Next trimester is hopefully our last trimester in Costa Rica. He is talking with his boss today to see if he can get part time starting next trimester. If the company can't do part time, he's going to quit. This makes me happy for a couple reasons. First of all, he'll have way more time to study and will finally be able to pass goddamn diff eq. Secondly, he'll have more time to possibly go to the gym and work out. That makes me happy because he gets so stressed out by classes and work and everything and he starts smoking a lot. He normally smokes a few hits of a cigar once or twice a month. When he's stressed he smokes almost every day. He knows how much I hate it. I don't care so much for the cigar smoke, or the smell, or the taste, or the yellow teeth, I just don't want him to die at 60 goddammit! My grandfather died of lung cancer and I don't want to be my weeping grandmother, watching her husband slowly turn into a skeleton because of chemo and then dying at a young age from something that was preventable.
Okay, the purpose of that was to say instead of smoking, he can exercise out his stress. Plus, we'll have more time together and we're thinking of going to some advanced dance classes. I'll just have to skip out on cumbia (every country has a different cumbia, in Costa Rica it's called swing criollo, here's a video if you wanna see). It's a whole bunch of bouncing that my foot can't handle yet.
ONTO CUBA STUFFS!
Where did I leave off- yes! Havana. We were deciding on where to go in between Havana and our AI in Varadero. Our casa owners were no help, so we went to a tourist agency that was super helpful (Cubanacan, I highly recommend them!) We decided to go to Cienfuegos. So Saturday we took a bus over.
It was a short ride and when we got there we went to find Cubanacan to buy tickets up to Varadero. Sitting in the tourist agency I realized I had left my backpack on the bus! DOH! My SO ran up and luckily the bus was still there. I'm such an idiot. In Cubanacan we bought our tickets to Varadero and the lady hooked us up with a casa that was close by. It was a really, really beautiful casa with marble everywhere. It really makes you wonder about the old wealth in Cuba, very cool stuff. It also had a whole bunch of these glamour shots of this one girl everywhere. It was really funny and my SO and I laughed a lot about it.
Cienfuegos was really hot (it literally means "100 fires", but not named for the heat, named for a guy). The first day we walked around a bit and that night went to a theater nearby and watched a really great band play. My SO and I did plenty of dancing (and got complimented again
) We also saw a group of young Cuban guys obviously trying to get into the pants of Gringas. It was so funny because that's how I met my SO!!! He came to salsa place, asked me to dance, nicely taught me, then courted me til I slept with him! 
It was strange to see it from the outside, but also really entertaining. We kept saying "You better do it Cuban Oscar!" 
I also danced with this really old Cuban guy. He was very sweet.
Hiding from the sun, drinking a few cold ones
Dancing with the old guy
The next day we decided to walk to the beach. It didn't seem that far away and we wanted to walk down the malecon so we went ahead. Well, four kilometers and one hour later we get to the beach... and it is a mother fucking wall next to water. My SO was so pissed I thought he was going to punch something! Worst beach EVER. We did manage to score some really cheap ice cream (sold in moneda nacional, which is 25 to 1, which means we spent about 5 cents on ice cream). We sat on the wall/beach and watched a few rowing races that were going on on the water and drank a few more beers. Then we took a taxi back up to our casa which cost.... 3$. WHY DID WE WALK THERE??!! jaja
On the malecon
PISSED at the "beach"
That afternoon my SO and I played a lot of our favorite card game called spite and malice, since we had by then seen and done everything in Cienfuegos. I got hungry and remembered seeing people walking around with some really delicious looking pizzas. My SO didn't feel like going so I went in search of the pizzas. Well they were also sold in moneda nacional so I got two personal size, greasy, cheesy, delicious pizzas for... 50 cents.
That night we went dancing again, but the band wasn't nearly as good.
Monday morning we went to the bus station to take our bus up to our all inclusive in Varadero. We kept joking about how everyone was going to look at us like "Are you sure you're in the right place?" because we were all smelly and gross.
When we got to the hotel, we immediately changed, threw on sunscreen and ran to the REAL beach. It was gorgeous!! Crystal clear water, perfect white sand, blue blue skies. Couldn't ask for more.
Real beach!
And of course all the booze was FREE! We drank way too much, especially since we hadn't eaten since breakfast and it was pushing 4pm by then. We eventually headed to take a nap, quite loaded. I woke up feeling pretty gross and I really wanted to just order room service and stay in for the night. But my SO was urging us to go out. So I got on my fancy mullet dress and out we went.
We ate at this "gourmet" restaurant where I saw the ugliest human being in my entire life. About 15 minutes after we got there, this girl started crying. It seemed at though the waitress had spilled something on her. The father swooped up the girl and yelled "I demand to see a manager!" When the guy came out the father yelled at the manager saying it was unacceptable, blah blah blah. He basically wanted the waitress (the PREGNANT waitress) to be fired. He left, then came back 10 minutes later to yell at them some more. It was the most hideous thing I have ever seen. I mean, where the fuck do you feel the right to try to get a pregnant woman fired from her job in a third world country for a MISTAKE. It was disgusting. And had we not been in Cuba I would have assumed the guy was American (from his accent), but he must have been Canadian since I doubt an American would bring his whole family to Cuba. So I felt a little better because of that. Like "phew, what a relief it wasn't an American!" Guess Canadians can be ass hat dumb fucks as well.
That incident made me feel really out of place, and almost guilty to be there. Ya know? Like, when I go to most hotels or restaurants, I assume the people working there are probably making enough to actually be able to afford to stay there or eat there one day. But not at this AI. These people make shit waiting day and night on ugly, fat, rude tourists who feel entitled to the world. They would never be able to afford to stay in that place, even with a discount. It made me feel awful. And that feeling didn't ever really leave.
Anyways, after dinner (and being overly polite to that poor woman) we went to see a "flamenco show" which was so bad it was laughable. My SO and I joked about it a lot. It was the flamenco version of "Phantom of the Opera" and it was terrible!
After that, my SO wanted to stay out drinking more but I just felt down. Partially because I was hung over from my earlier binge drinking, and partly because of the nasty event we saw at the restaurant. I convinced my SO to go back home. We watched a really bad B movie and fell asleep in our giant king bed. It was nice to have an early night.
The next day we woke up to eat breakfast and head out to the beach. We spent almost our entire day at the beach, it was fabulous! I started drinking these really delicious frozen lemonades, and my SO kept up with beers.
We took a nap and went out for dinner to the "Italian" place where I ate the worst Italian food of my entire life. That night we decided to go to the dance club. I guess we were naive to think they would play Latin music in a place occupied almost purely of Europeans. They started playing awful house and techno music (I'm sorry Europeans, but WTF. How do you listen to that shit for HOURS? It's awful! You know you're not in Cuba anymore when they put on Abba and everyone runs to the dance floor like a dog to a crotch) while I sipped on a margarita that tasted like it was made out of sea water. We were entertained by this one guy dancing to the house music who was obviously tripping on something. He kept like jumping and touching the floor, at one point he smelled this lady's ass. It was amazing.
And this is the first time LFAD has cut me off! Til next time!
It's funny because there's a few things in your blog that I've been thinking about in my own world. (For the boring stuff, not the exciting cuba stuff.)
Can't believe that ugly guy, why would you come back to cause more trouble? People...
J/k, read it all. Sounds like my kind of vacation.