First I must begin by saying that I'm sitting on the balcony in the sunshine, and the temperature is absolutely perfect. I can't believe that it's January, and anything more than a tank-top feels like overdressing. My roommates are doing aerobics, and because I am a lazy waste of life, I am sitting out here doing something far less strenuous.
On an intellectual note, there have been really amusing t-shirts that I've seen when walking around the city. Some include:
1. A man was wearing a sleeveless, pink shirt with rhinestones that spelled out the word "Whistling" across his chest in cursive letters. Why? I do not know. Perhaps he's very passionate about his whistling skills, or I suppose it's possible that he's part of some whistling society, and this is his uniform.
2. A girl was wearing a red tank-top with the word "TOP" spelled out in rhinestones. I'm not sure if this was because she was the best, or that she needed labels for her articles of clothing.
3. A girl the other day was wearing a t-shirt that said in gigantic letters: "GIRLS WILL SAVE THE W
ORLD." That's the kind of optimism I like to see.4. Yesterday at the zoo a little boy was wearing a t-shirt with a graphic on it that looked like the front of a cereal box. The name of the cereal was "CRUNK PUFFS." I got a picture of that one on the sly, though I'm pretty sure his grandfather saw me sneaking around. I can only assume from this t-shirt that the boy of about eight years old likes to get "crazy drunk" with his cereal.
5. One of the men working at Casa had on a t-shirt that said "TWINS" in very large letters across his chest. Maybe I should ask him where he got it so that I can appropriately show off my twins.
Tonight we're going to see a play about a Mexican poet (whose name I can't seem to remember at the moment) and Frida Kahlo. That should be fun.. or interesting, at the very least. I guess there's another play that we may be able to go see next week or something that's based on a Fassbinder film, so that should be really neat. I did a paper on the Fassbinder film Lola last semester, and loved analyzing it.
Last evening when we were walking home from the bus, we came across a peluquería that just opened. We asked them their prices, and apparently you can get a manicure and pedicure for eleven pesos nacionales. That comes out to fifty cents. Chino was telling us last night that clean feet are apparently a make-or-break thing when it comes to a girl's attractiveness, so it sounds like a pedicure needs to occur asap. At least with his generation, a girl can't be brought home to meet mom unless she keeps her feet clean (and doesn't wear sandals, which I find a little ridiculous). We also have a bidet in our bathroom which is both perplexing and hilarious, so I've been using that solely for cleaning my feet (even before this lesson from Chino) and it's quite convenient.
I also want to apologize for how hard it is to IM or skype with me, but the connection seems to be a little come-and-go. If I all of a sudden sign off on you, don't take it personally.. I probably just lost connection, and couldn't get back online. Maybe that sort of thing will get figured out soon, if not, I guess it's just a take-what-I-can-get situation.
As far as classes go, the one that's notably hilarious in its terribleness is ¿Afrocuba? which, first off, is spectacular in that the course's name is a question. Every time someone mentions Afrocuba, a confused expression accompanies. Sometimes an incredulous expression, or a face of solemn curiosity, or even the communication of a distressed moment of complete confusion - but always, Afrocuba must be confronted with caution. And, incredibly, the class lives up to its questionable name. The first day we had a professor named Juan Mesa who is exceptionally boring. The best part of the class is that it lasts three hours because we only have it twice a week, and it's only going to last about six weeks. He let us out an hour early, but at the time we believed that this was the worst two hours one could ever endure. We were wrong. The second class was taught by Jesús something or other, and his job was to introduce us to the works of the greatest Cuban anthropologists that have done work in the area of Afrocuba. What Jesús did was recite a powerpoint which was a long bibliography of the titles of every anthropologist who ever existed ever. That's all he did. The powerpoint had about 60 slides. HE was even included in the powerpoint. A picture of a young, dapper Jesús was seen on his biography page, followed by a list of a zillion things he's published. This class lasted for two and a half hours. At one point I got up to go to the bathroom even though I didn't have to go just because I couldn't take it anymore. Thus far, those hours were the most boring I've had in my entire life. Who knew the Messiah could be so dull? Not I.
I guess I'll wrap this up here. For some reason the internet isn't working at the moment, so I'll have to figure that out in order to get onto the blog website and put this on there.
pictures from the zoo, including our the little buddies we spent most of the time with:
nice shots
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