Advertisement
Published: September 11th 2007
Edit Blog Post
First experiences in La Universidad de Habana 05.09.07
Everything. Here. Happens. Very. Slowly. If it happens at all. It seems one of the favourite pastimes of the Cuban population is queuing… waiting… waiting… queuing.. and … waiting some more… and then actually… mañana. That’s what happened on Monday at uni - we went to enrol but we couldn’t do so until the next day because Magaly, in charge of foreign students, felt ill. Tuesday then, we went in again… I went to the first class that I was interested in - Estudios Afro-Caribeños - turns out the profe is away for two weeks so another is covering, but he teaches Arte del Caribe, which I was also interested in but I think I will only do one of the two. Four of us “extrangeros” (me, Rob and two Germans) sat bewildered and pretty much ignored by the rest of the class (4th years who have been together since 1st year). The link between the words extranjero (foreigner) and extraño (strange) was appropriate. The profe, Enerdo, seems like a nice dude tho, when we went to him afterwards to ask him to explain what was going on he was really helpful
and took us into an office and explained things more clearly. We have to do a seminario - like a group presentation, prepare a debate against another group’s seminario, do an exam and a written piece of work on a random Caribbean artist which we all got assigned. There is the opportunity to do a workshop for 8 weeks work a primary school, finishing in a creative presentation like a play or art, instead of the seminario. I put my name down for that straight away coz it seems fun and i wanted to work with kids anyway, but more importantly he said it would be a lot less reading than the others! J
Another class I’m interested in in Teoria Socio-Politica which I’m gonna go to this week as well. Luckily we have two weeks to “float” and decide which classes we want to take before firmly deciding. Think I’m just gonna do 2, then I’ll have plenty of time for my dissertation, maybe Portuguese, maybe helping in English classes, salsa, athletics, & disfrutar-me!!
I’m already absorbing the “mañana, mañana” attitude… yday afternoon I was gonna go for a run but Leydis came round so I ended up chatting to her all afternoon. She seems wicked - really enthusiastic with these huge bright eyes and beaming smile and full of good tips about la vida habanera. Just to show how small the world is, Mary who came here from B’ham a year and a half ago had actually given me Leydis’s email and said she was a good laugh and would show me around and take me to some cheap drinking spots. Pure coincidence… I come and live in Anita/Lily’s casa and meet Leydis in my first week here! She hangs out here to use the internet to keep in contact with her Swedish husband who was a student here not long ago. When he was here they both stayed at Lily’s because due to one of the complex laws here, even tho they are married, a Cuban with a foreign spouse cannot live together. Lily was explaining this to us yesterday when she had a serious talking to Sandra (German girl with Cuban boyfriend) who is illegally living with her man - Lily and Chino wanted to warn her about the mess she could get herself and his family into (boy am I glad I didn’t go to that illegal place). This set of laws makes it so hard for a foreigner-cuban relationship but even so, it seems that soooo many students who come here end up with a boyfriend!
While we were eating a woman and her daughter (about 18 years old) came round with an ugly, old German tourist in tow. They wanted to see if he and the muchacha could stay there when he comes back to visit her in December… the price of the room went up considerably because he was told the price with her commission! There’s a lot a sex-tourism here, as Lily and a Canadian-Cuban couple who came to dinner with us (Carolina and Sidney) were telling us. And it’s pretty obvious when you see bald old white man with their jovencita pretty Cuban girls.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.113s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 6; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0863s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb