I can't believe it. Time flew by and before I even knew it, the first week has passed. 1 down, 20 to go. It's not as if I'm doing a countdown 🙈.
Well, to start off, when I first landed everything seemed to just go completely wrong. But of course, things like that have to happen to me. After standing at the airport for roughly 2h, completely starved due to the lack of filling food by Iberia and trying to find my luggage whilst the staff seemed to have a blast exchanging the latest gossip stories (not that I understood any of that at that point) I was close to loosing it. Fortunately, I met this Swiss girl Carmen during passport control (something the cubans didn't seem to take quite serious either) and she kindly waited with me, after her backpack was the first one on the baggage belt to arrive. And what a darling she was. Like me she intended to visit a language course and prepared as she was (shame on me...) she seemed to be able to understand the guy at lost and found who didn't seem bothered at all, to simply be patient and wait for a couple of minutes. I was fuming and thankfully Carmen took it upon herself to keep up the small talk with the Cuban guy (by all means I can't remember his name!) and as she worked at the airport in Zurich, was able to start the tracking of my suitcase. I by then came to terms that I'd be without my luggage for what might be quite some time, shrugged it off and tried to find my transfer to the hotel. The transfer, however, was nowhere to be found. I had just given up hope by then, as well as Carmen and we both took a taxi to our accommodations. Some hope left in me I was looking forward to a shower and a bed, but someone seemed to have other plans for me. And as I've been going on about this rant far too long I'll just cut it short and say that in the end I FINALLY got a room in an apartment with another Swiss girl, who however didn't know of my coming in the middle of the night and was quite surprised to see me in the morning. Cuba, I love you by now, but getting used to how you deal with everything does take some time.
I started school the following day at Sprachcaffe in Miaramar, a couple blocks from where I'm staying. As you might have guessed, it didnt' really go as planned as well and my bags were still not in sight. It didn't however bother me as much as I thought and I was happy to finally learn some Spanish. And after only a week, I have to say I'm able to understand more than I ever thought possible.
In my course but at the school in general are sooo many Germans. They're nice and everything, but it was just a bit of an overload and paired with the fact that simply aren't able to get rid of their accent even when speaking Spanish always gives something to laugh about.
As we're staying a bit outside of Havana itself, the school offered a small tour of the city and I was absolutely blown away. Although I didn't really see much of anything during that small tour Havana captured my heart from old Chevrolets built in the 1950's, stray dogs and the old guys puffing their cigars with a glas of rum in their hands at the corners.
Goodbye for now, oh, and don't worry I've made sure by now that every single bloodsucker in my room is squashed and dead and I can finally let myself drift off into dream land and not be distrubed by a constant buzzing sound.
Bueno y hasta luego from a more than paranoid Joelle x
Post a Comment