El Cuerno de la Abundancia...de helado?

What better combination on a warm day but ice cream and a movie? José, Johandy, Rubén, Sonya, Emma and I headed to the theater to catch an afternoon showing of the Cuban film, El Cuerno de la Abundancia for 2 moneda. As we were walking down the street to catch a cab to the theater, José was explaining that there are a lot of cops in the area and that if they give us a hard time to tell them that we know each other and are friends so that they will leave us alone. Mid-conversation, a cop car pulls up to us and two cops get out, asking the boys for their IDs and questioning us. The boys explained everything and I said we were all friends, and finally they let us go. There were no problems to make them give us a hard
time, it was only that they are black and we are foreigners. These little run-ins with the cops got old quickly. I saw times when police would arrest someone for no other apparent reason other than their skin color, and sometimes if they were with foreigners. This rule to keep Cubans and foreigners is partly to keep foreigners safe but is mostly to prevent Cubans from learning about life outside of the country. The other times, it was blatant racism.
We made it with no other obstacles to the movie theater. We had some time to kill before the movie started so we headed across the street to the national institution known as Coppelia ice cream. This was my first Coppelia experience and it was confusing then, but it never ended up making sense to me. We waited in a line seemingly leading to nowhere by the metal white fence for about ten minutes before the girls went exploring only to find that we could head right upstairs to get helado de fresa. You never get a lot of options at Coppelia, you basically get what flavor is available that day, and we got strawberry. For about 30 cents we got three scoops of ice cream and three biscuits. Afterwards we headed over to the movie theater where we waited in line by a popcorn vendor, a crazy nut seller, and a man selling worn, well-read books on the Revolution and José Martí, until we made it into the theater. It was a huge place with about 200 seats or so and with the grandness of a Broadway theater. The movie was really good even though I didn’t understand the majority of what was said and missed most of the jokes. It was really interesting to see a modern Cuban film after seeing many older ones in class. It was funny and very entertaining and the perfect way to pass the afternoon.