SCU: Day 4

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I got to sleep in til 9am as class started at 10am today. Amelia and Paula didn't get home until 7am. I'm glad I left at 2am, there's no way I'd bounce back from that. After class, I cancelled my salsa class and Paula, Katrin and I caught a truck (the transport the locals cram into) to La Estrella where there is the Castillo del Morro castle and a small beach. We took a bus back home in time for dinner and the weekly weekend planner meeting. Nothing was decided as a group for the weekend, so I'm hopefully going to do some diving at Bucanero Resort and do a tour of the Sierra Maestra.

Clara cracked the shits today when she asked how I was writing my Spanish notes. I told her I write them in Spanish but with English translations. She wants me to write them only in Spanish. How does that work? How will I know what I'm reading in a few weeks time if there's not an English translation next to the Spanish? I wish she'd hurry up and teach us propositions so I can make up my own sentences. Verbs and grammar are all good but give me propositions already!

My class is held a few streets away from my casa. I've taken a few wrong turns sometimes but I have found a landmark to indicate whether I'm on the right street: a dead rat flat as a pancake in the middle of the street. It's a comfort to see it every morning on my way to another class.

At the beach this arvo I tried a Cuban stone fruit called "mamoncillo". They hang in bunches and look like tiny limes. You bite the outside and it cracks the skin so you can suck out the yellow ball inside. Very nice.

A highlight of my day is lunch and dinner. Breakfast is bread (usually stale) with butter, a plate of fruit (usually mango, banana and pineapple) and freshly squeezed juice (usually mango). Lunch and dinner is soup (never quite sure what kind but it's tastey), Cuban rice and beans, meat (chicken, pork, beef or fish), a salad of one whole tomato (the best tomatoes I've ever tasted) and cucumber, and either a few potatoes or puddings made with maize (corn). Dessert is plantain chips or plantain fritters and freshly squeezed juice. I've never had so much mango in my life but I'm loving it. The freshly squeezed mango juice just needs some vodka and it would be the perfect drink.

Tonight the guy upstairs listened to Bryan Adams' "Please Forgive Me" and Madonna's "Take A Bow". Time to update his music collection me thinks.

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