bokomaru

so i 'm back at brown. there will probably be no more blogging from me in a while. however, if you are still looking for weekly installments of this sort of adventure, i can point you in the direction of some other study abroad blogs:
Sarah, Senegal: Sarah in Senegal
Ari, Israel: Ari in Israel
William, Egypt: Blog Egypt: Ahlain
Katie, London: SOAS you like it...
enjoy! perhaps i will be back someday...

so, this is it. i'm about 36 hours from departure (that's right, the bus to the airport leaves my house at 3:30 am). i am currently with a stomach virus (couldn't go 4 months here without one) so that has made trying to wrap things up a little more difficult. so it goes. i guess i don't have much left to say. saying goodbye is somewhat sad, though at this point i think i'm ready to come home. i've taken my final rolls of film, handed in all of my papers, bought some souvenirs, etc... i have an official graduation tomorrow and various going away parties. then home.
i get into newark, nj at about 5:45 on saturday afternoon. i will be back in the 'dale several hours later. hopefully i'll get to see many people at sarah's bday party on sunday.
so, i guess this is julie, signing out. stayed turned for the next episode of julie's crazy international escapades, whenever those may be...
oh, and the cigar business is more or less figured out.
peace.

cigar update:
however legal it is for me to bring cigars into the country, of course there are still some complications because of the embargo. what i mean to say is, i'm doing my best to get the good stuff out of the country, but i hope none of you are relying on these as christmas gifts, because i can't guarantee i'll be able to get them to you.
the short of it is: i can take 23 un-official (read: illegal or fake) cigars out of cuba (i.e. without a receipt or a hologram seal on the box). or i can take any number of legal, documented cigars out (i.e. with a receipt and a hologram seal). the potential problem would be encountered at customs in the states. i'm only allowed to bring in 2 boxes of cigars and/or $100 of stuff (the cigars included in this figure). if i bring back more than that and i don't get searched, there's no problem. however, if i buy many expensive cigars and they get taken away at customs, no one will happy, except the customs agent who will be smoking my cigars.
in conclusion: i'm doing some serious cost-benefit analysis. hopefully i'll be able to fulfill your requests. if not, sorry. know that i tried.

10 days left and counting…
i hear that you all got a lot of snow in the past couple of days. suckers…i spent this weekend laying out on the beach in varadero (the cancun of cuba). besides the resort being all inclusive (drinks, food, lounge chairs, specifically), it was nothing really to speak of. but it was warm and there was sun. what a shock it’ll be to step off that plane. i only have my chacos. i hope whoever picks me up from the airport brings me some closed toed shoes. and my fleece. and my puffy jacket. i’m cold just thinking about it.
the international film festival (like sundance, with a focus on latin america) is going on right now, so i’ve been seeing a ton of movies.
anyway. the actual exciting news: i got to see fidel speak last week. semester-at-sea (think road rules, semester-at-sea, or 600 american students going on a cruise around the world for four months) comes to havana every year, and for some unknown reason, fidel loves semester-at-sea. he speaks to them every year. of course, we’re here for four month, but that doesn’t interest the big guy. but something about that semester long spring break really intrigues him… so, anyway, when semester-at-sea comes to cuba, the other american students get invitations. so we got to see fidel speak! and, let me tell you, he is funny. he has this reputation for giving long speeches, and he certainly lived up to that. something like four hours. and it was as if he was playing word association with himself the entire time. seriously. he covered a wide range of topics, with no particular organization to his thoughts. one minute he’s talking about education in cuba, the next about the bering strait. then something about remembering some physics formulas, and levers and work and power. then greece. and so it went. my favorite comments were the following: humans will soon need robotic eyes that split in two directions to be able to watch the news shows that have both anchors on screen and news headlines scrolling underneath. the other great comment: laughing while saying that he is familiar with gulf current that would bring the semester-at-sea ship back to florida, and that without it, cuba would have a lot more residents these days. four hours of speech! he did say some pertinent things, but mainly it was a lot of statistics about good things going on in cuba. he frequently said that he was not trying to be political. to tell the truth, i actually like the guy a lot more after hearing him talk. i took almost a whole roll of film. at one point i was like 10 feet away from him. cool. we also got to wear those cool translator ear pieces that they get in the united nations.
so i’m entering the home stretch. just one out of three papers is still unwritten. then back to feet upon feet of snow...

the fam came and went. it was real interesting to see cuba from the purely tourist perspective. we stayed in a fancy hotel (hot water in the shower and buffet breakfast featuring lox, chocolate croissants and a variety of real cheeses) and took dollar taxis everywhere. we also did a lot of sightseeing. as i predicted, the visit was very refreshing and i have rediscovered my interest in being here. aside from the fact that i think i picked up some food poisoning or parasite the other night (you can’t really trust peso food that you eat out of a cardboard box), i’m feeling pretty good. i am in the midst of writing all my final papers (marx’s critique of political economy, history of dance/ballet in cuba and impact of tourism and foreign investment in the economic history of cuba). i found out yesterday afternoon that i, in fact, am not entitled to the use of the truth in my papers, but rather constrained by the revolutionary rhetoric and account of history. for example, my tutorial professor told me yesterday that i would be killed (“se te mata”) if i wrote that the government confiscated private land during the revolution. apparently the land wasn’t “confiscated,” it was “nationalized.” oh how i miss free speech.
i spent yesterday afternoon in the house of my tutorial professor, orlando. of course, the one day in cuba that i feel nauseated and sick is the one day i get invited to a cuban feast cooked in honor of my presence. i was served fish, two types of salad, rice, bread, fried yucca, fried platanos, fruit salad, cake, coconut ice cream, espresso and fresh coconut milk (sipped through a straw straight out of a coconut picked from the front yard). what i ate of the food was very good, although i couldn’t eat very much of it. i hope i wasn’t too insulting.
the actual point of the visit was to learn about how the ration system works (or does not work) in cuba. orlando took me to the mercado where he receives whatever portions of his allotted rations are available that month. a brief overview of how it works: each cuban family is given a libretta (like a book of coupons) each year that states how much of what ration item they are eligible to buy each month for extremely reduced prices (almost nothing, in fact). allotment is based on number of family members and the age of each member. for example, children from birth to seven years are the only ones who get a ration of milk. the rationed goods include rice, grains, butter, oil, sugar, salt, cigarettes, cigars, bath soap, laundry detergent, dish soap, coffee potatoes, meats, poultry, bread, eggs, lighter fluid, gas for cooking, and several other items (none of them being fruits or vegetables). the rations are meant to cover a person’s basic food needs. in reality, they don’t come even close. in a normal month, orlando is only able to get rice, salt, sugar and oil. some meats, although they come into the market on days after everything else and are usually mixed with vegetable protein (where the vegetable protein makes up the majority of the mixture). he has to continually check at the market to see if items have arrived. and if he misses their arrival, he’s out of luck.
we spent the rest of the afternoon watching murder, she wrote and back to the future, which were being shown on one of the three cuban tv stations. we spent some time going over the paper i’m writing (that’s when the death threat was issued). i also hung out with his daughter (my age) and his wife. i thoroughly enjoyed the day, although it would have been significantly better had i not been concerned that i might puke at any moment (so far, i have not booted).
next weekend, all 61 of us are headed to varadero, which is basically the cancun of cuba. spring break 2001! gag me with a spoon.
also, if you are interested in buying any cuban cigars, speak now (via email). i am allowed to bring something like 100 back into the country. they range in price from $2 to $9 per cigar.
oh yeah, and i can’t believe that i have never mentioned before that the corner outside my house is a hotspot for picking up transvestite prostitutes.

well, not much new on the julie front. i've spent most of the past week working on my paper and my painting, both of which are coming along quite nicely despite occasional frustrations. with only month left in cuba, we're hitting that point in the semester where the panic sets in. so little time, so much we haven't done, so many regrets we know we will have when we get home (yet so little we can do to change those things while we are still here). and being around 60 other americans feeling more of less of the same things...well, it's something of a frenzy around here.
my fam is arriving on saturday, and i am quite excited. not only do i get a new supply of skippy extra chunk peanut butter, but it'll be real nice to have them here. i'll get to show 'em around, get to see some new sights myself, and hopefully gain a refreshed excitement about the city and the country and being here.
other than that, i can't think of much to say.
till next time...

$1.50/hour internet was, in fact, too good to be true. servipostal has now raised their price to a cool $6/hour, which is consistent with the going rate for internet time in havana. so much for those scoops of ice cream.
you´ll be happy to know that i made it back to havana in one piece. we had a great time. the best part was the driving, because the landscape here is so beautiful, and drastically different depending on where you are. for example, in one day we drove from palm tree-covered plains through pine tree-filled hills before arriving at desert mountains that run into the ocean. palm trees, pine and cactus all in the course of 4 hours. the driving was somewhat dangerous, as the obstacles on the road included goats, cows, chickens, pigs, piglets, pot holes, pedestrians, bicycles, tricycle taxis, horses, horse-drawn carriages and 1950´s chevrolets that are really the size of small boats. and driving at night (or past sunset) was not even an option, because there are no street lamps or visible signage, and none of the aforementioned obstacles wear reflective gear. other highlights included:
-- falsifying a police report, by convincing a policeman that our car was sideswiped while parked on a busy street and that the huge scratch on the rear right door was not a result of a cuban attempting to park the rent-a-car in someone´s living room (don´t ask). it was only a slight problem that we couldn´t produce any witnesses, but eventually we persuaded him to write us the report. oh, cuba. we had to wait an hour and a half for him to show up, because apparently there is only one traffic cop on duty on a friday night in cuba´s fourth largest city
-- buying gas from a man on the street who steals gasoline ration cards and then sells the rationed gas to tourists who realize they have an empty tank and are at least 170 kms from a gas station. he was concerned that the photos we were taking of the operation would somehow be traced back to him. we tried to explain to him that no one who saw the pictures in the states would rat him out.
-- swimming in a brackish pool at the bottom of a deep cave (natural springs and ocean water), where we needed a torch to see anything
-- talking to a self-proclaimed usa fanatic, who called himself “chico fat”
-- climbing cuba’s tallest mountain, which resides in the range where fidel et al hid while planning their attack
-- meeting a nice canadian woman who, after 12 hours of knowing us, took down our addresses so she could send us christmas cards. then she took a picture of us with her camera. can you say psycho?
-- stopping farmers on the side of the road and buying or trading for their straw hats. one guy was trying to sell us cheese, and ended up with a hat instead. he looked quite confused as we drove away
anyway.
the reality of school is setting in. i actually have work to do now. four or five research papers in the next four or five weeks. generally not a big deal… but, it is nearly impossible to do any research in this country, for the following reasons: the libraries are all closed stack (you can´t browse, you have to ask the librarian to retrieve every book that you want), the card catalogue is with actual cards (as in not electronic, not on a computer), the books you want are frequently not in the library or the city or the country, and even if you do find the book you are looking for, it´s in spanish (yeah, i know i’m supposed to be learning stuff in spanish, but it’s really hard to read academic literature in another language!). and, the worst part: i don´t have access to the internet, so my usual sole source for research is gone. yesterday, i waited 2 ½ hours for a book in the national library. first, the power went out for an hour so the stacks were dark and the librarian couldn´t find the book. then, when the power came back on, it was discovered that the book was on “special reserve” and that i needed special permission to read it. i finally got the special permission and then waited another half hour for the book. all i wanted to read about was cuba after the cold war. jeez. when i finally did get the book, i was too tired, hungry and fed up to read it. so i skimmed through it and promptly returned it. ugh.. for many many years, this is the way research was (mom, dad), and the way it still is for many people (cuba). it is so easy to write papers at school, i really had no idea. as is always the conclusion, i am incredibly spoiled. and, of course, i already knew that.
the other big thing going on in my life here right now is the havana biennial, a huge international art show that is here for the next month and a half. my art teacher is putting together a small show of his students work, and i’m currently in the process of creating mine. my teacher wants me to buy 2 meters of canvas. that's a lot of canvas. the piece is about verbal violence against women in cuba. i hope that it is provocative, and at the same time i really hate that it is such a foreign idea here that women should not be harassed all the time.
well, that’s my deal for now. as the governor of california would say, “hasta la vista, baby.”