Love the smell of pesticides in the morning.

Walking down the stairs yesterday morning to go to the art museum, there seemed to be a cloud of chemical-smelling smoke that increased in density with every flight. By the time we reached the sixth or seventh floor, we were sprinting to get to the bottom to breathe the outside air. We were dizzy, nauseous, and our eyes were burning.

Several hours later we were informed that they had been fumigating the building. So yes, we walked through a thick haze of pesticide to start our day. You'd think that'd be a bit of info that we would be informed of, but apparently here that isn't so important. Morning poisoning? No big.

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This weekend is the Jazz festival in Havana. Being the intellectual that I am, I can't hear jazz music featuring saxophones without feeling like I'm perusing the cereal aisle at Market Basket, but I still really enjoyed myself.

On Thursday evening we went to see Chucho Valdés who was absolutely wonderful. As he walked on stage, the entire audience greeted him with a standing ovation. I immediately began to feel guilty for sitting in such good seats, and not being excited enough to defecate in my knickers, which was exactly what the majority of the Cubans looked like they were excited enough to do. Events like this have different tickets that are of different costs depending on what you are (student, Cuban resident, foreigner, all that). We had bought ours in CUC (though we had a student discount) but found ourselves in the seating section with all of the elderly pasty Europeans (in the best spot of the theater). I felt a little self-conscious, but of course there was nothing we could do. The best part of the concert though was Omara Portuando's performance. In a country where women are daily reduced to mere objects, Omara held her own on a stage filled with talented Cuban men. She was sassy, she was stylin', and damn could she sing.
Last night we went to see the Buena Vista Social Club, which was very good too. Apparently the majority of the original members have kicked the bucket, so this is the new group. Almost like a Danity Kane situation, it seemed slightly artificial, but they were still very talented. A trend in jazz groups seems to be the token female in sexy clothing that plays one of those gourd instrument things that we used to rock in 1st-grade music class, though her main job is to swivel her hips and look pretty.
Today is the book fair which I'm rather excited about. It's also Valentine's Day, which, to my dismay, is celebrated here with even more enthusiasm than it is in the US. I was crossing my fingers that Cubans hadn't heard of it, but no no, they love their mushy, romantic, chivalrous holidays as much as Americans love their commercialized ones. Machismo is Cuba's Hallmark. Let the fun begin!


Here are a couple shots I took last night when we got home from the concert. The moon was lovely, and if you look closely in the second shot, you can see the stars. One thing that's amazing about this city is that even though it's the capital of the country and has 2 million residents, you can still see all of the stars at night. These weren't photoshopped or altered in any way.