Sat, 17 May 2003 13:07:49 -0700 (PDT)
First week in Cuba

Well, I have been here a week, and I think that I am really improving my spanish. With private lessons, I learn in one day, what would normally take a week to learn in a classroom with other students. I´ll be surprised if I am not fluent in spanish by the end of August.

My guitar teacher is amazing, and has played in cuban groups that have toured all around the world. I am learning a shit-load from him, and I think that my guitar abilities are improving pretty quickley.

I have gone out every night here, and am starting to get pretty exhausted. I think one of these days, I am going to stay in and study (one day). The nightlife here is OK, but it is really nothing special ... I´d say, most other latin american countries like Mexico, Argentina, and Chile have better night life.

Here in Cuba, the average wage is apparently $25 per month ... The result is that some people who go to a night-club and talk with a tourist all night, and ask for $2 at the end of the night to take a cab home are actually earning more than a medical doctor, and that is the ones who just talk ... . They have a special name for the (majority of) girls here in cuba, which is "jinetera" which lieterally translated means "horse-rider", and you can probably guess why they are called that. Personally, I find it pretty repulsive to see Fat old German men with 20 year old chicas.

Twice now I have gone out with a large group of people, and both times the bill mysteriously had about $10 more than what we actually ordered. It seems that they have a problem counting properly here. The first time, they accidently added 4 beers onto our bill that only had 8 beers on it. Of course we argued and got it fixed. Then last night, we went out, and had a few drinks that should have cost $14, and the bill came with $24 on it. After looking at the bill, and noticing a mysterious $10 at the top, I had to argue with the guy, at which point he said the $10 at the top was the date ... so I asked why it was added into the total, he pretended that even without the 10 added in that the bill should have came to $24 ... after that they changed their story to be that it was our table number, and they accidently added 10 into the bill because the table number was at the top of the bill. I was super pissed off, and after arguing pretty forcefully with the guy, they finally started apologizing, and said it was an "accident".

Everyone here wants a dollar for everything. You walk down the street, and everybody wants to know where you are from, but really they just want to start a conversation so they can ask you for a dollar.

Anyway, I gotta go, because there is a live music show starting right away.