On Monday a film that Gael Garcia Bernal directed and acted in premiered at the film festival. Our film professor had already told us that it sucked but we went anyway with the idea that perhaps Gael would be there since we heard he was coming for the festival (I was really going with the hopes of seeing Diego Luna since they’re best friends and I think he’s way cuter.) So we went and the movie was awful, one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. It was about how hard it is to be rich and young and beautiful in Mexico and then oh my God, he didn’t get into Harvard and his parents don’t know yet and then his sister OD’s at a wild party and his girlfriend comes and then he can’t seduce this other girl and life is just so hard!! But despite it being terrible Gael actually did show up along with Diego Luna and they walked right by us and then talked about the film a bit and the entire theater was packed and everyone was yelling and taking photos. It was pretty cool and in real life they both are exceptionally beautiful men but they’re also really short and of course Gael’s movie sucked and received the most lackluster applause out of all the other films I have seen this past week. It was a funny experience because never in the United States would you get to go to the premier of Gael Garcia Bernal’s shitty movie but here in Cuba any person who can get there early enough to get a ticket that costs about 10 cents can go. An extra note: the next day a few of us went to Hotel Nacional because it’s the hub of the film festival and we wanted to buy some posters and shirts for friends and family and Ana actually met Gael as they were waiting in line to exchange money. She told him that she “enjoyed herself” at his film. Ha!
Christmas trees are starting to pop up in peoples’ windows and now when I walk down the street everything feels like a huge oxymoron. I’m in a short dress, sweating my ass off, and then I look up and see a fake Christmas tree with fake glittering snow in someone’s window and I am reminded that yes in fact, it is that time. There’s just something so strange about seeing Christmas trees in a tropical place and of course everyone should be able to celebrate Christmas with whatever tree they want but for some reason I was expecting to see lights on a little palm tree in a planter or something. Even the hotels are all decked out and it’s just so strange because Christmas is something I so heavily associate with coldness and darkness and not going to the beach or sitting in the sun every morning. I heard that theft increases this time of year too because people need extra money in order to buy their kids presents.
On Wednesday we went to the Botanical Gardens on the outskirts of Habana. It was an optional trip but we were promised a good lunch with a lot of greens, something we’ve severely lacked during the past 4 months. 9 of us went and fought through our hang overs since we had played a rousing game of Kings the night before and together we discovered that there are a lot of different kinds of palm trees all over the world. There was a Japanese garden that was kind of nice and they had a koi pond with huge koi that swam around in circles and if you dropped crackers in the water they’d pile on top of each other hurling themselves out of the water in order to eat. Aidan and I also found a huge white toad but we weren’t sure if he was supposed to be white or if he was sick. We ate at the restaurant there called, “Bambu” and it specializes in entirely vegetarian cuisine. It was a buffet of a ton of raw vegetables and good dressings and they had a soup that came to be known as the “womb soup” because it was so comforting. Unfortunately there were pebbles in the rice and when I accidentally bit down on one and felt as though I shattered my back molars I kind of lost my appetite. My teeth were miraculously ok though, which disproved my theory that my teeth have started falling apart during my time in Cuba (Dad, we should make a dentist appointment.)
Now I’m down to a mere three days in Cuba but it hasn’t hit me yet. Usually things don’t hit me until about 5 hours before I leave so I imagine that when I wake up Sunday morning for breakfast that’s about when I’ll burst into tears and then will proceed to cry until 3 in the afternoon when we take off, then maybe some more once I am on the plane, but I think once I get to Miami I will be ok because I’ll be able to talk to all my loved ones at my leisure and won’t have to deal with 20 second delays over the telephone.
This is going to be my last entry during my time here in Cuba and I feel like I need to make some sort of closing remarks but I don’t want to talk like I’ll never be back here. When I think of leaving Cuba on Sunday I think of it as ending one chapter in an entire book of experiences I hope to have here someday. There is no doubt in my mind that I will come back because I’ve never been anywhere as beautiful and complex and amazing as Cuba. Of course there have been moments when I’ve wanted to go home more than anything else, like when I find myself eating pork for the 6th day in a row, or the men are being particularly obnoxious (after 4 months here I’ve found the amount of yelled “piropos” in the streets has a direct correlation with how hot it is, the hotter the weather the more persistent the men), but Cuba is a place that comforts me to my bones and there’s nothing better than waking up every morning to a room saturated with sunlight and the sounds of palms rustling outside the window. I will definitely miss Cuba once I leave. I’ll miss the people and the buildings and the dogs and the insane drivers who honk at you instead of using their breaks and the crowds of people sprinting down the street in order to catch a bus and the old men who set up a table in the street to play dominoes, but I don’t necessarily feel sad about leaving. I don’t feel sad because I know I’ll be back here some day and sure it might be different but to me Cuba has an incorruptible spirit that will persevere over everything else.