What you didn't want to know about TD...in 10 words or less: Day 2...pesos, salsa and words

I visited Papa's house today!

(This was done in Havana on day 2, but could not be posted due to lack of wifi.)

Time seems to run all together. So there is no order to this.

Hemingway's villa. Located outside of Havana, this is a quiet, peaceful spot. We could not go in the house, but we rang the bell ( a tradition) and looked in the windows.

One member of our group told me we were lucky. The house has been closed for renovations. They have done a complete reprinting, landscaping, fixing broken concrete walkways, cleaned the pool and spruced up the place a lot.

Why? Seems a certain US president is coming to town.

That was a theme that played out in several stops. People said you can tell where Obama is going by all the painting, clean up, patching and other repairs that is being done.

We have to move to another hotel on Friday because the state wants to house journalists and the president's party here....so we are being evicted. Supposedly some group tours have been cancelled altogether because of the crowds expected next week.

We have not met a young person who is not going to the free Rolling Stones concert. They are predicting 200,000 for the show, according to our tour guide Rosalen Gonzales.

What else today?

We met a local dance group. They performed for about an hour, then taught us basic salsa dance moves. Then members of the troupe paired up with us to dance.

I pity the young girl who got me! I did not step on her feet, but I could not keep up the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 routine.

I believe her name was Jeraldine...or something like that.

Since this is a people to people exchange, we had lunch with them and she was my "partner." She was 28, if I remember, and I asked her if she had gone to university and what she did as her civil service after university.

She said, "I did not go to university. I have two children. It's complicated."

Her children are 8 and 4, which means she had her first child at about 20.

She makes 20 CUCs a week there.

OK, I'll try to explain. Cuba has two currencies: the Cuban Peso and the Convertible Peso. The Convertible Peso, also called CUCs (which sounds like cooks) , are worth a different amount. Tourists use these. So when I buy something, I pay in CUCs, but when the tour guide goes to the store, she pays in pesos.

I think the exchange rate is something like 25 pesos to one CUC.

After lunch we walked through Old Havana. The streets were amazing.

Right next to a beautiful building was a shell of a house. Apartment houses that once were beautiful are now a mess. Streets need repair, sidewalks are in disrepair. The country's infrastructure will not handle the expected crowds of tourists once restrictions are lifted.

We visited the offices of OnCuba, a magazine that is a partnership with a Cuban American in Florida. He started this private operation a few years ago.

The Cuban government does not censor what they write, but the editor said they don't do anything critical of the government either. We had a nice conversation about the mag....which is sold in Barnes and Noble and there are teams assigned to Obama and the Stones for an upcoming edition.
And to get back to the hotel, we rode in taxis.....the old American cars so well known around Havana. It was a gas!

Tonight we had an incredible experience. We went to a neighborhood cultural center.

Muralaendor....or crazy mural makers.... Took a corner dump, cleaned it up, used an abandoned water tank for a building and made a community arts center.

Kids come for music and art. There are murals on all the walls surrounding the place along with various sculptures. We med the director and he told about the history and goals of the center. Then we heard a Cuban band, mainly people with the center, and of course, we tried to practice our salsa moves from the morning. Did not work.

How do they pay for everything? They sell art work created by artists with the center. We went into the Tank, an old concrete water tank at least 30 feet in diameter, and saw examples of art by the artists. I bought two prints.

We went into another room where a class of disabled youngsters meet and I bought a third print. A young Cuban man took my picture so he could show the student who bought the picture.

Then we had supper, and the same guy sat with us. Turns out Adrian is a dentist, married to a lawyer, who would like to travel and see the world and have kids someday. He is 29 and a product of the Cuban education system. He was very bright, very articulate, and funny too.

After dinner, which they prepared, we heard another band of young students who played rock.

It was while the director was introducing the band members that he mentioned the female guitarist was pretty good despite having only one hand! And she was! She had a device that allowed her to hold a pick on her right arm and chorded with their left hand....quite amazing.

And before we knew it, the night was over.

I sat outside at the hotel and had a mojito.... it seems I like those little suckers!