pogo

so, let me take a moment to tell of our trip. or at least an excerpt. i feel almost overwhelmed because i don't know where or how to start.

as you know i forgot my wallet. which is totally weird because it's rare for me to go to work without my wallet. thankfully i like to divy up my cash when i travel and i had a large sum in my suitcase. shannon reassured me that she had her credit card, and brendan told me "you don't need health insurance because it's a communist country". so i arrived in the land of cubans with cash only. it turns out that shan's credit card was refused because it had american affiliations and there were no bank machines in the area (plus they don't rarely accept foreign debt cards). thus, we were rather strapped for cash. BUT we did ok. we strategically set aside 25 CUC pesos to exit the country, so if all else failed at least we could go home. thankfully shanno had been given extra money for an expedition, and we were able to go to la habana, which was great. the only disappointment was that i would've liked to tip the staff more than i did. they depend on tipping, so i hated to withhold. i have to admit, it was more stressful on my subconscious than i thought it would be. after our trip to havana i felt much better, like a load was off my shoulders because i had no idea what that was going to cost. phew! well, i won't ever forget my wallet again, that's for sure, but it was an experience :S

what else should i tell you. what else. what else. when i have limited time it's hard to really go into depth with anything.

ok, so our resort was right on the ocean. we thought it was in varadero, but it was actually an hour outside, which put us an hour away from havana. it was really beautiful being smack dab in between the ocean and the mountains. on windy days there was a red flag place in the sand to tell us not to enter the water. when the waves were strong they brought all the jellyfish near the shore and we were in danger of being stung. as we walked the beach we passed a bunch that had washed up onto the sand. they were quite beautiful actually. i touched one, it was dry and resistant. i later tried to squash one with my sandal, i'd expected it to pop like a balloon (to be honest, they looked like an inflated condom), but it just made my shoe bounce back at me and left a sticky residue. hmmmm.

you're the first thing that i'm thinking when i'm taking off and landing.