Some noticings…

So now that it’s October 1 and I’ve officially seen a month of Sundays in Havana, here’s a list of things I’ve noticed about this city, in no particular order:

• Havana is evidently run by small dogs and street cats. They’re EVERYwhere, and sometimes you’ll see a chicken on the side of the street as well. These furry friends range from mangy and sort of zombie-esque to beautifully coiffed lap dogs; seemingly operating on their own system and rarely aggressive. Last night, my friend and I had a little black dog accompany us all the way to our doorstep (literally) after leaving a bar in our neighborhood. I’ll try to get a few photos next time, especially if we see another litter of kittens!!!
• I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this (and I’m not sure I am), but there’s a very real military//police presence in the city. On more than one night, I’ve seen what looks like soldiers in training lined up in the dark with a superior patrolling to make sure they’re doing what they should be (it’s not entirely clear what that is, however). Now that I think about it, it’s likely part of the mandatory service that young men have to do here, but either way, it was certainly surprising the first time I saw it. Interestingly, I didn’t really notice how many cops there were until my friend and I were stopped one night, and all of the sudden I feel like they’re everywhere. We had just gotten out of a máquina (more on those later) and were walking back to our house when a young male cop asked us for our ID’s. We haven’t gotten our Cuban ID cards, or carnets, yet, so we didn’t have anything to show him. Luckily, we were able to explain our way out of the situation, but I had never before been approached to prove that I was allowed to be in a certain place. Now I notice that there are police and guards and men with rifles all over the place, especially in our neighborhood where a lot of embassies are.
• The cafeterías are amazing and we’re all plotting on how to bring them back to the States. They’re effectively fast-food restaurants, only they’re usually tiny (standing room only kind of thing) and often run out of people’s houses. The food is super cheap (like a lot of other stuff here if you’re working in moneda nacional, the national currency, instead of CUCs, the convertible currency for the tourism industry), and generally pretty good. It’s almost always fresh, coming from home kitchens, and while the food can take a while sometimes, people will stop for a soda or juice and be in and out in literally 2 minutes. My favorite things at the cafeterías I frequent: una comida with huevos fritos, AKA a plate with two fried eggs, rice & beans, yellow sweet potatoes, avocado, and sort of cabbage salad; churros filled with condensed milk dulce de leche; and pizza with no cheese, AKA extra fluffy flatbreads!
• Aside from ropa vieja (effectively pulled pork, but made of beef), my favorite snack I’ve found is mani molido, or these wonderful peanut bars. As far as I can tell, they’re just ground up peanuts (mani), milk, and sugar and they range from fudge-y to cookie dough-esque in texture. So good! Also offers a nice alternative for a  quick snack instead of more bread. So far, the desserts I’ve tried that they sell on the streets or in cafeterías have been the most consistently delectable food I’ve found here.
• One of the first things I noticed walking around Havana was the old American cars rolling through the streets. In every color, make, and model, ‘50s vehicles function as fixed-route cabs that’ll take you along two main thoroughfares for less than $0.50. Crazy and awesome and sometimes painful when the driver doesn’t successfully swerve around one of the million giant potholes in the street.
• Another thing that caught my attention immediately was the beautiful wrought-iron gates throughout the city. Whether cordoning off the stately houses in our neighborhood or cascaded with plants on balconies in Centro Habana, these gates are everywhere and come in what seems like infinite variations. From heart-shaped trellises to straight bars with tiny pyramids at the top, I’ve probably taken more photos of gates than anything else here. (They may have also inspired my next tattoo idea!)
• As soon as we left the airport, we saw revolution “propaganda” on billboards where you’d find ads for websites, cell phones, or drinks in the States. They range from short phrases to murals memorializing certain treks of the revolutionary battles, and the images of Che Guevarra, Fidel Castro, and especially Jose Martí (the literary leader of the first Cuban revolution against Spanish colonialism) are ubiquitous. I’ve also found that there’s an emphasis on the idea that the Revolution is still happening (the newspapers say 55^th year of the Revolution at the top, right next to the price and the issue number), and that the revolution is for and by young people. I’ll have to do a whole separate post on this at some point, it’s really interesting and I feel like I learn something new about it every day.
• Finally, from before we even got here, Suzanne, our program director, kept telling us that if we wanted to do something, we would just have to ask the appropriate people to see about making it happen. I have 100% found this to be the case; one girl on my program was set up to do an ethnographic project with a big name professor here because she went to the center of study he works at and waited for 2 hours to chat with him. Similarly, a friend of mine here was interested in taking cooking classes and found something of a culinary institute in our neighborhood that we just stopped in one day to inquire about what our options might be. After a few weeks of back and forth and trying to get in contact with the woman we were told to speak with (who’s evidently the Vice-President of the Federation of Culinary Associations of Cuba), we’re set up to take a Cuban cuisine course every Tuesday and will leave with a certificate and tons of recipes to take home!

There’s so much more I could write about, and a lot of this took more explanation that I expected it to, but here’s a little list of stuff that’s stuck out to me so far. Literally every day there’s something noteworthy I could add to this list, so I’ll start collecting observations for the next post like this. Also, that photo post is still on the way!