Hello, everybody!! So, we’re officially past the halfway point of being in Cuba!!! Yayyy! I feel much more acclimated to the pace of the city now, and am starting to get more comfortable engaging in activities and knowing my way around. I still slip up, though, from time to time, as is wont to happen in a very different country. For example, I had seminario (basically a graded question-and-answer session) today in my Sociology of Work class, and ended up reading the wrong “lectura” (reading), and gave a short schpiel on something entirely unrelated to my question. But, our professor, in all fairness, had not clarified which article he wanted us to read, and he just laughed it off, because we’re innocent foreigners who didn’t know any better. I think that means that he will give us a good grade for our presentations (they were only about five minutes or less). I did pretty well on the pop quiz he gave out, so I’m hoping that’s a good sign… : )
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about trying to branch out and be involved more in academic and cultural activities, because I feel as though I have been moping around in the house feeling homesick for the past few weeks, and am ready to take advantage of all the opportunity I have here to learn from people. There are a lot of centers here of various kinds – centers for psychological studies, centers for culture, centers for the CDR (don’t worry, I’m not becoming socialist!), etc. I just want to make sure that I have milked this experience for all its worth, but these past few weeks it had been difficult to deal with the fact that I’m so far away from home. I think the trick is just to stay busy, so that you are so busy having fun and getting involved that you don’t miss the people you love most in this world – otherwise, you’ll drive yourself crazy. It’s a blessing and a curse to have so much time to think, because sometimes, thinking about certain things (like homesickness) too much can cause an idea to tangle itself up in your brain and mess up your other thought processes. I’m glad that I’ve been so busy with schoolwork this week!
But, not only is this the week of crazy seminario work (I have THREE in TWO DAYS!), but also the week of THE ELECTION OF THE NEXT US PRESIDENT! All of us here are ridiculously excited and eagerly awaiting the results of the election. We’re going to camp out in a nearby hotel and take over their lounge area tv for the day, coming intermittently through class.
Then, seeing as we will hopefully want to celebrate Wednesday night, we decided to make a group dinner (I’m making pasta!!!). I went to the CUC market the other day to buy meat (I have yet to buy onions still from the agromercado, which is like an open-air market, as opposed to the CUC market, which is basically in a mall), and discovered that all the meat was: A) frozen, and B) VERY not-fresh-looking. ALSO, can I take this time to mention how there is NO ground beef anywhere here??? I found giant turkey legs, really gross looking ribs, and tons of deli meat, but no ground beef! I ended up with a package that looked less questionable marked, “res,” or “beef,” and brought it back to ANAP. Little did I know, the “hígado” part of the label, which I had overlooked beforehand, actually means, “liver,” meaning that I had bought cow liver to flavor my pasta sauce with. Uck. I gave it to Camilo and Pablito (our cooks - we’re pretty good pals, me and the kitchen staff – I hang out and talk with them a lot in the kitchen and the restaurant…), and Pablito told me that Camilo could probably make a “picadillo” (ground-up meat dish) out of it, after we had a good, hearty laugh with Joanca, a waitress who works at ANAP, about the fact that I had bought COW LIVER instead of beef. Oh, how funny those language barriers are!!! : )
Needless to say, the pasta sauce is going to be vegetarian, I guess… : ) No Italian sausages here in Cuba… : )
I’m really really really excited to be cooking. I love and miss the smell of garlic in olive oil, with onion and tomato sauce. Everything here is fried, but in vegetable oil, so it will be so good to have a real, authentic Italian pasta dish, when typically pasta here is served with a very basic thin, salty tomato paste. I’m just glad I was able to find olive oil (!) and oregano (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in various locations. It’s so hard just to find, let alone stomach the prices (olive oil was 6 bucks for a little bottle!!) of certain “luxury” foods here.
Well, I’m off to study for my seminarios tomorrow (one is on Freud and the interpretation of dreams, the other is on Cecilia Valdes, which is a 553 page book written entirely in old, Cuban Spanish. I read the WHOLE THING, which I’m so so so proud of myself for (I don’t mean that to sound egotistical, it’s just that I have never done anything like that before!), and even though I didn’t understand it all, I just plugged through it, and was amazed that I was able to read it all and can use it now in my seminario and speak intelligibly about it). I suppose if the Holy Spirit caused the apostles to speak in tongues, it can help me read a book in Spanish, right?
Love you and miss you all!,
Christina : )
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about trying to branch out and be involved more in academic and cultural activities, because I feel as though I have been moping around in the house feeling homesick for the past few weeks, and am ready to take advantage of all the opportunity I have here to learn from people. There are a lot of centers here of various kinds – centers for psychological studies, centers for culture, centers for the CDR (don’t worry, I’m not becoming socialist!), etc. I just want to make sure that I have milked this experience for all its worth, but these past few weeks it had been difficult to deal with the fact that I’m so far away from home. I think the trick is just to stay busy, so that you are so busy having fun and getting involved that you don’t miss the people you love most in this world – otherwise, you’ll drive yourself crazy. It’s a blessing and a curse to have so much time to think, because sometimes, thinking about certain things (like homesickness) too much can cause an idea to tangle itself up in your brain and mess up your other thought processes. I’m glad that I’ve been so busy with schoolwork this week!
But, not only is this the week of crazy seminario work (I have THREE in TWO DAYS!), but also the week of THE ELECTION OF THE NEXT US PRESIDENT! All of us here are ridiculously excited and eagerly awaiting the results of the election. We’re going to camp out in a nearby hotel and take over their lounge area tv for the day, coming intermittently through class.
Then, seeing as we will hopefully want to celebrate Wednesday night, we decided to make a group dinner (I’m making pasta!!!). I went to the CUC market the other day to buy meat (I have yet to buy onions still from the agromercado, which is like an open-air market, as opposed to the CUC market, which is basically in a mall), and discovered that all the meat was: A) frozen, and B) VERY not-fresh-looking. ALSO, can I take this time to mention how there is NO ground beef anywhere here??? I found giant turkey legs, really gross looking ribs, and tons of deli meat, but no ground beef! I ended up with a package that looked less questionable marked, “res,” or “beef,” and brought it back to ANAP. Little did I know, the “hígado” part of the label, which I had overlooked beforehand, actually means, “liver,” meaning that I had bought cow liver to flavor my pasta sauce with. Uck. I gave it to Camilo and Pablito (our cooks - we’re pretty good pals, me and the kitchen staff – I hang out and talk with them a lot in the kitchen and the restaurant…), and Pablito told me that Camilo could probably make a “picadillo” (ground-up meat dish) out of it, after we had a good, hearty laugh with Joanca, a waitress who works at ANAP, about the fact that I had bought COW LIVER instead of beef. Oh, how funny those language barriers are!!! : )
Needless to say, the pasta sauce is going to be vegetarian, I guess… : ) No Italian sausages here in Cuba… : )
I’m really really really excited to be cooking. I love and miss the smell of garlic in olive oil, with onion and tomato sauce. Everything here is fried, but in vegetable oil, so it will be so good to have a real, authentic Italian pasta dish, when typically pasta here is served with a very basic thin, salty tomato paste. I’m just glad I was able to find olive oil (!) and oregano (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in various locations. It’s so hard just to find, let alone stomach the prices (olive oil was 6 bucks for a little bottle!!) of certain “luxury” foods here.
Well, I’m off to study for my seminarios tomorrow (one is on Freud and the interpretation of dreams, the other is on Cecilia Valdes, which is a 553 page book written entirely in old, Cuban Spanish. I read the WHOLE THING, which I’m so so so proud of myself for (I don’t mean that to sound egotistical, it’s just that I have never done anything like that before!), and even though I didn’t understand it all, I just plugged through it, and was amazed that I was able to read it all and can use it now in my seminario and speak intelligibly about it). I suppose if the Holy Spirit caused the apostles to speak in tongues, it can help me read a book in Spanish, right?
Love you and miss you all!,
Christina : )
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