Our Life in Cuba

Cuba is relentlessly surprising and confusing. This whole week has been a strange string of events. On Tuesday, our friend Geovanis took us to a rally for the Isreali/Palestinian conflict. It was really interesting to get a look at Cuba’s stance in the conflict and hear what they said about the United States. It took place on the steps of Havana University so there were a lot of students, but there were people of all different ages and backgrounds. There was also a very noticeable row of soldiers all dutifully holding Cuban flags. People made speeches, performed songs, and made other presentations. It was really great to be able to see a political rally while here in Cuba to see how they are responding to world affairs. It was interesting, however, that the atmosphere was more pro-Cuba than really reacting to the events.
The next almost surreal event was on Thursday night when we went out with half the national water polo team. The whole night as we walked around surrounded by seven incredibly beautiful, stylish, tall guys with amazing bodies, I felt like I was most certainly in another dimension. There was no way that I was standing six inches away from and talking to a man who looks like an even more handsome version of Taye Diggs. Just no way. But somehow it was true and the best part is that these gorgeous men are actually nice, making it seem more unreal but more enjoyable. So now we’re friends with the water polo team. Well, yeah, they're pretty much our boyfriends, I'm not sure it's possible for single Cuban men to be just friends with foreign single women. From the beginning of the night it was like the guys chose which girl they wanted and then pursued her. We all ended up having a good time and could not surpress our glee when they agreed to a photoshoot...we all wanted proof that we weren't actually dreaming.
The next day we were supposed to go out with our other group of friends when something really sketchy happened. We were all talking outside of our building, planning where to go when a group of about ten unknown men walked up to the guys we were with. They asked them some questions and then our friends left around the corner saying wait a minute and disappeared. They never came back. All of us were pretty angry because we had just been ditched and had no idea what was going on. We thought maybe it was going to be a fight or maybe a drug deal or something else really sketchy. We convinced ourselves that in Cuba we are not going to be able to trust anyone if we had thought these guys were trustworthy and then they did something awful like just leave us. In the morning, I went to talk to them and got the explanation. Apparently, the unknown guys were police. They had come up to our friends for some reason, it could be a number of things but because Cuba is so complicated it is hard to pinpoint exactly. They said that it was because they are black, which is most likely at least partly true. I also think that part of it is because the police get suspicious of Cubans being with foreigners, but either way they were taken to jail where they had to stay the night and then were let go in the morning. I could not believe that something like that would be possible but apparently in Cuba almost anything is possible. We had another encounter with the police when we were hanging out with the water polo guys and the police asked the two black guys for their IDs, but didn’t ask the white Cuban for his. They said it happens a lot in Cuba and they never usually have problems because they are on the national team. It’s crazy that there can be that kind of racism and profiling. I still do not completely understand the situation. I have a feeling I never will.