It is baffling to me to think that a week ago I was running around with my shoulders to my ears on one of the coldest days of the year in Minnesota as I prepared for departure. It has always stretched my understanding that a person can be in two entirely different realities in such a short span of time. I’m one lucky girl: this spring I have been given the opportunity to work with CGE’s new semester program in Cuba for three months. The 12 students, 2 professors, and I hopped on a charter plane in Miami on Monday afternoon, and a half hour later landed in Havana.
Walking down the roll-up staircase to exit the plane and toward the one-room airport, we were embraced by the soft-sunlight and gentle heat of late afternoon in ‘winter’ in Cuba. There were a few questions about our visas and the typical waiting that happens when you travel in a group of 15 before we headed to the Martin Luther King Memorial Center (our home base for the next three months) in the working class neighborhood of Marianao.
To our surprise we were greeted there with dinner and our homestay assignments! We hadn’t even put down our bags before we were being welcomed into our new families. And they have been beyond welcoming; students are acclimating incredibly well and programming is moving along beautifully.I feel incredibly blessed to be here and can’t wait to process and share some of the things that we’re experiencing. That being said – blogging will be a challenge given the internet situation here. Wi-fi is nearly non-existent and when you can manage to get a connection the social networking sites (among many others) are blocked. My dear mother has agreed to ‘administer’ the site if I can manage to send her text (and maybe even pictures occasionally) through email.
Thank you for all of your kind thoughts and support through these last few weeks of transition. I am so grateful for such an incredible support system!
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