After unpacking, my friends and I decided to visit Copélia, a state-owned ice cream shop. To me, it seemed crazy that the government can own even the smallest part of life like an ice cream shop. The price was very cheap, but we did not enter because the line was too long.
—Hayoung
Andrea and I went out to walk along the malecón. We crossed a 6-lane street with no crosswalk, and suddenly we were almost on top of the sea. As Rubén and Ingrid had told us, there was no beach but rather a wall along the sea that stretches around all of Havana. Standing there by the wall, the waves crashed loudly about 10 meters below us.
—Gabi
As soon as I arrived in Cuba, a woman approached us and asked for money. For this reason, the country’s first impression was poverty. However, the part of Havana where we stayed, Vedado, left me with a very different impression – the owners of the house where I stayed seemed to belong to the middle class because they had access to wifi and a constant source of clean, hot water. Although my host family did not hire someone to clean the house, the owners of my friends’ accomodations did.
—Hayoung
