beginning to explore

august 22 12:22 am

Nice day on our own. Woke up early for breakfast, then went back to sleep and slept in till noon. Hung out at the house for a while, then we went out and got ice cream at the coppelia, nearby on 23rd. Thunder as we were walking there. Then came back to the house and got our computers. Walked to the fancy hotel melía cohiba, which matt said is the only 5-star hotel in havana. Very very fancy inside. Reminded us of midtown manhattan. We got our wifi connection cards and used them right next to the bar. Wrote messages home but didn't check facebook. Facebook needs a break. And this is so distracting from that "old life" as it seems, that it's easy to forget about bookface.

After it started raining going to the hotel, it was cloudy the rest of the day. Dinner was rice, beans, tuna, the usual cold cucumbers and green beans, plus french fries and "ketchup", guayaba juice instead of the usual mango kind, and this too-sweet pudding with cinnamon sprinkled on top. We all dig the dessert.

After dinner we filled out applications for the carnet. Kayleigh and Anna and I went to the bar here and Jumanji was on the tv, so we watched that. Then chatted with the bartender for a while and had beers. Tonight was the hip hop show at the Riviera, nearby. It was a hip hop "simposio." Interesting, hard to understand, not as musically exciting as I was expecting though. I was hoping for more latin influence but it was almost like anything I could expect in the US, but in spanish. Plus we were all tired and I was kind of hot and grouchy. Slept through a lot of it, despite the loud hip hop--that's how tired. We left after 2 hours.

The walk tonight to the show was cool--noticed a few neat spiral staircases. Very elegant, very slim. I'm still impressed by the houses in vedado. All impressive, handsome mansions, very high ceilings. So many fluorescent lights, though. They're everywhere. Kind of unfortunate because it's so ugly. But energy efficient. I really want to know who used to live there.

Got to get to a good club soon. Want to hear some real music like the stuff we heard live last night. That really got me going, not the hip hop. But I'll try to give it another try when I have some caffeine.