Written by Luke A, High School/Pre-College Student Correspondent for CET Cuba: Advances in Healthcare, Summer 2019
As the trip is wrapping up, so are our schedules. For the last several days, our schedule has been far less packed than it had been since we got here. Instead of waking up, having two classes and a site visit or two, we’ve been focusing more on our final projects, and rarely had nearly as much planned. As we neared the end of the week and the trip, we had to prepare to give final presentations and papers in Spanish and Health class.
Today, I ended up waking up especially early because today we were doing our final presentation in Spanish and I needed to practice presenting at least once. By the time we needed to go down for breakfast, I felt pretty confident. Soon, we were on the bus, headed back to the Spanish school for the last time. Presentations went well, and everyone was actually speaking Spanish pretty well by the end, something I and a few others had struggled with. After Spanish class and a quick snack, our group went to the Revolutionary Square, where we took an elevator to the top of the tallest building in Havana.
The view was exquisite. From the top of the tower, we could see so much of Havana, all the way to the harbor and fort, and far far inland and along the coast. It was sunny out today, which only made the view more amazing, with the contrast of the blue sky over the green, grey, and brown city below. At the bottom floor of the revolutionary tower, there was also an amazing art exhibition about pollution of the oceans and other pieces of art with a heavy focus on water. On the way to lunch, our group stopped in a small square with a statue of John Lennon, a man who is respected by Cubans as a whole, and took a few photos.
I think the lunch today was the best we’ve had on the entire trip, as the restaurant was farm to table, and the bread was amazing , fluffy and light, but full of flavor. In the afternoon, we made our final academic visit of the trip when we went to the headquarters of an organization which makes films addressing more vulnerable populations in Cuba, such as transexual people and people who suffer domestic abuse. We got to speak with one of the stars of these films, a transexual woman who has played a role in many of these films.
Though the program was small, and they stated that it struggled to spread to new people due to the lack of mass media, the concept and ideals that the people had are important and will hopefully cause positive changes in the community. Now we’re returning to the house to work on finalizing our Health class papers, so that we can enjoy the beach tomorrow and our last day after that.