DAY 2 EN CUBA

Day one quickly bled into day two as I left the end of the Bueno Vista Social Club concert and wandered the Havana streets until I found a bar. It was about 11pm.

The first person I met was an Italian tourist; male of about forty. The second person I met proved more communicative: a German male of thirty-five. As I speak German conversationally, he almost forcefully educated me on his own experiences. He's been vacationing in Cuba about five times a year since his early twenties. He told me all about what it means to have a Cuban girlfriend - Cubanas he's began relationships with in discotheques, women who desire the money of a foreigner and more often than not an opportunity to gain citizenship which can allow them to leave Cuba.

"Don't fall in love with a Cubana," he warned me. "They are college girls who desire the money only foreigners can offer them," a sugar-daddy of sorts. "But one can have many Cuban girlfriends and return to them each visit. They are good women but they love the opportunity of you more than you yourself, you know what I mean?"

I knew what he meant. As he said that the bar in which we were drinking became completley dark. The TV and the lights flickered. Then everything was black. "Rolling blackout," he said. Electrical shortages are the norm in Cuba. So normal in fact that patrons at the bars remain calm, bartenders light candles and business continues as usual. It was then that I learned the acronym: TIC (This Is Cuba).

"This is Cuba," said the German. "You have two options. Either the vagrancies cause you anxiety or they relax you completely. No telling what will happen when you're here. Everything changes at a moments' notice."

Indeed, the German is correct. Like all the others at our bar I was relaxed. Thirty minutes later, the lights and sound powered on, musicians took the stage and life resumed as normal. I stayed until almost two in the morning. The music and bars close at three. The performances, even at small venues are excellent. All professional musicians in Cuba are graduates of the music program; just like all doctors are graduates of the medical program. Education here is excellent. Work opportunities however are not.

"You won't understand Cuba in just one day or one week," our guide told us this morning. And that made sense to me, even on just a few hours sleep. The society here is confusing. "I've lived here all my life and I still don't understand it," he said, and I realized that I feel likewise about America.

Our first duty on the morning of day two was to visit a church, the purpose of our visas. We visited a daycare center for underprivileged people run by the Catholic church. A nun, Theresa, was our guide. Many in our group were elated to see the children sing and dance for us. Many felt sympathetic to the kids and the nun overseeing their pre-pre-school education. It was an odd site: Americans handing out stickers and smiles to three year olds in uniforms as they were marched around by the educators of the nun. It didn't look much different from the church-run childcare I've seen for the poor here in the United States. In New York I actually was tenant mates with a nun running a similar organization. She was a nice women and a character - smoked cigarettes like a chimney, drank wine like a fish, cursed like a sailor... all with me and behind closed doors. I couldn't help but believe that the nun serving as our guide, Theresa, was much different. After all, it is the same work just in a different nation with a different economy,

After the church visit, we toured an art museum, then I freed myself from a museum of the Cuban revolution and walked to a bar frequented by Hemingway when he lived in Havana; a bar also calling itself the "Cradle of the Daiquiri" for its advancement in that field. From there we took the entrance to the hotel and stuck with the informality and chances of fate.

Tomorrow we go to a professional Beisbol game.