(un dia)

7:00AM: awaken to the sound of roosters clucking and pigs snorting. wonder why people in the bustling cosmopolitan (relatively speaking) city of havana have roosters on their balconies and pigs in their back yards. spend a moment contemplating how hygienic it can be to have farm animals in your home and make a mental note to stop eating things sold out of people’s windows.

7:01AM: take a second to have my daily panic about the fact that i actually have nothing to do today and seriously contemplate what the hell I am doing here and why i quit my job and sold my condo?

7:02AM: realize that i have nothing to do today and roll over in sheer delight at the fact that i have nothing to do today. what should I do? drink another mojito? go to the beach? read a book under a tree? work on my tan? who cares, i can do whatever the hell I want! fall in love with myself all over again for quitting my job, selling my condo, moving to a communist country and being so totally cool.

9:15AM: stir from the beating sun broiling my tender creamy skin and wonder why i am not only dripping in sweat but covered in itchy bumps? is it bed bugs? it IS 475 degrees with the humidity in here, after all, and surely that can’t do anything good for the 50 year old mattress i am sleeping on? or is it some crazy tropical disease carried by the filthy animals i am constantly caressing on the street? either way, another mental note is made to put calamine lotion on the next care package list and roll over again.

11AM: get up. it’s enough of being completely slovenly and indulgent. wander to the kitchen of the cuban family’s house that i am now living in and see none other than a spam sandwich on the counter waiting for me. now, if I make fun of the fact that there is a spam sandwich waiting for me then i sound like a total bitch and completely unappreciative of the fact that someone who has very little has taken the time to leave something for me, made with genuine affection before leaving at 6AM to work a 14 hour day and make 12 cents, so i won’t make any jokes about spam. and you know, to tell you the truth, when you’re hungry and you close your eyes, it doesn’t actually taste all that bad. chuckle to myself that i still call myself a vegetarian.

11:10AM: wonder why i am still hungry? realize that i am now starving in solidarity. cubans are obsessed with food, mainly because they actually don’t have enough and although i spend on groceries in a week what most people make in 6 months, i am still always starving. take a moment to yearn for a spicy tuna roll, look in the fridge, see nothing that resembles a spicy tuna roll and shuffle away in disappointment.

11:30AM: take my clothes off to get ready for my shower. look in the mirror and realize that my starving in solidarity is really getting me a hot bod. seriously consider extending my time here for no other reason than the malnourishment that will get me into a size 6.

11:45AM: take a shower. wash myself from a bucket in a bathroom without running water and holes in walls. marvel at the fact that, even though i have now done this 75 times, i am a super bohemian and remind myself never to let anyone call me neurotic again. however, have a brief moment of ‘former elana’ and feel disgust when i realize i boiled the shower water in a cooking pot and have to spend 20 minutes picking rice out of my bum.

1:00PM: what a surprise, i am hungry again. decide i am going to treat myself to a pizza and in a fit of laziness, decide to take the bus. stand at the bus stop with 950 other people and wonder how we’re all going to fit? feel the beads of sweat start to form on my upper lip. obsessively admire myself for giving everything up and taking the bus (and secretly and obsessively yearn for my honda civic with a/c). watch the bus pull up and in what doesn’t look safe at all, stuff 949 of those people on top of each other. decide that for safety, hair (it is VERY hot!) and personal space reasons, i shall take a pass. also note that the bus is from 1945, has german street names on the front and windows that don’t open. curious if it was used during the war? the sweaty, despondent faces pressed up against the glass look as some might have during that time. feel happy with my decision to walk.

2:00PM: realize it has taken me an hour to walk three blocks. perhaps my sedentary lifestyle at home, inability to acclimatize to the heat and the enormous and very dangerous potholes on every corner is affecting my efficiency on the roads. alas, skip in excitement around the corner to the pizza place but screech to a halt when i realize that this ain’t no normal pizza joint. one has to scream up (en espanol, i might add) what kind of pizza you want (hmmm, i better pick one that looks familiar from the list of unidentifiable pizza toppings – ‘hawaiana’ – again, there goes my vegetarianism) and then pray the guy 12 floors up heard and understood you amongst the starving, screaming cubans. wait and wait and wait and then panic when he starts to yell down in spanish and point at me. with trepidation and confusion, approach the bucket that is flying down overhead and realize, there’s a hawaian pizza inside! put 50 cents in the bucket and hope that i can always live in a place where your food is delivered to you in a flying pail.

4:00PM: walk by a book store and decide to browse. seriously contemplate buying the “O” magazine from 1998 out of sheer desperation for something in english. realize that my voracious appetite for pop culture has waned since living in an impoverished, communist country and feel excited that i am now ‘worldly’ and not shallow. try to remember to cancel my people magazine subscription when i get home out of my newfound ‘worldli-ness’ (and if i don’t remember, well, i should read it anyway, don’t you think? because my time here has taught me not to let things go to waste…you know. it’s not like i’d enjoy it. really.)


5:00PM: notice across the street that ‘inglorious bastards’ (‘bastardos sin gloria’ – hee) is playing. decide it would be good to experience seeing an american blockbuster film in a communist, anti-US country. pay my 4 cents to get in, sit down and appreciate the minus 20 degree air conditioning. feel confused by the fact that on the screen i see someone press ‘play’ and ‘subtitles…spanish’. realize that they only play dvd’s in the theatres here. hmmmm, i did only pay 4 cents, i’ll give it a shot. reel in shock when i see a pirated version of the film being screened and giggle in disbelief when i realize that said pirater left the video camera on his seat for 20 minutes when he went to the bathroom and decide that it’s time to leave. sigh. socialist cinema isn’t as fun as i thought.

6:00PM: walk by 12 grocery stores looking for peanut butter. nope. remember that one can’t get used to buying anything here because even though you bought it once, you may never get that opportunity again. in fact, some products you may fall in love with and then when the foreign manufacturer realizes they are being paid in cuban monopoly money, they just pull it all off the shelves and split, leaving all of us here with a big whole in our hearts where 90 cent tetra packs of pina colada flavoured rum once lived. if i had known i would have to visit 12 grocery stores, multiple times a week looking for peanut butter again for the next 3 months, i would have certainly made love to each delicious spoonful when i had the chance. shuffle out in disappointment and prepare myself for spreading spam on my bread again tomorrow morning. mmmmm.

7:30PM: uh, why can’t i see anything? surely mr. ‘c’ can afford to keep the street lights on for foreign gals like myself who CANNOT navigate these insane crumbly streets during the day?? no. they need to save energy. so instead of turning the lights off at night in gigantic government office buildings, it’s much better to just turn off all the street lamps and watch everyone plummet to the bottom of the pot holes. at the very least, the cubans on the corners watching me fall on my ass every 12 seconds are amused. i take a moment to feel happy that i am contributing to boosting the morale here.

7:35PM: flutter my eyes at swarthy cuban on dark street corner while his eyes, as dark as the streets i have to navigate, slowly make their way over me. feel ever so slightly creeped out by him but very happy that my starvation hasn’t completely depleted my ample supply of tits and ass for the cuban admirer.

9:00PM: feel super excited that i actually have a friend and stop by his house to attend a party. happen upon the one group of cubans who don’t dig salsa and find a bunch of brown guys dancing around a bottle of hooch to bon jovi’s ‘wanted: dead or alive”. have a very hearty chuckle (internally) at how they are spanglish-ing the lyrics (“i am war-ned, deaf and arrive”) and partake in said hooch. a few swigs later, remember why i treat myself to the real stuff and say a silent prayer that i don’t barf on the way home.

2:00AM: drunkenly fall into the home of my new bed bug pets. desperately feel the urge to pee and trepidatiously make my way to the very scary bathroom. ahhhh, perch myself on the edge of the ‘toilet’ and relieve myself. feel relaxed from my day of being a lady of leisure when….huh? what’s that? did something just run over my foot? mid-stream, panicked, frantically look around the bathroom to see what it was. then, staring up at me, the size of my hand (literally):

la cucaracha, la cucaracha….ya no puede caminar
la cucaracha, la cucaracha….porque le falta la patica principal

2:01AM: completely lose my shit, pee all over my feet and race back into my bed. realize that i not only have giant cockroaches running around but my den of salvation has bugs in it. contemplate new bohemian status and tell myself it’s okay to be a little freaked out. i’m a jew from leaside living in squalor, it’s gotta take more than a few months to completely free yourself of all neuroses, no?

3:00AM: finally return heartbeat to normal. lulled to sleep by the sounds of chickens clucking, ancient car engines choking, whores counting their pennies. come to the realization that i am one of the luckiest gals around that i have been afforded the opportunity to stay in the home of such a generous and gracious family, have insightful, kind new friends and can live in a place where although there is no peanut butter, having a belly that hangs over your pants is a pre-requisite for being invited to a party.