Pensamiento del dia

I heard that I can leave after premedico for 6 months to do whatever the fuck I want, and come back, and start with medicine. Considering my stats, I am still very young, and i can live without studies for 6 months. its a big decision, and in those 6 months, I will definitely change my mind about coming back.
Either way, when I come back, there is a 50% chance that I will be sent to
Havana when I come back, which is good.
Either way, im saying that this is all depending on my experiences here in Cuba for the next 4 months.

Vamos a ver

Habana, Habana and more Habana 25-32

This is a mural called Carro de la Revolución. I think, I am not so sure anymore. It is located in the Hotel Tryp Habana Libre, and it has been there for a long time. It is completely made out of porcelain. It was on the wall next to the first nightclub in the building.

The same road (Calle Hospital) but this time it showed some better housing. It really is a beautiful city you know.

Chinatown during the day. What did you think? Cheap Chinese food and not go back? Do we look or sound like idiots. Please, only this time we went to a different restaurant where we had sangria, fish filet, lobster (get this, they asked us politely if they could substitute the shrimp with lobster because they ran out of shrimp…..for the same price) and chow meen.

I have no idea what kind of fish it was, but it definitely had red meat. It was a mix in between tuna and salmon. I don’t know what it was, but I LOVED it. And then the langosta, oh gosh, I still cant believe I never had lobster before. Its all I eat in Habana.

That is the paifang that the Chinese government sponsored. They did the same thing in every country that had a significant Chinatown.

The capitolio during daytime. It looks exactly like the one in America. Isnt it ironic?

Oh this is cool. This camera is like 80 years old and it still works. The guy will take your picture for 2 bucks, and it looks like it was taken 80 years ago. Really nice, the pictures are done immediately, and are in black and white

Finally I have reached the last picture. GOSH, 32 pictures, now don’t complain for a long long long time. This is the Gran Teatro de la Habana. They have cabaret and ballet shows over there. I just think that the building is magnificent. It is located at Parque Central, next to Hotel Inglaterra.

Wow….La Habana. This is only part of what the city has to offer. And in my next few trips, I am planning bodeguita del medio, Cabaña fortress and el Morro. Hopefully I will get them done on time.

Habana, Habana and more Habana 17-24

A closeup of Hotel Nacional, which was in fact, constructed by the Italian Maffia. They even had their shit here. It has 400 something rooms, and it is expensive, that is all I needed to know. I wanted to sacar some dinero there, but they said my card was denied. I felt so poor.

A part of centro Habana, this picture was taken from my veranda at my casa particular. It shows the real picture of Cuban life. Kinda. These are the kind of images I saw sometimes on the tellie. It is really nice though, just like the tourist manuals describe, the people really do play dominoes on the corners of the streets.

This is the other direction, but the same road, calle Hospital

Yes, a real Chinatown. It was cool, everything was kinda different. The buildings were painted, and there were restaurants everywhere. Strangely there weren’t many Chinese people….

Even the graffiti was Chinese

Just take a look at these prices. Imagine, camaron and langosta are shrimp and lobster respectively. Just LOOK AT THE GODDAMN PRICES.

That’s the group of people I was with. We encountered a Japanese bitch, and she was fun. The guy in the blue is Luis our Cuban friend, and most of the other people are Belizeans from my school. We were just really happy. And most of us were drunk.

That’s the capitolio. It was modeled after the real capitol building in Washington DC but this one is taller, it is 92 metres. I think it still serves as a seat of congress but most of the building is a tourist attraction. It looks better at night than it does during the day.

Habana, Habana and more Habana 9-16

That is obviously a statue of Alma Mater. She is spreading her arms (if she was spreading her legs it would have a very different meaning of welcome) to welcome the new minds to her death trap of studies. I currently have no idea who Alma Mater is, you can look it up yourself on wikipedia while you’re at it and lighten up my day.

This is a church in Miramar, the rich people section of cuba. As you drive on 5ta Avenida, you will realize why all the other buildings in vedado, centro and vieja look so old and dilapidated. Its because all the nice buildings, embassies and hotels are in Miramar. It is like driving through palm beach in Miami. It really is different, they even have good stores in Miramar.

This used to be the soviet union’s embassy. Nowadays its used as the Russian embassy. It is Huge. No doubt about it, they have 4 flights a week to Moscow. Da da, the daughter of the owner of a Casa Particular where my friends stayed at was-is studying in Moscow, isnt it funny?

The marti monument again. Its just so purrdy, and biiig and stuff. Its really nice for a national monument. Guess what, that’s a statue of José Martí again. Ugh you'll see this guy like everywhere.

Look at Che Guevarra. He even has his face on a building. I guess I should become a doctor, cure lepers and fight for the revolution of several countries before I get that done. Look at it this way, atleast that way the people will have something good to look at.


I was so hot and excited that I finally got my hands on real internet. Right after this picture was taken I realized that there was no MSN. What a cock-block. Oh the bitch on the picture is Louisa, my friend from Nauru.


Yep, that’s what we call some mean ass daikiris. That’s how they spell it here yes, I am not an idiot. But yes, they were amazing, and only 3 bucks a piece. Told you, it flows like water here.

That’s just me in a restaurant while I was waiting on my 2 dollar hamburger. Now THAT was one of the best burgers I have ever had in my entire life.

Habana, Habana and more Habana 1-8

Have you ever seen the bride of chuckie? Have you ever heard about voodoo and santería? Well this restaurant I ate at last weekend was like owned by a family that practiced santería. They had all kinds of these dolls over the place and they burned the cigars and candles too. Very very creepy yes, they all had yellow eyes.

That was the lobster-shrimp dinner we paid 20 bucks for. Little did we know that we could get much more food in Chinatown for less than 5 cuc a plate. You can imagine how robbed I felt, but nonetheless, the food was great. The 20 cuc included side dishes and whatnot.

That was the beautiful sunset on the Malecon. The buildings you can see in the distance are none other than the main buildings in Habana´s Vedado district. The wide one on the left is Edificio Focsa, and right in front of it you have the very famous Hotel Nacional.


This is Edificio Focsa. It was designed as a city within a city. Completely self-sufficient. All the inhabitants can work within the building. It has its own laundrette, restaurants and nightclub. I have never been, but I will have enough time to spend here in Cuba.

This is sunrise on the malecon. It was that really good Saturday night where I was so happy that I never went to sleep. The picture came out much better than in real life I think. It was really beautiful.


That is a statue of one of the Cuban national heroes, Jose Martí. He did some thing for education bla bla, nobody cares. And with that I mean everybody non Cuban. Cuz they love the guy, all schools have a portrait statue of him. He is holding a baby, and I don’t feel the need to translate whatever the hell it says on the base of the statue

This is on the malecon as well. I forgot what its called, but it is some convention centre, for concerts and no sé qué. Right behind it is the American foreign interests section where they display anti-communist messages on an electronic banner. Its funny really, they will do anything to try and take a crack at communism.

This is the main entrance to La Universidad de la Habana. It was founded in 1790 I think. And my Cuban friend-slash-tour-guide is doing chemical engineering there. It has many faculties, and it frustrates me even more to try and comprehend why ´they´ did not send me to Havana in stead of the llanuras of the west.

Habana, Habana and more Habana

When you wake up and look out of your window and all you see are Marabú (trees-shrubs with lots and lots of thorns), some palms, and more schools, you would agree that any form of civilization would be a welcome change.

At first us students here at ELAM 10 thought that the relatively nearby (=77km) city of Pinar del Río was adequate. It has a nice hotel that isn’t that expensive, has much better shops, some branded clothing, and different food. The chicken there is even available in more than one flavour (it’s always deep fried).
But then after a while, it started to get a bit boring, especially if you could only walk the main street, because the rest of the city is a dump. So we started fantasizing about La Habana.

I mean come on, were basically village people over here. We live next to a freaking farm. And all the teachers have been bitching about the maravillosidad of the capital. So we were like always horny to go to Habana, but never really had the time, until we just figured ´screw it´, you only live once.

So for the third time since I have been here, I went to La Capital. In all of its grandeur. It was even better this time. I stayed at a casa particular en Centro de Habana. We were like 14 blocks away from Chinatown. I also spent a lot of time at Parque Central, in front of the Capitolio. I know it doesn’t make much sense right now, but the pictures will bring more claridad into the whole situation.

Moving on, if you didn’t understand anything that was written in the previous part of this post, you will understand the descriptions of the pictures in the following posts.

Greetings from Havana

Yes, it really is heaven.....

Red Soil

I took another step outside of the home base. The outside temperature was just right at the time but I had a feeling my vestidios wouldnt serve as much of a barrier between me and the neduring radiation and UV rays. I still ventured out because anything was better than 4 boring hours of spanish classes. Mis companeros me acompanaron hasta la 'fence'. As soon as we were walking some distance I knew that my suit had failed. The radiation had reached my skin, and my melanocites were highly active. I couldnt control all the sweating. I knew I had to look for a shade or else the radiation would have surely killed me.
There was vegetation around. Strange looking, but vegetations nonetheless. Thorny, entangled, red-beady-seeds, and apparently highly adapted to the barren red soil it was growing on.
It seemed that the longer I avoided the radiation, the more steps I could make in the unknown desolates. I ventured on with my friends, conversating on and on about the amount of strange feces we had encountered along our path to the fruitfields.
Yes, this desolate land had to have something to offer. Amongst the thorny bushes called manambú there were strange fruit trees carrying orange fruits. Some carried yellow fruits. They vaguely resembled the citrus fruits on earth. But we couldnt be certain, so we drilled core samples and carried out the analysis. We discovered that they had a high concentration of H+, therefore, they were acidic. Some were more acidic than others. And there were also some that contained glucose, our much needed fuel, So we stored those in special containers we carried with us. The radiation of the yellow star the planet is orbiting became worse, so we concluded that the star must have been in zenith in conjunction with the planet we were on. The strange barren planet with strange vegetations.
We decided to move back towards home base. My body had been leaking fluids too much and needed to be replenished rapidly. On the way back we encounters strange lifeforms with calcified hairs on their heads, we assumed that they were responsible for the strange defecations we c came across. They made weird noises, we were afraid they were trying to scramble our communications array, so we ran.

This is not something that happened on a terrafied planet. This happened in the granja that surrounds my school. And we went orange picking. I just felt a little sci-fi because I found AVP2 on the server, so i'll be watching that shortly. Ciao maricones.

Fariz (as they say it here)

Huevos Fritos

As I am sitting here in my-little-plot-of-artificial light, I realize that I once again feel the need to fart. This never-ending feeling is starting to annoy me. A diet of beans, rice and eggs surely isn’t helping. All this hydrogen disulfide is smelling up the room. And can you imagine the smell of a 5X10 room, with 14 people in it who all have the same diet?

Today is Friday. In normal life this means going out, having fun, drinking, and qualquier acción que quieren hacer. But no. This is Cuba. No, wait, this is the boonies-o-Cuba. Everything is controlled. Bye-bye alcohol, bye-bye late nights, and bye-bye normal internet access. We have school on Saturdays, but only half-days, up until noon. That means lights out at 11pm. Its 11.37 pm, and my form of living on the edge is keeping the lights on after 11. Have I told you how sad it is that these things have to make my day?

I drank alcohol in school today. That was a rush.

It is such a step down from the life I had in Surinam. You’d think that your life is insignificant, full of bad times and whatnot, but believe me people, you haven’t lived life as a Cuban. It is difficult, I cant even begin to imagine what they have to go through. I'm a student here, I have a foreign source of money. They don’t. Things are really difficult here, there is lack of different types of foodstuffs and regular things that we take for granted in real life.

Have you ever imagined life without toilet seats?

Think about that every single time you take a crap. Think about all the poor students (ME ME ME) who have never gotten used to the fact that there are no toilet seats in school. And at this very moment, I need to take a crap.

Where is my hepatitis-B injection?

Hussled by the pastor.....

I went to Pinar del Río again. I know I know, it doesnt sound as interesting anymore, but I was forced. kinda. I had no more cash on me, so I had to go out to the city to sacar some dinero from the bank. Which eventually worked on sunday.

Moving on, this time I went with my gf's from the Bahamas, all the other kids had their own things to do, so I went and had my own fun. We took a cab straight from school, which is something their professors had arranged. Turns out as soon as we left sight of regular Cubans, the cabdrivers were already planning to con us. They charged us double the agreed price, so we protested, and got dropped in the backwater town of Sandino. Which is where we met 'the-pastor-with-the-toyota-hi-ace'

He took us all the way to Pinar del Río, and this is how he managed to hustle us, he managed to squeeze his way into making us agree to having to come pick us up again the following day. In total he made 60 CUC on us, which, first of all, is cheaper than we would have spent anyway, but
secondly, 60 CUC is more than 3 times his monthly wage. We can all imagine while mr pastor was all but sad.

Moving on, I took a lot of scenic pictures, I thought I'd introduce you people of the normal world to some of the things I see when I look out of the window. La belleza de mi provinicia de Pinar del Río.

Mostly scenic, it browses through the tobacco fields of vueltabajo (the best tobacco in the world) and the town of San Juan Y Martinez....

Hope you enjoy them, and dont hesitate to mail me back at
FARIDK@ELAM10.PRI.SLD.CU

for comments that is....