Wed, 21 May 2003 15:39:40 -0700 (PDT)
Day number 9

Last night I went to a show called ¨Tropicana¨, which is basically like a vegas style dancing show with a kick-ass Johnny Carson-styleof Big Band backing it up. It has the best dancers and musicians in all of cuba, and it was definitley worth checking out. Especially if you like seeing women prance around half-naked. It also had some circ-du-sole aspects to the show. The music that they played along with the show ranged from big-band jazz, to cuban type salsa, to african rythims and singing. One funny thing about the show was the main announcer guy who says the typical ¨welcome to our show in cuba¨ etc. stuff ... it was completley obvious that he had no idea what he was really saying, and had just phonetically memorized the words, at the end of the show it sounded something like ¨tha-hank-u fff-o-re co-mm-ng to or shh-o¨. The cost was $85, and was obviously only attended by Tourists as no Cuban could afford such a price. That price included dinner (which was nothing special), and 26oz bottle of rum for the group of 5 that I was part of, and a personal small bottle of champagne. I think that I drank at least half the bottle of rum on my own, as some of the people that I was with weren´t drinking at all. After the show, I ended up going to one club, and then another until about 5am. I woke up for my class at 8:00, and was still pretty wasted. The owner of the house was (Onelio) was lauguing at me as I stumbled around the kitchen. I think that I sobered up about half way through the class. I basically slept the afternoon away, and I have a guitar lesson (for two hours) that starts in about an hour. There is really not enough time in the day to get everything done that I want to do.

Did I mention about the dogs in street here. Basically, like every other latin-american country that I have been in, there are wild dogs on every street. They are not really wild in the sense that they seem friendly, but they are all obviously infected with some sort of skin-parasite that makes some of their hair fall out. Some of them are actually sort of adopted by people in the sense that some people will feed certian dogs. The other day, I was sitting on a stip by the street eating my lunch (which was rice&beans, and some meat on top) with my bare hands because I didn´t have a utensil. There was a dog sitting beside me, which I decided to feed some of my meal to. Well, it turned out that the dog was really sort of adopted by the people in the house that I was sitting in front of, and they came out and we started up a brief conversation. Their first concern was that the dog didn´t ¨steal¨¨ any of my food. After I made it clear that I fed the dog willingly, they gave me a plastic spoon so that I wouldn´t have to always eat with my bare hands ... I was very grateful for that, and I have saved the plastic spoon for my other (lunch-time) meals.

Oh yeah, the girl who got most seriously injured in the car accident (Alexa) was out with us last night. She has stitches on her forehead, and here arm is in some sort of sling, as there may have been some tendon damage to one of her fingers. Other than that, she seems pretty well, and was in good spirits.