I got sick with a stomach bug the first weekend we were back, which was no fun. It was a Sunday, and I felt well enough to make it through doing singing time in Primary. But when we got home, I immediately started throwing up, and I basically quarantined myself in my room for the rest of the day, watching movies and sleeping. I'm just grateful that I didn't throw up at church. I did miss Cap's 1st birthday party, though.
Daniel and I had a busy January. The first 3 weekends, we had a date every weekend night -- we went to see the last Star Wars movie; we had a game night at the Christensens; we went to Dry Bar comedy and dinner with Brian and Sammy; we went to a big Divvy gambling party that turned out to be really fun. For most of those dates we'd either already paid or had gift cards for them, so basically all we paid for was babysitters. It was quite busy, but very fun.
The last week of January, Daniel, Mom, Dad, and I took our trip to Cuba. We made arrangements for Daniel's family to take the kids for the week (they bounced around from Bekah, Mom Holbrook, Emily and Adam, and Bowman and Stephanie's), and then we flew overnight on the 24th. We arrived at the Havana airport around noon on Saturday.We got through all the airport security and checks, got a taxi and went to our first Airbnb.
It was a fascinating trip! Our first few nights, we stayed right around the corner from the Capitolio and basically the center of the city, where a lot of the government buildings and hotels are. That city center was pretty nice -- all the buildings were updated and beautiful, the parks were nice, there were restaurants and musicians playing. But around the corner, where we were staying, the entire neighborhood was crumbling. The building right across the narrow street from us looked like it had been bombed out. And you could tell that it was the poor neighborhood. All the people that lived in these crumbling buildings ran little stores right inside their front door, selling any and everything: bread, fresh produce, clothes and shoes, personal care supplies, etc. Just whatever they could.
We walked down the street a few blocks, taking it all in that first day. Mom said she felt pretty nervous there; just so much poverty, so much decay everywhere we looked. We walked to the most interesting Asian restaurant you've ever seen. Christmas blow up Santas and wreaths were still up; there were random posters of Asian things -- buildings, anime characters, lotus flowers and designs; the food they offered was a mix of everything -- authentic Cuban food, inauthentic Asian food, even "Chicken Gordon Blue". We waited in line for at least an hour and a half (even though they told us it was 45 minutes), and it was interesting to see how they tried to keep track of the line outside. There was one guy who seemed to be in charge of keeping it all straight. He came out every 10 or 15 minutes to check the line and reiterate who was next, who was after who, and who was new in the line. We were all starving, having been on an airplane and in airports all night, and having not eaten a lot in that time. But eventually, we got seated. It was very crowded in the main room. Tables and chairs crammed everywhere. We ordered a few things, one of which was very traditional Cuban Ropa Vieja, which is a shredded beef and vegetable dish, with a side of rice and plantain chips. We also got fried bananas and nonalcoholic Pina Coladas. It was very good, we all enjoyed what we got.
The money in Cuba is confusing. There's a local currency and a tourist currency, which is 25x more than the local money. Tourists are required to pay in the tourist currency -- it's pegged to the dollar, so where locals would pay pennys for something, we were paying dollars. Anyway, it took a couple of days to get used to it, and we got ripped off a few times before we figured it out. When we paid at that Asian restaurant, they gave us change in local money, meaning they gave us WAY less than we were supposed to get back. Dad also gave a guy at the little church branch $20 before we could even think. And then when we did think about it, we realized we basically gave him hundreds of dollars in their local money!
That first night, we walked around the capitol building and the hotels. We stopped to listen to some music groups at the hotels, and Dad danced with a little Cuban woman, who had asked him for money. That first night was fun, but a little hard. Everything was just so ... different, and worse, than we expected. The state of the city. The condition of the people. And how these people were made to live.
The next day was Sunday, and we found a little branch that met in another part of the city, about a 15 minute drive. The taxi pulled up to this big beautiful, old building that must've been grandiose about 75 years ago. There was a big gate outside, so we weren't sure what to do. Especially since we were 10 minutes late. We walked around the building a little bit, and I could hear people singing, so I knew they were in there. Eventually, we saw a man and asked him about it. He opened the gate and we went into this small side building for Sacrament meeting. The branch consisted of, maybe, 40 people, most of them adults. Only a handful of youth and children. They had a few talks, a few hymns. I understood only part of it at the beginning; but further on, my brain was getting tired of focusing so much and I started zoning out more.
After Sacrament meeting, we met with some of the branch members and explained part of our purpose of being in Cuba (that is to look for family members and history), and then we split for Relief Society and Priesthood. Poor mom and dad didn't understand anything from those meetings; I felt lucky that I could at least understand a little. But in Relief Society, the sister next to me tried talking to me, and we just weren't getting each other very well. She invited me to participate in the lesson, and I just didn't feel comfortable enough with that.
We were in the neighborhood where our family members were supposedly living -- we had gotten some addresses for uncles and cousins living in Cuba from some letters that Grandpa Fernandez had from them. The letter were from 1995, from Dad's cousin, Alina, and his uncle, Roberto. We wrote down the addresses to look them up, not sure if we would find anyone there. It's been 25 years, so we weren't sure what to expect. We walked a few blocks down the street from where church met, and found our first address, which appeared to be a little market, with a big line of people outside waiting to get in. We weren't very hopeful, but Daniel walked down a little bit and found an entrance to the building on the side, all gated but with a buzzer. He rang, and a woman came down to the gate to see what we wanted. Daniel explained who we were looking for, and after a minute of stunned conversation, I asked if she was Alina. She said, "SI!" and got this look in her eyes. It was such a cool moment. We were meeting Cuban relatives that we'd never met before for the first time! And they were still at that address they'd sent! She let us in and invited us up to their apartment.
We spent most of the rest of the afternoon talking with Alina, her husband Felix, and her mother Alicia. My great uncle Roberto, Grandpa's brother, has dementia and was resting when we got there. We talked to them about family and drew diagrams of our side of the family. We talked about their family and what they've been up to. They pulled out pictures of relatives and pictures that Grandpa had sent them. We talked about our family's history a little bit and they showed us old pictures of Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Fernandez. They even had old funeral and burial documents. They told us a lot about living in Cuba and what it's been like. They told us that when Castro took over the country, they traded 3 houses that family members had occupied for the one house they lived in, and they all lived together for years in that house. We learned so much from them.
