I'M BACKKKKK!

Hey all!!

So the update is that I'm back in the USA!!! YAY! I arrived home safely last night at 12/12:30 pm in Logan airport!!!

Give me a call if you're around so that we can hang out!

Love, Christina :)

Wrapping up - one week left!!!

Hello, my dear readers!

It is officially T-minus one week until I return home, and I’m starting to get SO EXCITED to come back!!! It’s a very exciting time in general, though – I mean, Christmas is right around the corner, classes are ending, people are leaving for the states, etc. But I cannot wait to be back home in my own bed in my own house in my own hometown by my own city – Boston!!!!!! : )

I was walking through Habana Vieja yesterday, and felt so good to be enjoying the city, knowing that I only had a few days left there. I got to go to the Feria, stopped by a used bookseller’s stall who had property deeds and certificates from Cuban families back in the 50s, which was SO cool to look at, and just walked around and allowed myself to wander through the busy streets of a very alive city. I know I’ll miss this place, but there is really no place like home. Dorothy SO had it right!

Last night, the Sarah Lawrence girls upstairs left for home, and everyone was crying and really upset to be going. I don’t yet know how I’ll react – I’m sure I’ll cry a bit, but mostly because I’ll miss the people here, but I can definitely keep in touch. I love Cuba, but Boston is the city that has my heart. Cuba is taking second place for me.

This week as I’m wrapping up classes, I’m wishing and hoping that everyone back home is getting through paper-writing and gift-wrapping. Here, I’ll be going to some classes, just soaking up knowledge (and doing an oral evaluation on Tuesday!), and enjoying my remaining time here. It has been a wonderful and crazy ride, but this has been the experience of a lifetime, and I thank God that I had the opportunity to see all that I have in this country.

That said, thank you so much for all your attention during this semester and your readership. I love you all and can’t wait to see you VERY SOON!

Love,
Christina : )

Paper-Palooza: the beginning of the end

Hello, everyone! So my countdown says we're almost at the two-week mark, and I cannot wait to get back to the good old US of A!

Currently, the Latin American Film Festival is taking place here in Havana, and all of the movie theaters are filled with directors, film aficionados, and curious Cubans watching tons of movies from all over Latin America! I got a pass to get into all of the movies, and there are daily schedules published of where movies are being shown, but I still have classes, so I don’t know how many I will be able to get to. Some of them look pretty interesting, though!

As for school, I am currently in the midst of working on papers (by “working,” I mean “procrastinating working”). I have to write two ten-page papers for my sociology of work and social anthropology classes, and a five-page paper for my history of Cuban culture class. I think once I get started it shouldn’t be too bad, but until that point, I am finding that writing blog posts and emails is MUCH more entertaining than researching!

This is not to say I’m not doing well in classes! I actually just got my midterm back from history of Cuban culture, and I got a 5!!! (YAY!) I studied so hard for that test, so I’m really really happy that I did well on it!

In other news, our dial-up internet connection recently got taken away from us, so we’ve been forced to use really really expensive and faraway hotel WIFI access. Ugh. It’s all good, though, because we had two months of really inexpensive dial-up internet access!

The big story of the moment, however, is the trip we took to Camaguey this weekend. We took a 10-hour bus ride to the eastern side of Cuba on Friday, and went to the beatification of Padre Olallo, the first Cuban saint, on Saturday. It was a crazy Mass, with tons and tons of people in this plaza in front of this church. Camaguey is the “most Catholic” province of Cuba because of the high concentration of Catholic churches (yay Catholics!).

At this plaza ceremony, they had a ton of Cuban priests (perhaps 100 or so) all up at the altar, and they gave a relic from Padre Olallo to each diocese. There was even a priest from Miami there! The sun was beating down on everyone standing up for two hours, and several people passed out. They were filming the ceremony to put on Cuban tv, and even Raul Castro was somewhere in the crowd watching! It was pretty darn cool!

After having a fairly chill weekend, we negotiated a deal to be driven back by this really tough-guy looking individual who was called “El Chino.” He had this really sporty-looking black Peugot, and we ended up driving back the 300 plus kilometers to Havana in this thing. It was hilarious. I suppose I’m getting used to the hilarity that is Cuba, huh? : )

Happy Turkey Day!!!

Hello everyone!!! I cannot believe that it’s already Thanksgiving – time for turkey, family, and football (Americano!). We all have a lot to be thankful for this year!

First of all, we have a new President. Having seen how the United States looks from the perspective of a Latin American country, it makes me so proud to be able to say that we now have a biracial, part African-American President who wants to enact change in our society. Things are and will be getting pretty bad with the economy, but the fact that we can still afford the internet to post to and read blogs is pretty good, eh? I suppose we definitely have that to be thankful for.

I personally am also quite thankful for the support I have received down here from my Cuban friends, my international friends, my Harvard classmates, and my “ANAP family.” It would have been so hard integrating in here had it not been for the friends I have met at the University, and the help of everyone at ANAP. I have met incredible people in my classes, and have gone with them to performances, run into them around campus, and have just sat around talking with them. It was an amazingly wonderful feeling the other day to be on campus for a mere half hour and run into several people that I know, greet them, and see how their lives are going. Something so simple as feeling like I fit in would have seemed so distant two months ago!!! It is incredible to me, and I am so thankful for having met the people that I have met, and having had the amazing conversations that I have had.

I am also, as always, very thankful to my friends and family back home. I wrote about this in the last post, but I am always so appreciative for all of the love. Thanks, everyone!

I think that most of all, though, I am so grateful for the opportunities (which often manifest themselves as random chance occurrences) that God has given me, especially this program in Havana. Everything that has ever happened in my life has happened as a result of the appearance of a very well-timed idea, word, person, etc. – I chose half of my classes as a result of stopping in a classroom by chance, and I also met most of my friends when someone started a random conversation. I cannot help but feel blessed for all the gifts that have been given to me in this life, and cannot help but realize what a miracle it is to be alive and joyful in this beautiful world that we live in. God is very present and alive, and He is constantly working in our lives in ways we often don’t understand. I’m constantly trying to remind myself of that, even when I get frustrated with living here - things often are often more difficult to “resolver,” but Cubans always maintain a strong graciousness in handling all of life’s problems. Looking at how very little Cubans have, it has made me a lot more thankful for everything I do have: access to internet, the ability to contact my family in the US, access to the CUC, medicine, etc. We are very very blessed, indeed. After all, “la vita e bella” – always.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone. : )

Emailers and readers, far and wide!!

I just wanted to take a quick blog post to thank all of you for reading my blog so much and keeping updated on my posts! I recently received a slew of emails from lots of different people I haven't seen in a while, all being so encouraging and sending lots of love!! Thank you, thank you, thank you so much to everyone for reading and supporting me - I really appreciate and enjoy all of your comments and emails!!! :)

In the past few days I have been thinking a lot about what a great network of individuals I have surrounding me - my family, my friends, my teachers, my coworkers - everyone. The fact that you all read my blog and share it with friends still astounds and humbles me more than you can ever imagine.

In short, this post is for you, the reader, the poster, the emailer - thank you so much for all your support and encouragement!!! :)

Love you all,
Christina :)

More fun in the land of many hurricanes... :)

It has been an interesting past couple of days in this parallel universe I like to call Cuba. First of all, I have been getting to meet with some pretty cool organizations and individuals from various lines of work, and getting their perspectives on everything about Cuba, in addition to sharing some of my own perspectives on my country. I feel like our discussions have been so fruitful and insightful, and can’t help but be excited for the fact that Obama is going to open up the line of communication so that the US and Cuba can have these same kinds of discussions. If only our countries could talk the way I have been talking for the past few days, I know they would at least reach some level of understanding with one another!

One of the first groups I got to meet with was CEMI, or the Centro de Estudios de Migracion Internacional, which basically studies international migration (specifically, a lot of the experts there study Cuban youth migration to the states). Diane, one of my fellow classmates, is currently doing a program with HAVMUN, or Havana Model United Nations, and somebody randomly gave her name to CEMI to arrange a meeting. She invited me along, because she knew that this is something that I want to do my senior thesis on, and BOY was I happy I went! When we got to their office – which was located about fifty feet from where I have my classes every day, by the way, unbeknownst to me! – we were immediately shown to this little conference room, where four younger-looking, but very professional young scholars were seated, with notepads and a platter of coffee cups. They started asking us a lot of questions about the American stance on Cuba, how Cuban-Americans factor into the mix, what the typical American youth feels toward Cubans, the stereotypes of America, etc. They were so excited and overwhelmed at the information we provided them for their studies, because it’s difficult to download or obtain books about the material they are studying in Cuba. Our offers to put them in touch with Cuban-American student groups on campus and various other resources was so exciting and groundbreaking for them, I couldn’t help but want to help them. It was an amazing meeting, and I look forward so much to keeping in contact with them throughout the rest of my time at Harvard (for thesis research in addition just to keeping in contact with them – they seemed like such genuinely wonderful people!).

In addition to this meeting, I also got to meet with a Cuban intellectual property lawyer in Miramar who is connected to Harvard Law School, and she gave us some insight into how the legal system functions here. Every lawyer is controlled by the state, and the legal system functions in pretty much the same way as it does in the US. One cool detail that is different, though, is the hiring of untrained, “average joe” judges for one to five year stints to serve in court cases. These “judges” actually have no legal training, and have to leave their regular jobs to work for the government in this role in serving as a judge. It’s kind of like jury duty, because your place of hire is required to keep your job open for you until you return back to work!! Crazy, huh? : )

In slightly less dorky news, I got to meet up with my friend Yudi from class (and her boyfriend, and some of her friends) the other night and go out to a free, intimately small concert at the Melia Cohiba Hotel (in the lounge area), for the promotion of the new solo cd of a Cuban singer named Diana Fuente. I really like the music, and I got to see one of the famous Cuban musicians from the movie Habana Blues singing live (and playing this REALLY cool guitar that just had a line of wood surrounding the strings, and then just had a metal frame where the edge of the guitar should have been). It was as though the strings were floating in midair, and was SO cool. Everyone did an excellent job performing, though, and I thoroughly enjoyed the concert (mostly because of the excellent company, I must say!). : )

As for news at ANAP, things have been a bit tense around here lately. The main boss of ANAP (the one who talks to Raul and Fidel, the one in charge on the national level) came to visit the Residence a few weeks ago to check up on the workers here and making sure things were running smoothly, and was rather perturbed to find that nobody was doing what they were supposed to. The bartender wasn’t in the bar, the front guard was nowhere to be found, etc. Usually, I would go into the kitchen after breakfast or dinner to see what’s up with Yohanka, Pablito and Camilo, but lately I haven’t been messing around with that, because there always seems to be a higher-up watching. Students technically aren’t supposed to go into the kitchen, but naturally, when you live for two months with someone, you are going to want to help clean up the dinner dishes and bring them into the kitchen to be washed – it’s only natural!! But, workers aren’t supposed to have too much contact with the guests or else you can get fired… and people have gotten and do get fired for this. Therefore, I have had to cut down my talking with Camilo and Johanka (Pablito’s on vacation!), and it’s killing me!!! I love talking to them and joking around with them, and this whole “walking-on-thin-ice” thing is really really nervewracking. It’s not as though I have stopped talking to people entirely, I’m just taking extra caution. It’s strange to feel limited in having relationships with people who feel like your family, because you have lived with them, essentially, in the same house, for two months.

I am constantly amazed at how equally I can feel love and disgust for this city at the same time. I am in love with the people, with the sights and the beauty of the art, music, and dance, but am constantly burdened by the meaning of it all – that behind the weathered façade is a people, but also a morphed and deformed ideology that is killing the city from the inside out. The city is obviously decaying, but is decaying in an all-comprehensive, no-holds-barred sense – in its moral integrity, in its solidarity, in its buildings (of course). The old Lada and Chevy cars, fixed up with paint to hide the rust, are representations of this culture of covering over the problem with a happy exterior – in fact, everything seems to be a metaphor to that effect – buildings, cars, people made up in camisoles and makeup, donning precariously-high-looking wooden skyscraper heels that “clop” as you walk with that unmistakable Cuban sway.

I know that I will miss Havana more than I ever imagined that I would, but at the same time, I also know that I will NOT miss the power outages, the frustration felt by myself and others at the prevalence of “the system,” the “Big Brother” sense you feel every time something new comes out about how the government is watching me while I’m staying here (example: my friend Brigid, who lives upstairs, was told that the neighbors spying on her shouldn’t bother her, because the government intends that they keep an eye on her to make sure she’s not up to trouble. She’s also not allowed to leave ANAP to find a cheaper residence.). As much as I will miss this place, I cannot wait to be home.

Puttin' on the Ritz!!!

If there was ever any doubt in my mind that I am having an excellent stay in this beautiful country, the past two days have erased said doubt away completely. Last night, I came back from using the internet at the Melia Cohiba hotel around 6:30, and my group had already eaten dinner at 6 and left to go to a club with our waitress, Johanka, so nobody was in the restaurant. (Staff and guests aren’t supposed to hang out outside of ANAP, so this was all done covertly – operation “have fun with our friends from the kitchen” had commenced before my arrival!).

When I entered the restaurant, Pablito, Camilo and Albertico (one of the bartenders for the in-ANAP bar who was taking Johanka’s place that night) all came over like my three fairy godfathers and asked me how my day was, said they would bring dinner out right away, and did I know how to get to the café where everyone was going dancing?? I said I had forgotten how to get there, and immediately Albertico offered to drop me off. It was incredible - I felt like such a well-taken-care-of princess!

I ate dinner, dropped my plates off in the kitchen to be washed, and then went to go get ready, but by the time I was ready to leave, I realized that it was 7:30, and the ladies were coming back at 9, so it wouldn’t be worth it to head out. I wasn’t really bummed – I love spending nights in the house – but I didn’t really have anything to do, so I hung out in the kitchen and asked if I could do anything to help. That was the best question I have ever asked thus far this semester, in or out of class!

I ended up playing waitress for the night, bringing out food to a late-night diner/guest, and setting the table for the next morning’s breakfast (Camilo came out and corrected most of my work). I got to fetch things around the restaurant for Pablito and clean up the tabels, and it made me feel so good because I felt like I was cleaning up my house, which I actually miss a lot (it’s so weird, but I miss ironing and washing dishes and such. Mom and Dad, please take note – I DID say this at one point in my life).

Tonight, we ended up going out to eat at a paladar, which is basically a really fancy and expensive Cuban restaurant. Usually, paladars don’t have certain dishes when you ask for them off the menu (especially with the food shortages from the hurricane), but this paladar was EXTRA special! It’s called la Guarida, and it’s located in the apartment where the famous Cuban movie Fresa y Chocolate was filmed!!! It was so weird to recognize the rooms from scenes in the movie!!!

Most importantly, however: THE FOOD WAS DELICIOUS!!!!! They had everything on the menu, which included everything from rabbit with peppers and avocado to full-fledged salads (we’re talking REAL tomatoes here, with LETTUCE and fancy dressing and cucumber and cabbage!!!!), in addition to roasted chicken, snapper, salmon, octopus, and grouper. I ordered a girly drink called a Mary-something (rum with pineapple juice, grenadine (!), and maraschino sauce in a very cosmopolitan glass!), and got the octopus salad, in addition to this AMAZING spinach crepe concoction with an amazing vinaigrette sauce and chicken on the inside. MMMM! It was the most delicious thing I have ever tasted – seriously!

Let’s provide a little background to the Cuban dining out experience. Most Cuban eateries, even the nice ones, are [attempts] at imitations of fine restaurants in Europe or the US. Often they are up three flights of stairs, in what could probably be someone’s back porch or living room (and most likely once was). The food is delicious, but you could probably encounter a better version of the same food (lasagna, which was delish, but lacking pasta, salads made of basically cabbage chopped into cole slaw pieces and cucumbers, fried chicken) back in the US.

La Guarida was the closest I have seen to a “fine dining” establishment, and could most likely hold its own as a US, culinarily-innovative institution. I wanted to cry when I tasted how delicious the spinach was, and ate REAL tomatoes with REAL onions and REAL FRESH BASIL LEAVES (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), and a DELICIOUS sauce with my octopus salad (and REAL lettuce!). You have no idea how much my heart was so happy just to have that brief moment of ecstasy in which I was reminded of the luxury of having every type of food available at any given time. The octopus salad I ordered made me think so much of home, of my grandfather and seafood salad at Christmas Eve dinner, where the family gathers around, and in Italian tradition, eats a huge seafood meal and then opens presents. Food to me is a key element of my existence, and eating really good food tonight really reminded me of home and family, as I can connect most of my experiences being with my extended family involving meals of some kind (going to parties and sitting around the sweet table, commenting on someone’s amazing recipe for a pasta dish, looking at huge Thanksgiving turkey(s) or even ordering pizza and sitting around the kitchen table, talking late into the night over cups of coffee about politics, the kids, plans for vacation, or engagements to be married). I always associate good food around a big table with my family, and the moments of sharing life and the goings-on of the day with one another. It was a bittersweet moment of recognition, but I was nonetheless made extremely content by my meal.

I even got the chance to order chamomile tea (te de manzanilla), which was amazing, mostly due to the fact that it is not as available in Cuba (available meaning offered everywhere at a low price) as coffee is. The experience is one we will hopefully be repeating on Thanksgiving and one I will most certainly not forget any time soon. One can’t often be too picky when the only thing one can afford is rice and beans and maybe some veggies from the agro (maybe some pork or chicken, too), and when the market runs out, there’s not really much you can do but resolver by just making do with what you have.

In the Special Period (the time during the early 90s where Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin), there were stories of eating everything possible to stay alive. To think of all the luxury I just enjoyed – it would never be available to your average Cuban. Tonight, as I was heading home with my friends, we hailed a maquina by the Malecon to get us back to ANAP. The driver was a former sailor who was a rich Cuban, and he didn’t even charge us for taking us home. I think it had something to do with the fact that we had a really good convo on the way back, and he outwardly stated that he was one of the few Cubans who could afford to not accept the money we offered him. I just can’t believe the system I’m in, and how biased it is; although it pledges undying loyalty to socialism, it is a deformed Russian socialism that is reproduced constantly and incorrectly. He said that is only Cuba had gone with Che’s socialism, it would have been fine.

I’m not so sure about that, but what I do know is that it’s much easier to be able to say that and buy yourself a nice gourmet pizza at the end of the day than it is to say that and be going hungry, because you only make $15 every month and can’t afford to pick up that tab.