The next day, we drove with our host’s son to Cartagena. The drive was an hour-and-a-half long, but the town was beautiful! Quaint old buildings flanked the narrow streets and young people rapped accompanied by guitars. We walked and I drank coconuts, and we also saw a statue made by the famous artist Fernando Botero. While we were there, we were asked to pose for some marketing photos for a new photographing company called Memories. They took our photos and gave us a copy of one, but Troy thought they were trying to scam us. I also did some research later and found out that they were NOT a new company. We ate lunch at a really good restaurant. I had an excellent fish with basil coconut rice and tried ceviche for the first time. The sourness was delicious!
Speaking of sour, I am sour because Troy has limited the number of pickles I can eat per day because he thinks they are unhealthy. But I love pickles! Also, before we even entered the old town we explored Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas fort. We saw this fort in a movie the night before, Romancing the Stone, and it was cool to see it in person.
The next day, today, we flew to Bogata, Colombia, and I just have one interesting tidbit about our flight. We waited next to the gate and got first in line, but then a fat man cut us. Aba remarked to Troy, “it’s like they haven’t seen us waiting here for half an hour!” and the man replied that ‘without us you wouldn’t be able to fly’. He said he was the pilot. We noticed that he was wearng shorts and no uniform and Aba said that they shoud have given him a uniform. When we board the plane, he sat doen in a seat! He lied!! Anyway, tomorrow we’re flying to Havanna, Cuba! It is really hard to get a tourist visa to Cuba, so I’m very excited that we can go. In addition to seeing another fascinating country, our goal is to interact with more of the locals, especially the Jewish Cubans. Who would’ve thought they would make up such a large part of the population? It would also be really amazing to be invited to Shabbat dinner there, so I’m hoping that will happen. It would be quite a learning experience to see if their religious traditions are different from those of the Jews in Israel and the United States. I don’t know very much about Cuba, but I know relatively about the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’m not 100% positive about my facts, and since another one of our goals is to learn more about Cuba’s history with the US while we’re there, I’ll tell you what I learned in my next post or two. Anyway, that’s all for now. Bye!
Ella
I decided to let my friend Una write today’s code, so this is from her!:
“8-21-5-15 23-21-12-12-1-26. 1’12 8-17-6-6-6-6-6!!!!!”