2/17/10

We’re making friends! Some members of FEU, a student leadership organization of the University that I have previously mentioned, brought a few of us to the National Book Fair on Monday after Spanish class. Each year with a guest of honor (this year, not surprisingly, the guest was Russia) there is a large book fair at one of the old castle forts.
The book fair was fun. Most of the books were about Fidel, Socialism, or Russia. I bought a collection of poems and short stories for children called the Age of Gold written by Jose Martí. It is clearly and easily written for youth but contains deep moral and societal significance, or so I’m told. I’m excited to be able to read it in Spanish and at least understand the premise. It cost 25 cents. The most expensive book I saw was one dollar. Our friends were wonderful. I had a very interesting conversation with one of them about the Cuban people’s power to publish material that might not support Fidel. They tried to teach us some Cubanisms you might hear on the street. This resulted in a lot of failed attempts at Cuban lingo and laughter at our expense.
Tuesday was my first real tutorial in Marine Biology. I talked with the professor about limitations of organisms in a marine habitat. My classes in Biology are held at the center for Marine Research. This first Professor does research on coral reef conservation. He said that the research center faces a lot of difficulty because of the unavailability of Internet and therefore the most updated research. During the second half of class we watched an episode of planet earth. I hope it gets more challenging, but overall a good first class compared to other ‘first classes’ I’ve taken.
Unfortunately, I haven’t had a lot of time for my reading recently so I was forced to stay up quite late last night to try and finish my reading and reflection. It will have to be an early night tonight. Enough for now.
Feelings: the weather feels like autumn; there is a cold front coming through, I’m finding it a bit hard to concentrate.