Putting the "Mata" in Matanzas: Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

Friday morning greeted us with chilly weather and a day full of God-knows-what. Breakfast was at 8:30, which was complimentary (complementary?) with our stay at the (two-star) hotel. Each morning I ordered a cheese sandwich, and each morning I was given a ham and cheese sandwich. Each morning the waiter took it back, then returned a few minutes later with the ham removed.

We all piled onto the bus (after being scolded for being a couple minutes late) and headed to the first destination. It was a theatre in the middle of Matanzas, which we were presumably to tour. The theatre was closed, as no theatre is ever open that early in the morning. Cornelius did not feel the need to look this up beforehand, so we sat in the bus waiting for the information to be gathered. We then left.

Second on the "schedule" was the pharmacy museum. Standing in the entrance of the museum, the professor chatted with the woman in charge, asking her the basic information which could have easily been found out before dragging fourteen people there. Fudge then turned to us, saying (in front of the museum woman) "It costs 3 CUC to get in. I know I want to see this, but if you guys don't want to pay the entrance then let me know." We all stood there, rather shocked, because we had been told before that all expenses would be included in the trip. Concluding that this expense was a bit much to spring on us suddenly, we decided not to go in. This was when the museum woman consulted with one of the other museum workers, and eventually reached the deal that we would get a tour of the museum then afterward would pay what we were able. Okay.

The pharmacy was interesting. It was completely preserved to look like an original 19th-century pharmacy, and had all of the medicine ingredients there. Mostly it reminded me of potions class in Harry Potter, so I was pleased about that.


Whilst standing by a knee-high table displaying mortars and pestles, Cornelius Fudge wanted to take a picture. Apparently I was obstructing his view of the display, so he felt the need to merely mutter "Um, Megan," then shoved me out of the way. Then proceeding to take his photograph, he muttered, "Yeah." He then chuckled to himself as if to make this into a joke. Ha. Ha.

Next on the "schedule" was the seminary. We arrived there, looking around, and asked Cornelius what we were to be doing at a seminary school. "To be honest, I don't really know," he replied. Glorious. What we did end up doing was sitting around waiting for the seminary guy to show up, as he would not be ready for another 15 minutes. The grapefruit-face tour guide decided that this would be a good time to entertain us with his extensive repertoire of card magic tricks. Joy.

The seminary man was nice, and we learned a lot about the school. I felt like we were on a college tour, learning a lot about the institution, with dates and facts and all that jazz.

Next on the "schedule" was lunch. Our illustrious tour guide brought us to a rest-stop area with a restaurant sitting atop a high hill. The restaurant was outside. It was windy, and it was miserably cold. The meal ended up taking over two hours because the service was so slow, and I wasn't able to eat anything because the only food available all contained meat. After about 45 minutes waiting for the food to arrive, Courtney and I decided to sneak out to the restaurant that was next-door to see if we could find anything that I could eat. I ordered some spaghetti without the ham and cheese which usually is sprinkled on top. The conversation following was in Spanish, but I'm too lazy to write it out in both languages.

Courtney: Can we get this to go?
Girl at counter: What?
Courtney: Can we get this to go? Like in a box or something?
Girl at counter: What?
Courtney: Do you have any boxes we can put this in? We're with a group, and they're all eating at the other restaurant over there, and we wanted to bring this back there with us.
Girl: We have plastic bags.
Me: Uhhh.
Courtney: Uhhh
Me: Would I be able to eat this on the plate over there then bring the plate back?
Girl: No.
Me: Hm, okay.
Girl: We have plastic bags.
Me: Okay, let's do this.

My order was then dumped into a plastic grocery bag, which we grabbed quickly and ran to the other restaurant with, laughing so hard we could barely contain ourselves. The spaghetti was disgusting and, surprisingly, tasted like plastic.

We spent over another hour in the restaurant, miserably cold. The majority of my lunch comprised of saltines. The other students' lunches weren't much better: bloody, undercooked chicken. Yum.

The rest of the day was decent. We went back to the hotel, and Harry Potter was on HBO (with Spanish subtitles, so we could even listen in English) and we napped. Life was good. In retrospect, we decided that that was the best part of our weekend.

TO BE CONTINUED.

(Just making sure everyone knows that you can click on the pictures to see them bigger!)