31 Marzo 2010

Today the morning couldn’t come fast enough seeing as Veronika and I were clearly sharing our hotel room with a cockroach. After an early breakfast we all climbed into our monstrous tourist van and drove to a museum in Yara. After the museum, we drove to a primary school in Yara. At the school the students sang for us and presented us with Cuban history. They were so cute! All of the children seemed very disciplined and well behaved. My favorite part was when they preformed some traditional dancing to Son music. We applauded their talented skills when the song ended. They came over to us and I thought they wanted a kiss on the cheek. Then, with an iron grip upon my hand and a immediate feeling of horror I realized we were being asked to dance by the young professionals. It was fun in the end though. My 10 year old dance partner spun me around and was patient as I botched the 1,2,3 step timing. Thank god we took even just the one lesson with the FEU kids. At the end of the visit they shared some desserts with us and gave us a cake for the road.
We departed for our next museum. Normally, I find the birth houses pretty boring; usually they have the exact same things (some traditional Spanish colonial wood and tile work, an outfit worn by the person, and revolvers or swords they used depending on the epoch of their life. Today’s was a little more interesting however. Today we went to the birth house of Celia Shánchez- she is a leading woman in Cuba’s history and worked alongside Fidel for many years of the revolution.
Our last stop today was the Museo desembarco del Granma- basically the location where the Granma ship first disembarked which is now commemorated by a small museum. We took a relaxing casual stroll to the water, which took us 20 minutes and originally took 5 ½ hours because Castro and his rebels had to bushwhack through thick mangrove stands.
The museum guide ended up staying late to answer our (mostly our professor’s) questions so we decided to give him a ride home to the nearby countryside in our monster truck of a tour bus. We asked if he had any children and found out he had one young son. As he left us, we decided to give him the cake we had received from the primary school. We watched as he walked with the giant pink cake into the cluster of palm=thatched houses. A small shirtless boy approached him. We bent down to show his son the cake which elicited a joyful leap a quick hug around the knees before the two of them waved and walked towards their house with the boy carrying the cake happily. It was much more sweet than the cake would have been.