Hello there! I am back today with another super duper awesome blog post for you today about the beginning of our week in Havana, Cuba, and how we will learn about education, religion, and helping the human people. Our trip to Cuba will be an educational trip that will help us learn about how people live around the work world and how they live their lives. In my next blog post, I will talk about our experience in the Jewish community and what the synagogue will be like. So without further adieu, let me present to you my blog post about Cuba! So to start off our fabulous day, we woke up four thirty a.m.! Yes, very exciting and a fun time to wake up to(I’m being sarcastic)! So after packing up, we drove to the airport where after a long stay at security, we got to the gate and flew to Havana! When we got there, we drove to our apartment for the next week and we met our hosts, who run the apartments. Apparently, it’s a family business and the apartment is actually their home that they turned into an apartment for people to stay in! We walked around the neighborhood after that and immediately decided that we got the best neighborhood in all of the town. It was right next to everything and it was very pretty. Also, I might be getting a new Spanish tutor who is actually the manager’s son, which might be very cool. While we were waking, we also saw an old woman who’s puppies were getting a drink! She invited us in to see them and they were so cute! Later that night, we went out to dinner and ate a delicious fish. We went home that night and got our long awaited sleep so we could prepare the next morning.
The next morning, we woke up at 9:00(YES!!!) and had a delicious breakfast that consisted of an omelet, a banana, guava fruit, and bread, which was very yummy! After that, we got into a 50s car called a Bellaire that went out of style in the US but has lived on in Cuba. The driver was named Javier and the car was turquoise with white on the sides. It was such a cool car and Will Smith rode in the specific car we were driving in! The driver showed us pictures of Will Smith in the car with him and the car played awesome 50s music while we were in it.
It was very stylish and then we took a tour around the city and saw many cool buildings and cars. We went to a synagogue after that and met a caretaker named Moses who invited us over to the Sabbath dinner at the synagogue later that day. Later, we stopped by the Cuban Missile Crisis memorial were we learned about the crisis between the U.S. and Cuba and how it affected the relationship between them. We also saw a cruise ship filled with people from Miami who came to Cuba, which was very weird because I did not know many people from the US came to Cuba. We drove by the seaside and drove to a hotel called the Riviera, where the American mafia went to drink and gamble during the prohibition. We also went to a park called John Lennon Park, where during the time American music was banned in Cuba, many people went to that park to play it, even though the penalty was 1-5 years in prison. We took a picture with a John Lennon statue after that and I ate a delicious Brownie after that. A few hours later, we went back to the synagogue Sabbath in order to learn about the Jewish community of Cuba and to be honest it was very boring. I just had to listen to empty and coarse speeches for an hour and when we finally had dinner at the synagogue, we had Jello and a drink that tasted exactly like bubblegum! We also had Black Beans and rice, a traditional Cuban dish, and tuna. It was very weird and I’m sure that I am sick with something because of it. Anyways, it was a very interesting day and the city of Havana was very interesting indeed.
The next day, I had a nice breakfast of bananas and omelets and after getting ready, I was ready to start my Spanish lesson with the owner’s son, Andy, so I could continue my Spanish learning. Since I need to review Spanish every day, Aba thought it would be a great idea to have a Spanish tutor mentor me for a few days so I can learn. This started in Argentina and has progressed until now when my Spanish tutor is Andy. We started off the day by walking to an art museum where there were many unique statues and paintings that described their artist’s nature. There were montages of kids in the pictures doing their own things and there were large, metal sculptures of great monsters and random objects. All of these art forms described life in Cuba in one way or another and they made going there worth it. The pieces demonstrated what Cuban Culture was like by showing us their history and traditional foods and clothing. After that, we walked down a street where artists were selling many unique items like weird instruments and optical illusion -filled pictures. An example was of this woman who’s face kept changing depending on the way you looked at it. It was very cool and after that, we went to the revolution museum, which was filled with artifacts from the Communist Revolution of 1959. We saw many different weapons and gear that the soldiers used and it was interesting because I saw how devoted they all were to their country. I had a margarita pizza after that and my day with Andy was over. Later that day, we watched a movie called “Cuba and the Cameraman” which was about a cameraman who visits Cuba and shares his experience with the world. It is called Cuba and the Cameraman because the narrator of the story visited Cuba for 40 years and made friends with a lot of Cubans including Fidel Castro himself. In the documentary, we learned about Cuba’s Socialist Revolution, which was started by Fidel Castro in order to make sure that the rich and the poor were equal. While the system was ok at first, things quickly went downhill as there were major shortages in stores and Cuba was abandoned by their closest friends like the Soviet Union and the United States. The cameraman explored how people lived in Cuba from the 70s to the 2000s and became friends with many people there. One of the people that the cameraman followed was a group of 3 old men that owned a farm with many livestock. Every day, they worked for hours and every year they kept getting robbed of their plants and cattle until there was none left to work. They were always very nice to him and when one of them lost their voice, the cameraman got him a machine that enhanced his vocals so he could speak again! It was a great documentary and we had pizza at home, which sealed the deal!
The next day, we had a nice breakfast and then I started my lesson with Andy. During our lesson, our conversations were spoken in primarily Spanish and I learned new words to expand my vocabulary. My Spanish practice was very good and I feel like I was a good student. We first went to the Natural Science Museum, where we saw many mummified animals staring creepily into our souls… We saw different marine life and insects that were all very cute and were also very creepy because they were all mummified as well. Scary. After that, we went to the house of a famous Cuban figure from the 1800s. It was a simple place, but a cozy one that was a perfect working space for him. After that, we went back home where I met the rest of my family and we went to eat pizza. After that, we went to a ballet which was actually Cinderella! Apparently, Aba thought it was a traditional Cuban Ballet, but since there’s no internet here, it was actually a Cinderella Ballet that tried way too hard to be good. The costumes were absolutely horrible and the people had this painted on fake smile that burned my soul nearly as much as the animals. After it was over, I had an octopus for dinner and went to sleep early in order to prepare for the long day tomorrow.
Our fifth day in Cuba was a lot different than all of our other days here, in both good and bad ways. We saw a lot more of Cuba’s unique culture, a lot of funny animals, and we got to eat a type of ice cream we haven’t had in forever! On the flip side, we got to explore a dead cave that was incredibly boring and something else which in my opinion will freak you all out and made this day a memorable day(I will reveal this later on). So after getting up and having an awesome breakfast, we got in a cab and spent the rest of the day touring the remote parts of Cuba. We drove for two and a half hours to an old cave first, but I slept most of the way to the cave. Being in the car makes me feel tired and I don’t know why. Anyways, once we got there, we went into the caverns and expected a beautiful and peaceful cavern like the ones we saw all over Vietnam. To our unfortunate surprise, we saw that the cave had died long ago due to the fact that all of the structures had no color and that there wasn’t even the smallest echo. It was dead silent in the cave and that made me feel very uncomfortable. We eventually caught up to another group and we got to go on a boat ride! That lasted for only five minutes and was completely boring. All we did was see how dead the cave was and we finished the tour by landing next to a man-made waterfall which looked totally fake. It wasn’t an all bad experience, but it could have defiantly been a lot better. We then drove a little while later to a tobacco farm in order to see the home of Cuban cigars and to learn about how cigars are made. We met our host there and he showed us how Cuban cigars were made and the steps involved in creating one. The tour was actually very good(except that the warehouses smelled like tobacco) until the highlight of my day happened. It honestly was a really weird experience for me that made me feel kind of uneasy and a little bit concerned. The host of our tour there offered me and my family freshly-made Cuban cigars to try out and to my great surprise, EVERYONE TRIED IT. Except for me of course, Aba, Troy, and even Ella tried the cigar and even though it probably didn’t affect them one bit, it was kind of breathtaking for me. It never really occurred to me that they could smoke, especially Ella who was only 13. It made me feel very queasy, but thankfully we went to lunch afterward and then back home for the rest of the day.
Like the night before last night, we went home and watched another documentary about Cuba. This one, though, was about the history Cuba had as a territory and its long struggle for freedom, which made it very interesting. It was under Spanish occupation for 400 years and when it was finally freed, it was under the wing of the U.S.for a brief time. Anyways, today was very interesting and I hope that there will be days that are as ALMOST as exciting as today was.
The next day, we did not do much, but we certainly did have a lot of fun. First, we got breakfast and then we walked for an hour in the blazing sun until we reached the Hotel Nacional, which is a Cuban hotel that played a role in its slow formation into a communist country. However, a lot of famous people stayed in the hotel as with well. For example, both Winston Churchill and Walt Disney both stayed in the hotel! Anyways, we went to the backyard of the hotel and we saw a bunch of peacocks roaming around the place! They all looked very majestic and we saw a grand waterfall that towered over the city! We then took a pink Bellaire to a restaurant called Sloppy Joes, where I had an awesome double burger that tasted amazing! After that, we went back home where we had downtime for a few hours before having dinner at the restaurant we ate at before the ballet. The chicken there was off the charts and then we watched another episode about the history of Cuba. Cuba was the world’s largest producer of sugar and that lead to the U.S.constantly asking more of the country and Cuba was put under hard labor. After one of its presidents was elected, he managed to make Cuba an officially free country by taking away the U.S.’ ability to intervene at any time, which helped him gain the people’s trust more. A commander in the military named Batista then slowly started to shape Cuba’s economics by controlling who got to be in charge from the shadows. He started to bring the reign of communism upon Cuba by making the people question the current people in power and the way their government worked.
On our seventh day in Cuba, we did not do much although we learned a lot about Cuba’s history. We watched three videos in our documentary today about why Cuba was a mafia paradise, how Fidel Castro managed to overthrow the current government, and the country’s descent to socialism. Since Cuba was a massive tourist attraction for Americans, it only made sense that the American mafia would come to hang out there too. They slowly took over Cuba’s casinos and rigged the game system so that they won by cheating. Many people were infuriated at this, but the government couldn’t do much to stop them at that time. Ernest Hemingway also went to Cuba in order to tour, but soon he saw that Cuban Culture was fascinating enough to write a book about. After a while, Ernest Hemingway created ” The Old Man and the Sea”, which was an instant hit and was dedicated to the people of Cuba who supported him. In the next episode, we learned about the start and end of the guerilla war started by Fidel and how it permanently changed Cuba. After many failed attempts to free people from the regime of Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro and a few of his comrades flew to Mexico where the plotted about how to stop Batista’s regime and started to recruit their small group, which included the new and soon famous Ernesto “Che” Guevara. They bought a ship with their money called the Granma which sailed all the way back to Cuba at a bay called Las Coloradas. From there, the revolutionaries started their long journey of making propaganda, recruiting soldiers, and scaring the government. After they received a lot more soldiers and weapons, the revolutionaries split into two groups to take Cuba. One went to Santiago and the other to Havana, which ultimately caused Batista to flee and the groups had no trouble taking Cuba. After watching those two videos, we went out to see Cuba and although we didn’t see anything new, we saw a statue of Ernest Hemingway in a bar, which was pretty hilarious me because he looked like he was enjoying himself! When we got back from walking, the last video we watched that day was about Cuba’s fall to socialism and how the people took it. Fidel didn’t have many plans for the future of Cuba and since the U.S. felt very strongly about what happened in Cuba, Cuba started to trade with the arch enemy of the USA: The Soviet Union. Since Cuba was taking many orders from the Soviets, Fidel eventually became very interested in the idea of Socialism and made Cuba a socialist state. Thousands of people left and anyone who defied Fidel’s rule was publicly executed. Since the U.S. didn’t help Cuba, it became a Soviet outpost and put the U.S. in great danger. We then had our last dinner in Cuba, which was a splendid Margarita pizza, and then went to sleep in order to get ready for tomorrow. I have had such a great time here and I will never forget my time in Cuba.
