More from the film festival

Warning: minor spoilers

Last night I saw two American (okay, one was Canadian, but that’s basically the same thing) films at the Cuban film festival. The first was Courting Condi, a comedo-tragic-musical-documentary about this really ugly fat white guy who was supposedly in love with Condaleeza Rice and on a mission to win her heart. He starts to learn about her life, taking a road trip through all of her once homes, and writing cheesy love-song music videos, I think he called them ‘love discs’ (instead of love letters or love songs, you know, play on technology, although discs are antiquated now) that he would send to her. It goes through her life story, how she grew up in pre-civil rights Birmingham, wanted to be a concert pianist, etc. The most interesting part of all of this was how she developed (or rather, had naturally assumed) a philosophy of always looking towards the future, never towards the past, no regret, I think it video-quoted her saying ‘I don’t believe in self-reflection.’ Oh, and another interesting part was that she might still be a virgin at the ripe young age of 55! I guess that would explain a lot of her success, all that sexual frustration channeled into hard work, although she seemed to be pretty cozy with W. Of course, the documentary had to end with a half-hour Condi-bash session, in which the ‘love-discs’ became an angry rock metal you betrayed/fooled me you bitch song. Entertaining, a little weird and original, but also a little too predictable.

The second movie I saw was The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a Canadian film set in the UK with the late Heath Ledger (his last film, he died in the middle of it), set to open officially in theatres across the world this Christmas (yes, I did see a major feature film before it came out in the USA). This was also a very strange film, there were lots of plot elements that were not the easiest to understand, however I would recommend it overall if not just to see Heath Ledger be charming and beautiful one last time and feel sentimental about it. Also, since he died in the middle of shooting, they worked into the story this thing where every time he entered the Imaginarium his face changed, so that Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Ferrell were all in it too, so its pretty loaded with big names and sexy men. That said, if it weren’t for Heath Ledger’s death (resulting in this being his last film and the three other hot shots joining the credits) this movie would probably not be a big deal at all. Other than some interesting imaginative stuff, lots of technological and narrative tricks, contrived symbolism and forced deep religious/good-evil shit, the movie is pretty uncompelling, a silly story about a teenage girl with a weird childhood who just wants to be free to have a normal life and a family, who has two suitors vying for her heart and falls in love one or both of them. The most interesting part was the representation of the devil, who was conniving and a little annoying, and wanted more than anything to just keep playing games. Other than that, however, things were pretty fancy but unexciting. Although now it occurs to me that maybe they decided to drastically change the plot to accommodate Heath Ledger’s death, which might have made it so bad. I guess it was a good choice on their part, because Heath Ledger (and accompanying threesome) will probably make them more money than a decent/comprehensible/unbanal storyline would have. Also, most people will probably be too impressed by all the confusing plot turns, imaginative computer manipulation, and fantastical mythical elements to be bothered with the story anyways. Summary: interesting, but not compelling.

Coolest part of the night: when we got to skip the giant line and ushered into theatre through the bustling mob like kings because we had VIP passes. Well, I didn’t have one, but I was holding the hand of a guy who did, so that made me feel a little like a winner.

The Tiradores on Avenida G

While I was away on my hitchhiking trip, one of the American study abroad students got hit by some flying sperm on Avenida G.

 

In the past few weeks, Cuba had started to lose some of its magical socialist utopia vibe. For the majority of the past three months, I constantly gushed about the wonderful things about this country that were so unexpected and backwards from the rest of the world (for ex. Cuba’s two selling points education and healthcare), and one of them was safety. Every time I walked home alone with my laptop on my back at midnight (clearly a muggable foreigner), I marveled at the low crime rates and public safety. In no other capital city in the world would I feel so safe walking alone at night as in Havana.

 

About three weeks ago, this bubble of safety popped a little. One of the girls in our program was robbed at knifepoint a block away from our house. It was 2:30am, she was alone, and there aren’t really streetlights in our area. She didn’t lose too much of great value (except for a Marx-Engels reader!) and was fine, but we were all a little shaken up by the news, and started being more careful about things like that.

 

Other things started to happen too. Another girl got hit by a car on her way to school. (She was bruised but okay). Two girls got roofied at a club (turns out they had willingly accepted drugs, but hadn’t known they were roofies—they were okay too, no worries). Anyways, the point is, although everyone was mostly fine after all these incidents, they happened pretty close to each other in time-space, and it seemed like for a while that crazy things were just happening to the American study abroad students.

 

And then this poor girl got hit by flying sperm on her way to class.

 

Let me explain. There is a big sprawling avenue that leads to the Art and Letters Faculty of the University of Havana called Avenida de los presidentes, or Avenida G. It’s got a big grassy middle section, and there’s a point right before it gets to the university where there’s a rotunda/oval thing with a monument/statue in the middle, and the cars drive around it. By the sidewalk, there are cliffs with trees and buildings growing off of it, about 20 feet tall. This area—where the road curves so it’s hard to see the oncoming cars (and thus dangerous to walk in the street) and the sidewalk comes right to the edge of the cliffs—is staked out by some men who stand behind trees or bushes and masturbate to the women walking by underneath. Often, passing the area, one hears hisses or whistles, and if one is inexperienced enough to turn her head, she will see one of these sick men, grinning at her and yanking their thing.

 

We had known about them for a while, but until the incident with the American girl we always thought they were just sickos who got off in public. Turns out, they have an even more specific aim—their public masturbation is actually a game of target shooting. We told the story to one of the Cuban women who work in our house. She was unsurprised. Apparently most habaneros know about them and their special spot. They’re called “tiradores” (shooters/throwers) and they pay off the cops so that they can play their yank and shoot game in peace.

 

Although I laughed for a week about this, it’s a real threat. Every time I walk to Spanish class and pass that place, I make sure to walk as far from the cliffs as I possibly can, even if it means walking in the middle of the street. For some reason, the idea of getting hit by a car is much more pleasant than that of being hit by some flying sperm.

Alternativos

Last night I went to the first festival of alternative music in Cuba; at a hip hop concert in the Pabellón a week or so ago we had met this guy with a head full of white silvery mohawk/dreads who is an artistic director of concerts and shit, and all into the alternative scene, who told us about it, because he was directing it.

First: alternative music means something different in Cuba than back in the States. It means anything that is not salsa or reggaetón (or merengue or bachata or son or afrocuban/Caribbean in any way). This includes hip hop, rap, rock, emo, metal, reggae, house, electronica. For example, the guy we met at that hip hop concert looked kind of like a punker (he was old too, his hair was naturally white) and we started to talk about music, and he started to trash reggaeton, so I asked him what he thought of the hip hop group that was playing (because in my mind hip hop and reggaeton are similar, both induce a lot of ass-shaking), and he said it was great, you know, alternativo.

Second: the alternative scene is pretty small in Cuba, so all these people hang out in the same crowd. This seems a little incongruous and weird to me (in a positive, kind of funny way, of course) because generally rockers, hip-hoppers, and electronickers give off pretty different vibes, and here they all group themselves together into one—alternativos—and hang out together. Cool, I think, but once the scene gets bigger, it will probably not last. They mostly seem to be unified in their vehement hatred of reggaeton (and indifference to salsa).

Third: Alternativos also call themselves “underground” sometimes. I think this is because 1) they are a little anti-establishment, they have only recently started to be recognized as an art form by the government (the Cuban government is a heavy sponsor of culture and art, and does a surprising wonderful job for a Communist regime), and sometimes the lyrics and messages in music are a little controversial and say bad things about the system; and 2) most of the rest of Cuba is pretty conformist culture-wise, everyone dances salsa and listens to reggaeton/other Latiny islandy things, dresses in a similar style, so these people are pretty anti-conformist too, and you can recognize them with just one look, dreads and afros and random strange articles of clothing worn is a strange way are pretty common.

Anyways this concert was an award ceremony of sorts, for up and coming alternative artists who had submitted works in different categories of alternative music. It was pretty shoddy and put together (it’s Cuba), and there were probably not more than 100 people in the audience, but maybe it was historic (?). Some parts of it were pretty entertaining, at least. My friend’s favorite act was this metal group called Hypnosis who were wearing all red and black and all had long hair down to their butts (blonde or black, one girl had braids that made her look medusa-like) and they kept on head banging very seriously, so that all their hair would cover their face, anyways it looked pretty funny and you could tell they were all really into it and gave it their all. My favorite act was a hiphop/rapper called La Rueda who was this short and skinny little mulatto who had a huge beard and looked a little Arab (maybe because of the beard, maybe because he actually was) and he was also wearing this turban, and his acceptance speech was pretty bomb, and he rapped about discrimination and sabor while hopping around like a maniac, so much that he lost his turban and long dreads down to his butt came tumbling out, swinging around the stage. The best part was that he had two accomplices too, who were all very weird too, turban wearing, jumping around and doing flips and one of them kept on shouting the lyrics in the main guys ears with him (he wasn’t miked, so I can’t imagine it was for anything more than show) and it was just so entertaining because here were these weird guys hopping around the stage like crazy 4 year olds on speed, shouting about people discriminating against other people to a pretty thumping beat.

After the show we went to talk to our white mohawk-dreaded friend and congratulated him, and he was like oh man so many things went wrong and we reassured him that it was great, even though you could obviously tell that things had gone wrong. Yeah alternativos!

Making Bottle

That’s what they call hitchhiking in this country. I guess it makes a little more sense in Spanish—hacer botella—well, grammatically at least.

 

I think the term originates from back when people used to have bottles in their cars for hitchhikers to put tips in. Haciendo or cogiendo botella in Cuba is a legitimate, government sponsored mode of transportation, because there is generally a shortage of transportation in this country, and extra space not being used in cars seems like a good thing to take advantage of. Although many people just stand on the side of the road holding out their hands or some small bills (usually no more than $1), outside of every major city there is an “amarillo” stand, where guys in yellow outfits run out into the middle of the highway and hold out cardboard signs that say PARE (stop), and shuffle people into cars/trucks/buses based on destination. I say it is government sponsored because government owned vehicles are required by law to stop and take travelers free of charge if they have the space (this does not always happen, bribes happen for line cutting and things like that).

 

Anyways, the reason I’m saying all this stuff about traveling in bottle is that I did it this weekend with two friends, we hitchhiked Cuban style all the way from Havana to the beautiful cities of Santa Clara and Cienfuegos in the center of the island and back—about 600 kilometers total, all for less than $2 each (it could have been less, too, but we were generous).

 

This is what happened:

 

Asked people how to get to an Amarillo stop in Havana. Got there, bumbled around a little stupidly (our first time!). Waited in the hot hot sun, I thought about how I should have packed my spf65 sunscreen instead of the 15.

 

Finally, after an hour or two of tired, impatient waiting (we’d been trying to get out of Havana for about 4 hours now) we hopped onto a bus that was going in the general direction we wanted to go. We got dropped off under a bridge about half an hour later, still closer to Havana than anything else. Waited. The good thing, though, was that there were a lot of Cubans with us in the same position, and though they weren’t ecstatic about all the cars driving past without stopping they didn’t seem too perturbed or antsy about the situation. I start to climb up the bridge to pass the time, and then lo and behold, just as I climb down, a truck stops, and the Cuban friend we made while waiting is waving frantically at us to get on. I climb on, or rather, I step on the wheel and then some men who are already up pull me over the side of the truck (it was pretty tall, and there were no foot holds), and then watch as my friend who is halfway up gets thrown off as the truck starts to drive away. Luckily, everyone starts to scream “Espérate!” so the truck stops again and then he gets on.

 

Our first camioneta! This is an open backed truck, you know, the old kind that normally carries boxes of things to sell. Ours had apparently been transporting large amounts of papaya before the humans got on, because the floor was covered in slippery black seeds and red pulp. Anyways, even though we couldn’t sit, my friend had almost died, I was getting severely sun/wind burned, and the truck looked like it was one pothole away from falling into pieces (not to mention a few oxygen particles away from crumbling), we felt like the kings of the world, because there we were, cruising down the national highway with all these Cubans on this tall truck, the wind blowing our hair in this majestic way, definitively leaving Havana for real, finally. I had seen something like this in “Guantanamera,” a Cuban movie, and thought it was pretty novel, and now there I was, doing it myself. I felt pretty cool.

 

Got dropped off at Jaguey, had dinner. In Jaguey there were tons of Chinese people (from China, a pretty rare sight in Cuba based on all the stares I get in the streets) for some reason (we walked into a restaurant and literally everyone inside was Chinese, and I burst out laughing then scuttled away) and I awkwardly avoided them. For some reason, my gutsiness turns off whenever I’m faced with large groups of Asians. I need to work on that.

 

Went to the side of the highway to try to get to Cienfuegos. By that time, it was dark, and we were a little worried. Luckily, however, everyone was stopping (this didn’t happen the other time) which was a good sign, even though no one wanted to go to Cienfuegos. Finally, we hopped onto a truck going to Santa Clara, which is a big city close to Cienfuegos that we considered going to, but didn’t seem as cool.

 

The second camioneta ride was one of the best parts of the entire trip. It was pitch black by the time we got on, and the Cuban national highway doesn’t have lights on it, so it was really really black. I used my backpack as a pillow and leaned back (no papaya gunk this time, just a lot of dirt). The sky was beautiful, llenísima de estrellas, with a little bright sliver of moon. I had never seen so many stars in my life. There were also some navy officers on the truck, and their outfits were billowing romantically in the wind.

 

Santa Clara: saw the Che museum and mausoleum. Rode in our first peso-horse carriage, and thought it was novel, but the next day we took two more. Like other things that seem novel, it was just one of those things about transportation that are pretty normal in Cuba.

 

Went to Cienfuegos. Indulged in having money and dished out $5 each for a taxi over there, but it was worth it, I think, because we got there in probably 1/5 of the time it would have taken. Also, in the United States, sometimes I dish out $5 for Boloco burritos.

 

Cienfuegos: extremely clean and orderly and pretty and nice. Felt not like Cuba, but somewhere else in Latin America, except for things were extraordinarily cheap. We got an illegal casa particular for $20 for the three of us, which was a great deal, especially because usually they make 3 people get two rooms. We did have to sleep 3 on a bed, however, which was not so nice. Luckily, went to a club that night and didn’t sleep too much. The club felt extremely un-Cuban as well, filled with people who looked like they had money, and no one was trying to hustle us. The best part of Cienfuegos was when we climbed up to this mirador which was a beautiful old crumbling mansion with a really tall tower and you could see the entire city and bay and it was so beautiful it felt like the entire trip was worth it just for being able to run around up there. Also there was a time when we climbed to the roof of our casa at night and sat up there talking, which was nice too.

 

Bottled our way back. Same old camioneta and Amarillo shit, even stopped in Jaguey for lunch again (ate at the same place, it was the only one with food), saw and avoided some Asians, got back to Havana, tanned, dirty, bruised, but alive and happy, and feeling pretty happy about ourselves.

Mierda / life is beautiful

The dogs in this town are playing games with me. I was walking to the hotel and I hear this pitter patter behind me and then I think, maybe there’s someone robbing me right now—I was wearing a backpack, on my back—but I turn around and there’s no one there, except for this little dirty blondish stray, one of the scruffy bearded looking ones that kind of look like my philosophy professor. And it kept on following me all the way to the hotel—I even turned in a circle to evade it, when I noticed for the second time that it was still there, but it followed me in circle, and that’s when I knew for sure.

Lately they’ve been barking a lot too, and fighting in the streets, so that everywhere I go I’m trying to avoid them. Now when I think of the old cobblestone street outside my house—with stones sticking in and out of it, like a seismic wave had gone through it or something—I see the street, and the guard at the corner of the Chinese embassy sitting in his little box, and black and brown and yellow dogs, sprawled sleeping on the street or going at each other. I’ve never been a dog person, but these dogs are especially ugly, maybe because they’re strays and maybe because they have no food. Anyways, they’ve been really vocal and present lately, so I’m thinking that maybe its mating season, or maybe a hurricane is coming. The lady with the trunk legs and the box has been appearing a lot too, which is also a little freaky.

I might have also gotten myself into a lot of shit, which seems to happen a lot on Thursdays. In the morning I met with my brilliant philosophy professor (the one the dog resembled), who showed, unlike last Thursday when he stood me up and I ended up in a Cuban Pentecostal service where I witnessed something really terrifying—maybe people speaking in tongues, or possession, or something—anyways the point is that he talked to me for about an hour and half about Kant and Hegel and other shit like that, and I think I presented myself as even more precocious than I actually am, and more able as well. I’m meeting with him again next week, and he is going to bring me a list of books for me to read and then talk to him about with. I think its going to be like a semi-tutorial. So all of this is super cool, because he is an absolutely brilliant man—how many times have I said this now?—but the thing is I haven’t even read all the reading for his class yet, because its social theory in Spanish, and there’s a lot of it, and so how in the world am I supposed to read more on top of that? Ay mierda, am I in Cuba to learn and think, to meet Cubans, to find love, to dance salsa, or what? I wish I could do all of them, but they days aren’t long enough, and the nights are not either. Cuba has done this thing to me where I just let things happen, which is a wonderful feeling, because I don’t feel caged, because its different and kind of lovely and traipsing, but akdf;oaishf;oih;ewrk!

EL CONCIERTO PAZ SIN FRONTERAS

Summary: Juanes, Orishas, Van Van, Olga Cañon and other famous Latino artists; plaza de la revolución; Havana, Cuba; over 1 million people; 9.20.09, 2-7pm; sunburn and tired feet

And I was there! 8 hours standing in the scorching sun under the inspiring gazes of Che and José Martí, because I’m a sucker for collective effervescence. Proof:

people claiming their place and waiting for the concert in the scorching noon sun-- monumento josé martí looming in the background

Waiting under our umbrellas for 2 hours before the concert started

people waving to the camera

and it finally starts! its almost impossible to see anything over all the umbrellas, so people climb onto shoulders

triple shoulder totem - three people and an umbrella

slow song

Juanes finally performs

che in the setting sun

plaza de la revolucion post concert

Homesick

I am sick again, boo. How I managed to get a cough in this suffocating heat is beyond me; I guess I just have mad abilities.

Anyways, this whole being sick thing has made me miss some things about America. A few days ago, an economist came to talk to us as part of a seminar series, and kept on telling us about how Cuba’s economic problems are not about money, but supply of goods and productivity. I am realizing this more and more with every passing day. Even though I have the money to splurge on goods that I might want (for example, vegetables, fruits, food that isn’t greasy, cough syrup, ginger, honey, tea), these things are either non-existent in the country, or a hassle to find. Last time I went out looking for a specific thing (face towel), it took me about a week to find it. Of course, I wasn’t searching every second of that week, but with the scorching sun and crowded public transport, working up the energy to go out and look is a hurdle in and of itself.

So maybe I could find some mini green peppers or white tomatoes at the agro 5 blocks away, but in my slightly grumpy sick state, I can’t get the ganas to walk over there and look. Furthermore, going to that agro is extra stressful because it is the worst place for catcalling—every time I go there are yells of “China” from all directions, vendors and buyers both, so that I must maneuver the stands ciega, sorda, muda like the Shakira song, which makes me feel both uncomfortable and bitchy. No, the task of leaving the house into the suffocating, whistle-filled streets is a daunting one indeed.

This is what I would like to do: drive to the grocery store, buy some tea, ginger, and a salad, or chicken noodle soup, some robitussin, crawl into bed with a blanket and two or three pillows, and watch Friends on Youtube. I’d like to do this without walking through groups of men who stop their conversations to stare and say things in Japanese to me, without soaking my Tshirt through with sweat, and without worrying about putting SPF 60 sunscreen on the back of my neck.

Anyways, this post has turned into a major bitch-session, which makes everything sound worse than it really is. I still love Cuba, and am very happy to be here. I’m just a little annoyed that I’m sick, and a little bitter that mango season is over, because mangoes were an important source of happiness.

FIDEL BLOCKS SKYPE

And such is life in Cuba. One day, I sign on successfully onto Skype, and email my parents to meet me on Skype the next day at 5. The next day at 5, for half an hour I fail to connect, wasting 3 precious dollars of internet. A week later, I hear through the grapevine that Skype, and all other international internet telecommunication, has been officially blocked by the Cuban government. Now, the only way to hear the voices of my friends and family is to call by phone, which costs $3 a minute (even more ridiculous than internet).  I guess I will just wait 4 months.

Though scarily anticlimactic that quiet Sunday afternoon I first arrived, I have now realized that Cuba is the realization of my anachronistic and naïve childhood utopia—a culturally preserved, insulated island, locked by the soft and terrible waves of la mar and the US embargo, undistorted by the hurtling marathon of technology and telecommunication in the information age. I can’t skype my family, and I have to use a paper Spanish-English dictionary, but I can eat mangos every day, I can walk slowly and be late to everything (except class), I can watch TV without being bombarded by advertisements, I can read Marx leisurely in the sun. I am liberated from internet addiction: from reading about the world’s biggest potato or learning how to spell all the countries of Africa, not because I want to, but because it is better than tearing myself away from the digitally accessible world and facing the much less manageable present reality. I am forced into life—tangible life, flesh and concrete, salt and sun—because it is made so much harder here to hide in images of life without Youtube and Google.

But Cuba is not a utopia, because though Cuban people can live in Cuba and Cuba only, Cuba must live in the world. Mangos are plentiful, but other food is not.  Communicating with the outside world is expensive and difficult. There is a shortage of transportation. There is a shortage of toilet paper. There is a shortage of many other things too. There are multiple springs sticking out of my mattress, my toilet only flushes half of the time, and my bedroom light stopped working. The sun is unbearably hot, my classrooms are unairconditioned and have broken chairs and no chalk, my professors are underpaid and my textbooks are unpublished or impossible to find. Daily life is not convenient—sometimes, it is difficult. Moreover, this is my experience as a rich American. What must Cubans—who have monthly salaries of at most $40—feel about living in their Caribbean socialist utopia?

But all the rum and salsa must have gotten to my head. I am rambling. Here are some pictures, if they load.

9.11.09 (That’s when I wrote it, posting a little late due to awful internet)

Intro–PERÚ

Dog in random Limeñan street

Bueno, como la última vez que escribí estuve demasiada cansada, ahorita voy a hacer un poquito de Introduction to this blog.

Well, basically I am writing a blog because my memory is terrible, and I am doing cool things that I want to remember. Also synthesis is always good or whatever, and as I have decided after a grueling internal battle not to suppress the exhibitionist inside me, I’m putting it online.

So. the cool things I will be doing/am already doing are frolicking in PERU, or Lima, to be more exact. I’m here for a couple of months doing a pasantía, or internship with Aprendo Contigo, an organization of hospital classrooms which works to bring normality into the lives of long-term hospitalized children. Yes, I know, how altruistic of me. Of course, I am also living practically for free for this time, minus travel to places like Macchu Picchu of course, pero de verdad es una oportunidad bueníssima para mí.

The real real reason I am in Peru is para mejorar mi castellano, para que cuando vaya a Cuba el próximo semestre, no voy a ser completamente horrible. Basically, in two months I’m going to Cuba to study at la Universidad de la Habana until diciembre, and as Cuban Spanish is notoriously difficult to understand, I wanted practice. Ya. But really, now that I’m in Perú I love it, my roommate Emily, how wise she is, was right, I am falling in love with the country, the food, the people, todos.

My flight to Lima was pretty okay, except for the fact that it was awful, because I had to do seat request because the airline oversold, and I almost didn’t have a seat on the plane to Lima, and because it was the second day of the worst period of my life, and there were literally buckets of blood gushing from my vagina, so that by the end of the day despite changing tampons and pantiliners as frequently as possible on an international flight my panties and jeans had big embarrassing splotches of crimson, and because I arrived in Lima at like midnight, and went to bed at 2:30 and had to wake up at seven the next day and then walk all over Lima until like 8 at night and BUENO–la cosa es que estuve y todavía estoy MUY cansada.

So, that was Day 0 in a nutshell, and now onto day 1 in a nutshell. Mi familia peruana es bueníssima, Alicia, mi mamá peruana, is the sweetest thing in the world, and peruvians love kissing, and honestly, being a somewhat naturally over- affectionate (or perhaps affection-starved) person, I kind of like this custom. So we met at la Universidad de Pacifico at 9, with Charo, Patricia, y Alejandra, the coordinator people. In the morning we had a basic, general orientation about stuff, and then a little dance show of traditional coastal, sierra, y selva danzas, and then lunch, my first real peruvian meal, que fue riquíssima. We had causa con pollo, pollo arroz y verduras, un postre de arroz con leche y algo morada, y a peruvian drink call chicha morada, which is made of purple corn. Then, we went on a mini city tour del centro de Lima, in the historic, old center with all the pretty colonial buildings and whatnot. We saw the plaza mayor, churches, catacombas (many bones, very sinister and creepy), and etc. The highlight of the day were las escobas de San Martín–a peruvian Saint of brooms. Outside the church in which his relics (including a skull) lay, there was a small booth selling various little religious items and among them were these tiny brooms the size of my index finger, little charms to protect the bearer. And when I saw them I was taken a little off guard, and I started feeling like I should feel sentimental or sad, because those were the same little brooms that my grandfather once made through some weird internet thing when he lived in the United States. And I remember thinking at the time, why in the world was he making tiny little brooms, who would ever want them, but there they were, in front of my eyes, ten years later. And then I started thinking about how I would write in my blog that I went to Peru chasing after some nebulous future, and unexpectedly discovered a piece of my past, but now I realize that that sounds kind of cheesy and personal-statement-y. Anyways, it was a distinct moment, the most distinct  moment of the day. My grandfather has been dead for a while now, by the way.

As for other things of the day, bueno, I ran into a dressed dog in the middle of the street, very randomly, and took a picture that I like of some kids feeding pigeons (palomas) in San Francisco’s Church/square thing, where there are thousands of pigeons because San Francisco was the protector of animals.

After the city tour, we got dropped off at Larcomar, and then Charo walked us back to our casas, which were pretty close, but since the road was new and we were exhausted, seemed like a really long time. Then I ate a palta, or avocado, with un pancito (little bread) for dinner, and went to bed.