me and went over all the points of lecture the other day, going over parts that I had questions on, and gave me his email address, telling me to email him if I had any questions on anything. He was so incredibly kind and thoughtful, and I cannot be thankful enough for his attention to detail and making sure that all of his students are learning, including the foreigners. He is the best University professor I have had thus far in my college experience, I must say. Sometimes it feels like professors at Harvard could care less how well you understand class, but this is really his passion, and it shows!!

In addition to class, though, all of us down here in the Cuba study abroad program are eagerly following the Presidential election, and we trekked to the Melia Cohiba hotel on Thursday to watch the VP debate. Our favorite part was when Sarah Palin mentioned the “two Castros,” at which point all the Americans sitting in the fancy schmancy Smoker’s Lounge where we were watching the tv started shouting, applausing loudly and laughing. Oh, Cuba! I also appreciated the reference to “Malakawi Talabani” (what????), and Joe Biden referring to himself all the time in the third person, in addition to mentioning Scranton like fifty times. CNN is truly a godsend. I love American political figures, but American politics… not so much! : )

The last really exciting event of the week was our trip to Miramar, which is a really ritzy part of Havana where all the embassies and nice houses are located (it’s fairly close to Vedado, which is also a really nice neighborhood). Miramar doesn’t look that different from the rest of Havana, but the houses are most definitely nicer, and there was a GIANT GROCERY STORE (Hallelujah!!!)!!!! Had there been shopping carts, I would have jumped onto a cart and starting singing as I coasted through the aisles, like that old Staples back-to-school commercial (“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!!). There were pickles, frozen meat, yogurt, juice, soda, cookies, olives, herbs, seasonings, flour, cake mix, tomato sauce, baby food, etc!!! It was AMAZING TO BEHOLD!!! My favorite part, however, had to be encountering PEACH ICED TEA (from the same French no-name brand that brought me my PEACH RINGS last week!!!), which I had been craving, and the AISLE OF BARILLA PASTA. I almost cried – there were definitely tears in my eyes. Pasta here, though, is much more expensive that in the states – it’s about 2.50-ish per box. BUT BARILLA – JEEZ A LOO! It’s really weird to see all the European brands that I’ve never seen before in the stores, but it’s not like Cuba can just import American brands of everything. It was just such a surreal experience to be shopping and NOT see tons of American brands! : )

Earlier that day, we had gone to get our fingerprints taken for our carnets, or ID cards. We went to this special compound-ish location for foreigners, and entered in through a cast-iron gate to this little complex of shack-like buildings, then entered into this little building where a woman called us up and fingerprinted us, then wrote down how tall we were (in meters, which she guestimated haha). Apparently it can take up to two weeks just to laminate our carnets before we get them, but I suppose such is the bureaucracy / red tape of Cuba! I’m getting pretty used to it by now!

I remember that yesterday I had a flashback to the time when a professor had given me a book to look up in the Fung Library at Harvard, but he hadn’t told me the name, and I was so frustrated that I couldn’t find it or it wasn’t available or something. Now, I just started laughing at myself for getting so frustrated about that stupid one book. It’s crazy, but I think that this experience is making me approximately ten times more patient and understanding of craziness. I’m starting to fall in love with Cuba, but don’t worry, folks, I’m still missing my Boston a TON (I still love that dirty water… oh, oh, Boston you’re my home!!!). I have my friend Zehra’s postcards that she gave me from Boston up on my wall, in addition to my guardian angel and St. Theresa prayer cards, and my pictures of HCL Tech Services, my best friends from high school, and my fam-fam.

I miss you all and hope that the semester is going well for you!!! Also, if you are in a swing state this election, please let me remind you ever so gently that YOU MUST GET OUT AND VOTE!!! THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIFETIMES!!! GO GO GO!!

Eh-hem. Sorry about that. God bless and hope everyone’s keeping safe and healthy!!! : )

An Introduction to Cuban Culture... Christina style!

September 30, 2008

Sorry for not updating in a while!!! Last week we went to the cigar factory, where cigars are still manufactured by hand. Believe me, they take their cigars SERIOUSLY. Workers are put through a 9-month training school where only 35 percent of students pass the three tests that are spread out over the 9-month training (one at three months, the next at six months, the final at nine months). The workers that make the cut are given numbers according to their level of cigar-making ability, and are assigned to making a cigar with the quality of their level. For instance, the highest level cigar makers (I think it’s 9, maybe?) are assigned only to making Cohiba cigars, which are the best brand of cigar that Cuba produces. Workers are salaried based on their evaluations, which measure how many mistakes they make in their cigars, and how large those mistakes are.

Cigars differ by brand, size and amount of certain types of tobacco leaves used in the cigar. There are specific tobacco leaves used from various parts of the tobacco plant which make the cigar burn more easily, give it a richer flavor, etc. I think they classify tobacco leaves into five different types, all of which are used for different parts of the cigar (some in the middle, others for wrapping the cigar, etc). They are divided by color and size before being rolled into cigars.

Our tour guide, at the end of the tour, starting talking about US politics (!), which was awesome, and he said that most Cubans follow the election, because Obama has talked about improving US-Cuban relations, whereas Cubans have no reason to support McCain. I don’t want to get into a huge political battle here, but I just thought it so interesting that, even though the Cuban government only puts 20 minutes of election coverage on the news, Cubans all seem to watch it and follow the election. After all, it could be very important for them to have a President willing to stick out the olive branch to their country – especially when that olive branch comes with a trade agreement. Our tour guide even talked about the recent debate that was held, which my group didn’t even watch!

Another cool thing I got to do last week was visit Temas magazine, which is a cultural magazine that accepts academic abstracts from around the world to be published and shipped around the world. It is difficult for the office to function, because internet is slow (but it’s lucky that it’s even available!), and they lack connections in other countries. I’m going to be helping out there once a week, along with another girl from my group, in order to try to publicize the magazine and make calls for papers to various academics in primarily developing or undeveloped countries, who normally would not have the resources to publish. Also, the director of Temas knows a woman that I work with at the library technical services, which I thought was pretty darn cool. Small world, no? I think it’s great what they are doing, and am so eager to use my day off of classes to work with such a cool Cuban organization!!

In addition to all the events of last week, however, I figured I would take out a small amount of my blog post to describe the Cuban food and style of dress that I have seen over the past three (!) weeks (I still can’t believe I have already been here for three weeks!). The style of dress here includes a LOT of tight jeans (how they survive in this heat, I don’t know), tight, stretchy tops with holes cut in them, and miniskirts, and all the guys wear tight, stretchy tshirts and jeans. EVERYONE WEARS D&G. I have to see at least 10 different people every day who have a D&G stretchy tshirt on. It’s apparently the thing for youth down here. Last time they had the study abroad program, it was apparently Puma, and you can still see the remnants of that trend in shirts and shoes.

Cuban food has also been a great experience. We get really fresh food served to us for breakfast and dinner, and lunch is usually a Cuban peso pizza, which us students buy at the University lunch cafeteria and consists of soft dough, a thin layer of tomato sauce, and some cheese, or a hot dog. Breakfast is always a slice of ham, a slice of cheese, and a “tortilla,” which means an omelet (not a thin type of bread) in Cuba. We also get fresh-squeezed juice served with every meal (orange and guava are typical, sometimes we get mango or pineapple, though). Dinner is often some form of cut up and fried tubular vegetable (often boniato, which is kind of like a more starchy sweet potato), rice and beans (the beans are often replaced with chickpeas and are cooked with ham), some form of meat (ham and fried chicken are popular), and a veggie (Linda usually buys us avocados, which they cut up and serve to us). We also always get a delish dessert, which often is chocolate pudding, or a kind of French-toast like adaptation to the fresh baked bread that we get served with every meal. It’s like a giant family-style dinner at home, only the circumstances and type of food are obviously changed a little bit.

In other news, classes are going really well. I have two papers due next week, and am inundated with readings for class, but I’m liking my professors (one professor actually had to leave to do some research in another part of Cuba, so we’re getting a replacement today). I recently had to read an 86-page Word document that I downloaded offline, called the “18^th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” by Karl Marx, for my History of Cuban Culture course. All I have to say is, Marx REALLY liked his analogies / metaphors…

But, the good news is that I have all my books and readings, I will be working at a pseudo-internship once a week, and I’m starting to finally feel really settled in. I’m also trying to do some “thesis research” (by that I mean buying books about Cuban migration and the government issues surrounding it, from both a sending and receiving country perspective). The books here are really cheap (5 for about $2.50 US), and I’m eager to get researching senior year!! Wish me luck!!! : )

END NOTE (PLEASE READ):

Given the fact that my blog posts are typically sarcastic, I just wanted to take the time to impress upon you all the fact that my entire experience here – all of it, good and bad – has been SUCH a blessing beyond comprehension. I'm so lucky to be here! I often say that “Cuba is wonderful,” but don’t explain the real meaning behind those words, and really want to explain the “why” of this experience. I know that it is often easy to consider all the downsides of studying abroad here (she’s CRAZY!) – I get my cross stolen, or classes don’t meet on time, or there are strange people. But, all of that is part of the experience of growing up and living life as a functioning, breathing fully-grown, independent woman of faith. I have spent most of my life living comfortably in a large house, in an upper-middle-class town, in a rich state, in a rich country, and offer praise to God for that, but I am also so, so thankful for the chance to be a part of a different walk for a few months. This has been as much a strengthening of my faith as it has been an educational opportunity, and I am so blessed, not just to possess the things that I do in the US, but to be privy to such a loving people, who are open, great friends and honest critics, hilarious, and know how to take the knocks of life and get up, dust themselves off, and keep going. There is so much more to people here than generalizations about impoverished masses, or dominating Cuban men, or coffee and cigars, or fresa y chocolate.

Anne Frank once wrote that despite all of the horrible things that happen in this world, she still believed that all people are good at heart – and I’m getting to see the real truth behind that statement here. So, why the decision to go to a developing nation, living a very simple life instead of the comfortable life I’m used to in a developed country? Because beauty in life, in God, in other people, and in yourself is only visible when you don’t have so many THINGS to occupy your attention. There is no need to be worried about me – I have the best protector in this universe looking out for me, and He follows me everywhere. Just be happy for me, knowing that this experience is granting me the gifts of grace, fulfillment, and love in my life. : )