6/10 - First thing on tap this morning is a trip to the Cuban Film Institute for a lecture and a screening of Suite Havana, a beautiful and depressing film made last year. It shows the lives of real Cubans and the lengths they have to go to in their free time to make ends meet. There’s no dialogue -- just images set to heart-wrenching music. It’s fantastic and really, really sad. We’ll have to give it a view when it comes out back home. We dilly dally around for a bit -- the level of retardation and ineptitude of the cows is reaching critical levels -- and finally break up back at the hotel. (This last week could be UGLY. All of us crammed on a bus for long periods of time, traveling around the countryside with poor or no access to food, hot water, and toilet paper? This… is going… to RAWK!!!)

After a brief spell, some of us make our way out to the suburbs to participate in a Santeria ceremony to cleanse and bless our orisha beads. Rosa, our guide who’s set to become a santera this year, said my orisha (god) is probably Obattala, the god of old age, wisdom, and peace. (How cool!) After describing V, she said she’s probably Ochun, the goddess of love, sensuality, and rivers. She also said Ochun is very sweet and is perfectly matched with Obattala. So yay for us, huh?!? Woohoo!

When we get to Rosa's godmother's house, a tiny, sparse apartment whose electricity is out when we get there, we get to see all the shrines to the various orishas and meet her santera godmother, an adorable portly lady with chubby cherubic cheeks, a twinkle in her eyes, and a bright, smiling face. She starts the ceremony with six types of herbs and plants from the area, dried crumbles of the arm of a jutea, a Cuban rodent, and the butter of a humfording schiggleschmaggle (no idea what the real word is – my notes are smudged), a type of small native coconut.

She mixes all these in a giant clay bowl, puts a cup of water on top, and then says a prayer while shaking a maraca in her hand. Then she dives into the bowl and starts scrubbing/tearing the leaves, adding another bowl of water after a minute or two. She scrubs the leaves together and tears at them for another couple of minutes until most of the leaves are broken up into tiny bits, and then adds some Everclear-type alcohol to the mix. Once this is done, she sieves the liquid out into another giant clay bowl -- the one holding our necklaces -- and leaves the leaves to the side to "gather power." (They cannot touch the necklaces, she says, or some of the ceremony's effects will be canceled.) She then washes our necklaces in the liquid, scrubbing them about for a moment before lighting a cigar and moving on to the next part of the ceremony. (Cigars have a cleansing power in this religion and play a major in their rites.)

In the next part she boots us all out of the kitchen and then takes us back in one by one, youngest to oldest, to cleanse us of negative spirits, bless us, and give us a consultation. When it's my turn, I go back into the tiny kitchen and stand in the middle of the room (the bowls have since been moved to the perimeter), arms at my side. The santera blows smoke from the puro into a fistful of the sieved plants and herbs leftover from before and spits a mouthful of the Everclear on them. She asks me a few questions about my parents -- she knew dad was dead (she thought of cancer, but crossed it with my mom), she asked about where I grew up, about my mom -- blowing smoke into the fist of leaves periodically while continuing to pace in front of me.

Once these brief asides were completed she would return to asking questions -- she said she could see my parents are still very close to me and that it causes me to cry from time to time, that they're always watching me and don't want me to be sad, and that I’m destined for great things and will probably end up the head of a factory or company (she sees leadership in my future) -- you know, typical sidewalk psychic stuff. She asked about V and said she gets nervous and excited a lot, that she has good energy, that I should be more patient with her, and that she gets jealous about me. (I wonder if this is true? I know she was wrong about the middle one, so maybe she got this one wrong, too. ;) The whole time she's questioning me she's pacing and grunting, emitting frustrated, "rrrruh!'s" while blowing smoke into the fistful of green.

Once this is done she sings this song and caresses me with the fistful of herbs (now split into both hands), brushing me with them from head to toe, shaking the leaves at the end of each stroke as if trying to flick the bad energy and evil from their tips, all to rid my body of evil spirits and negativity. It’s a very relaxing sensation and you feel the stress draining out of your toes. When the song is finished she has you take the fistful of leaves in your hands, horizontal to the ground, and wring them to break the bundle like you're twisting a wet towel to rid it of water. Next she squirts some scented liquid into your hands (something like holy water in that it has been blessed), which you then close and rub together, making a wish or two before rubbing it on your face.

The last step is to receive our necklaces one at a time, this time from oldest to youngest, and for this she takes it, drops it, makes you pick it up and then repeats the cycle twice more. After the third time picking it up she takes it and touches your face with it pulled taut, once vertically, once horizontally, and then places it over your head. (For V’s she only had me put my hand over my heart before she put it on me -- she didn't do the drop and pick up routine) Before we leave she says a prayer for my parents in hyper-Spanish, kisses us on the cheek, and we set off. All in all it was extremely cool. She knew some crazy stuff about my background, but kept attributing it to the wrong person. (In addition to the previous mentioned items, she knew someone had broken their arm a few weeks ago, but she thought it was V. Still kind of crazy, though, huh?) It was kind of frustrating because of the level of specificity she achieved for everyone else -- she knew someone's parents had just bought a new house as a result of a lucrative financial investment, she knew that one of our group members had a threesome two years ago with a short brunette and a tall blonde, etc. SUPER specific stuff that she never could have made up, which made it all the more disappointing she couldn't get things totally right for me. Oh well. Still pretty neat, though. Alright, I’m off to bed. Nonis…

6/11 - Realized I have only ONE WEEK LEFT until I can go home and smooch my bella. Yay, me! I heard ray Charles died last night and that made me really sad. He’s one of my faves and his songs always make my heart ache. Beautiful stuff. What’s happening to the country while I’m gone? It’s chaos -- people dying and resigning like crazy. Tenet, Reagan, Charles? Nuts.

So today was a rather tame one. We had our last lecture, which also turned out to be our worst -- this guy was supposed to talk about Cuban foreign policy and instead rambled on and off course about racial politics, ethnic identity, and historical hegemony. So in short -- racism and antiquated modes of thought on races and ethnicities? Alive and well in Cuba. Cogent, cohesive, and/or comprehensive foreign policy? I’m sorry, what? Can you spell that? Sigh. Depressing, to say the least, irksome and uncomfortable to say more.

Afterwards we had a nice little graduation where all the ISRI heads came and congratulated us before giving us our diplomas (I’m certificado now! Woohoo! (That’s good for one free roll in the hay, right? :)) and Cuba libres or straight anejo especial (straight aged rum). Apparently I uttered the phrase of the day when I took a sip of my ice cold libre and sighed, "Cuba is free and it...tastes...GOOD!" (People were laughing their asses off for that one. It was hot as balls and I was just so thirsty it kind of came out. It did taste gooooood, though. Ah......) After that I went to the last major flea market in Havana for a shopping marathon. I was seriously a machine -- a bargain-finding, bartering MACHINE! I got two sexy dresses, two bags (purses), a guayabera, eight cigar box coasters, a coco taxi statuette, and two Cohibas for 75 bucks. It was great. In all I got V, my sis, Greg, my nephew, brother-in-law, and myself taken care of lickety split. Woo! I was (am) pretty proud. I can't wait to give them to you! Yay!

After that I gave out a goodie bag of soap and clothes to Taty, one of my amigos, have a big dinner at the hotel (pescado asado, moro, y flan), smoke one last cigar and imbibe one last mojito on the deck of the Nacional, and then turn in. Our blitzkrieg of the provinces begins early tomorrow and I’m itching to start. It should be fun and the sooner I begin, the sooner I get back to V! Yay!!! I can't wait. I can taste going to the airport. I’m going to be jumping around until I get back to the States and V for sure. Bueno. Hasta manans.