Books and Bowling

This weekend has been pretty eventful. We did a lot of things and had a lot of fun with our friends. We went on a field trip to a Maternity Ward in Nuevo Vedado. It was set up eight years ago to give women with pregnancy complications a place to stay where they can get proper treatment and care for their complications. Most of the women are younger and don’t have the means to take care of themselves at home. It was good to see that there is this option for mothers and that they are in a small way working on improving the birth rates and rates of low birth weights and other birth complications by providing a healthier situation prior to birth. It was really interesting to see this program and speak to some of the young mothers who are staying at the ward.

After the visit, we headed to El Morro to buy some books. Every year there is a book fair held at El Morro, the old fort and lighthouse on the city’s coast. It is a great place to hold a book fair with all the open rooms of the old fort. I wasn’t sure what to expect of the fair, how big it would be, what type of things would be there, how many people would be there, and I was pretty surprised by what I saw. When we got out of the cab near the parking lot, there were a dozen kiosks set up with hot dogs, ice cream, and refrescos. We continued up the stone pathway to the entrance of the fort. There were a lot of people walking around with bags full of books, kids with ice cream cones and toys, and people just looking around. The little food booths reminded me of American fairs, the only difference being the food choices. The rooms were full of books, Cuban, Latin American, and of all different genres. We all left with bags full of books and our wallets only about 5 CUC lighter. There was about six of us and in order to save 5 CUC we all convinced a taxi driver to let us all go in one taxi. So all six of us piled into the tiny car, and zipped down the Malecon to the tunes of blasting dance music.
Friday night after we played soccer with the boys we decided to go bowling. We were all excited to hear that there was bowling in Cuba and also very curious to see what that would be like. It was, of course, very different, but was a very good concept. It was at a hotel in the bar and game room. Right next to the bar were two lanes for ten pin bowling. So you can bowl, drink, dance, and play pool all in one place. It was great. It was my first time ten pin bowling and I almost injured a couple people on my first turn but other than that I did okay.