After watching the booty shake for a few minutes I boarded a bus and proceeded to the University of Havana.  Semester at Sea sets up a meeting with local college students in every country we travel to.  At the University there was a large welcome reception with the Cuban students.  I quickly made many friends and asked them about their views on Americans, the embargo, and Castro.  All of them said they had no hostility to Americans, only our government, that they desperately wanted the embargo to end, and that they supported Castro.  Throughout my stay I asked similar questions to other Cubans and they agreed with the students on the first two points, however, I was surprised to learn that many of them did not support Castro.  They felt that he had lied to them too many times and that the time has come for someone else to take power.  Two very contrasting viewpoints.
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    That afternoon, I visited a hospital which was established to treat children who developed diseases as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  At first it was depressing to see these children so far away from their families in Russia with horrible diseases.  However, they really stole my heart when they put on a talent show at the end of our visit.  There were numerous singing and dance routines and whole experience was very touching and emotional.

At the end of the performance we were allowed to give the children small gifts which we brought from our home country like stickers and candy.  It was here in this hospital camp that I learned one of life's valuable lesson.  You should never start giving things to a group of children if you don't have enough for everyone.  You're only asking for trouble!
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    That evening, some of my friends and I strolled along the Malecon and met our new friend Luis.  Luis was a guitarist at one of the local hotels in Havana and was incredibly friendly.  He only spoke spanish so it was fun for me to act as a translator between him and my nonspanish-speaking Semester at Sea freinds.

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Luis, a true lady charmer

. We went from bar to bar, drinking "Mojitos" and dancing the salsa.  Cubans never seem to want to go to sleep!  It was a very peaceful and relaxing evening until the police intervened.  We were casually walking along the Malecon when a police officer pulled Luis aside.  You see, in Cuba, locals need to have a special permit to talk with foreigners.  From what I understand, this is because the government wants to make sure that it's citizens aren't giving an unfavorable view of Cuba, and Castro, to the tourists.  Because Luis was in the tourism business as a musician he was allowed to talk to us so it was no problem.  However other Cubans, as you will see pretty soon, were not so lucky.  The evening ended after a severly drunken Ryan, one of my SAS frinds, picked up a 65 year old woman at a bar.  Need I stay more.  We all stumbled back along the Malecon to our mothership to get some sleep.
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    The following morning, Jimmy and I were supposed to meet our new friend Luis to go on a bicycle ride around Havana.  We waited awhile for him (we later found out that his son had to be rushed to the hospital because of a spinal disease) and decided to rent bikes ourselves when he didn't show up.  Unfortunately, we soon discovered that it's almost impossible to rent bikes by yourself in Havana.  What we decided to do instead was the next best thing, rent a bicycle taxi!  Bicycle taxis are designed for two passengers with a driver who takes you along the Malecon for a short, half hour ride. However, Jimmy and I convinced our driver to let us use the bicycle taxi for the entire day for $10 if we could drive it ourselves!  I can't even begin to describe how fun it was to ride this bicycle taxi around the streets of Havana.  I really felt like a working Cuban and the looks I received when the Cubans saw that an American was driving around a Cuban were priceless!  The driver directed us to many beautiful churches which were to far to get too by foot.

He then took us to his home where we got to meet his family.  These people were extremely poor however they appeared happy.  His son was handicapped and I gave him a helicopter toy which seemed to brighten his day.  I felt really good that I could help a less fortunate person than myself.  We said goodbye to the family and headed towards the capital building.  Along the way, Jimmy and I, thought it would be fun if we started picking up Cubans and Semester at Sea students to take them to wherever they wanted to go.  Maybe we could even make a little money on the deal.  This turned out to be a big mistake.  We saw an attractive Cuban woman walking down the street and asked her if she wanted a ride.  She readily agreed and off I went.  I rode about two blocks when a police officer pulled us over.  We had three major violations against us: I was driving the taxi without a license, we had too many people in the taxi, and the woman we picked up wasn't supposed to be talking to Americans (and from what I gather a prostitute at that).  Luckily for us, the taxi driver was the brother in law of the police officer so we were let off.  They were a few tense minutes though.
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    We finally got to the capital which looks remarkably like the capital building in Washington, DC and said goodbye to our driver.  We had had enough bicycle taxi fun for one afternoon. .

Is this DC or Havana?

.     Jimmy and I then set off to explore the city by foot and met a lot of interesting Cubans.  It's also very interesting to note that stepping foot is Cuba is like stepping into the past.  As a result of the embargo, Cubans have no economy and are unable to modernize things.  This is easily seen in the following picture.  Look how old the cars look!

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Taking a step back in time
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Typical dwellings for the residents of Havana
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It's hard to believe that a place so close to the United States (only 90 miles from the Florida keys) can be, in reality, so far away.  We saw numerous sights along the streets of Havana including lots of socialist grafitti like this. .

Did Castro write this?

.     After walking around randomly, Jimmy and I stumbled upon a cigar factory.  I was supposed to take a Semester at Sea sponsored tour of it in the morning, however, I decided to pass it up to hang out with Luis. .

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. The day after we left Cuba we began classes and I'm not going to focus too much on those.  All of mine are fine, however, the material is pretty basic because they're introductory level.  Just to refresh your memories, I'm taking a World Geography course, Intercultural Communication, Global Ecology, and Ethnomedecine.  There are a lot of reading assignments but I find it easy to get reading done while at sea.
On Monday, March 1st, we passed the equator at 4:52 AM.  The day before we had "King Neptune Day" and what a crazy day that was!  King Neptune Day is a ritual that is performed for all "pollywogs" who've never crossed the equator by boat to become "shellbacks".  It involves, getting fish guts dumped over your entire body, kissing a fish, getting your head shaved, and kissing the rings of King and Queen Neptune.  Oh, I almost forgot getting hot spicy mustard sprayed in your eye, that's really fun!  We had a great time and many of the people on the boat actually shaved their heads.  The vast majority of those people were girls as well!  Oh, I forgot to mention before, the ratio of girls to guys on the boat is 480:180 girls:guys.
There is so much more to say, but I also have a lot of other things to get done as well so I'm going to call in quits for now.  Please be sure to write whenever possible!