July 31, 2015
Last week, 10 Commodore student-athletes ventured to Cuba with Soles4Souls for a historic international service trip. Due to a lack of stable internet service in Havana and Trinidad, the Commodores weren’t able to send out daily blogs. Now that they are back in the states, the student-athletes are able to share their journals.
Our third blog was written on Tuesday, July 21 by Simone Charley, a member of the women’s soccer team. She describes her third day in Cuba, which included the group’s third shoe distribution and trip to the US Embassy.
Today was a full day! We started the day at 7:30am with an hour drive to Las Terrazas eco-community in the western province of Pinat del Rio. The school, Republica de Uruguay, was in the middle of this eco-community. The school had about 260 kids ranging from ages 5-15. The shoe drop was a huge success! Because most kids are out of school, we were only able to give shoes to about 25 children; however, we left about 100 pairs for the other kids for when school starts back up.
After the shoe distribution we took a trip to the San Juan River and went swimming. We then got cleaned up and headed to the US Embassy. The US Embassy opened only yesterday. We were a part of the very first official briefing at the US Embassy. It was amazing to see the history unfold. We learned about Cuba and US relations and how they have evolved over time. I even got to ask one of the US diplomats about the human rights and crime issues in Cuba!
We then went back to our hotel for a quick breather before we headed to Los Ambos Mundos for our lecture from Havana University professor Dr. Jorge Mario Sánchez. Similar to our embassy visit, we had an in-depth lecture about Cuba and US relations. It was interesting getting the two very different perspectives on the history from both the US Embassy and the Cuban professor.
We finished off the night eating dinner at a restaurant famous for their bread that is served in a hat. I tried a dish called la paella mixta. It’s a combination of rice, shellfish, beef, and chicken. It was delicious! With full stomachs and the day almost done, we headed back to the hotel.
Back at Hotel Riviera, Logan (Cox) and I grabbed our soccer cleats and trekked to a park about a 15-minute walk from the hotel. We were happy to find that on the sparsely lit field, the kids we played soccer with yesterday were juggling a soccer ball next to the rusted goal frame. After a quick warmup, they approached us about playing a pickup game again. Gabriel, one of the boys, brought a few of his cousins to play with us this time. After a few minutes of playing, another group of kids who were playing on the monkey bars slowly meandered towards our makeshift field. It only took a simple ‘¿quieres jugar?’ for them to be laughing and playing with us on the dirt/grass field. My teammate Chaela, a 10-year old girl who was our portera (goalie) for the first half of the game, started off very quiet and shy.
After some of the kids had to leave because of how late it was, Chaela was forced to come out of the goal and play on the field. From playing aggressively as if she wasn’t wearing flip-flops to screaming ‘golassooooo’ after scoring the game-tying goal, Chaela transformed into a new person! We came up with a saldudo (handshake) and were able to come back from a 3-0 deficit (take that Logan, haha). The end of our movie-style victory was punctuated with her jumping and hugging me while screaming, ‘¡Sàse puede! Sàse puede!’ It was a great ending to a busy day!
