My Day 9 : Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

My Day 9 : Tuesday, June 30^th, 2009

Today marks our first day without a tour guide.

We left our fancy (and when I say fancy, I mean in grandiose appearance and price… because we had no air conditioning most the time, trouble with the toilet, and at one point, no phone) hotel today and headed for our “hostel,” Casa Oralia. It’s technically called a casa particolare, which makes more sense, because it is really just a house with extra rooms, in this case, two. It has a big balcony that faces the street, our own bathroom, our own large fridge, and she said we could use the kitchen sometimes. I think she makes breakfast too. We’ll see tomorrow… hopefully it doesn’t mean we have to wake up early all the time.

Personally, I prefer a big hostel, for the opportunity to meet people. But it’s a comfortable place to call home for the next few weeks.

Tomorrow we’re going to go to the University of Havana to try and register for Spanish classes. Did I already say that? I just want to take a class at the university, but it’ll be good for me anyway, I don’t know grammar conjugations and stuff. Plus it’ll be fun to be a student here. That class will last for about a week starting this coming Monday, if we get to take the classes.

The week after classes end, we’re going to travel somewhere else in Cuba. Suggestions, anyone?

So, anyway, today we went to a market and saw people selling fruit for the first time since we’ve been here. We were very excited, to say the least. I ended up spending 124 MNs. Oh, so we were able to use the Cuban pesos, which are called MNs, for moneda nationale. It’s so much cheaper!!!!!! That ends up being a little less than 5 CUCs, which is about $5... Well the exchange rate is actually $1 = .89 CUC. And here’s what I bought: 1lb rice, way too much salt, some oregano, 6 limes, a package of spaghetti, a huge mango, a couple huge avocados, an onion, radishes, mint, a juice box of rum! (como!?), some tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, and 1 lb of bananas. Wowzas! This is a huge difference from what we have been paying…

And the reason we have been paying so much? Probably because we are Americans. Today while we were waiting for one of the shops to open, a Cuban came and asked us where we were from. We said the United States. Two seconds later he asked us if we wanted a cab. So he got one for us, for 3 CUC! The distance isn’t that far—we walked there earlier. 3 CUC is 72 MNs, which is about 3/5 of what I paid for all that food. Imagine that! We were like, why is it so much? That’s too expensive for such a short trip. And he said, “You told me you were Americans, right? You’re Americans, you said.” Our AHHA! Moment. So from now on, Aileen and I are from China. They think I’m Chinese anyway. Let’s see if that gets us a better response.