When we arrived at our hotel in Havana, we were each given a room assignment. I would be rooming, as I suspected, with the only single adult lady on the trip. We had a couple of hours to relax, take a shower (the shower at the camp had been a cold water pipe coming out of the wall), and get dressed for dinner and then church. Being Sunday evening, we were going to attend a service at the local church we came to help.
Unfortunately, our room was so high up in the hotel that we had no hot water! So we each showered quickly! I could feel another migraine coming on, and I had brought migraine medicine with me, but I had no water with which to take it. And we had been explicitly warned not to drink the tap water. So I waited until dinner. By then, my head hurt so bad I was in tears.
I really don't remember what we had for dinner. We ate in the hotel restaurant. Water was $1 a bottle. They wanted US money. In fact, I don't think I saw any Cuban money the whole time we were there. I hadn't brought money to dinner with me, so one of the people at my table bought me a bottle so I could take the medicine. Tim told me I could stay in my room that night if I didn't feel well, but I declined.
Soon we set out for a walk through downtown Havana. I could tell that the city really used to be beautiful. There were all sorts of gorgeous old buildings. We passed the Capitol Building, which was built specifically to look like the US Capitol. Here's a picture of it from the next day:
When we arrived at the church service, half an hour after the time they said it was going to start, it still hadn't started. This is a phenomenon I've encountered in other countries: local time. Time just doesn't mean the same thing other places that it means to Americans. So we got to meet several people before the service began.
There was a lot of singing, really joyful, enthusiastic singing. I think I expected a Christian service in Cuba to be held in a basement somewhere in hushed tones of voice, lit by candles or maybe flashlights. Instead, we were in a huge old building with a sign clearly marking it as a church. The lights were bright, the song lyrics were projected on a screen for everyone to see, and the doors were opened to the outside to allow the joyous sounds to reach out into the street.
I should mention that while I took four years of Spanish in high school and two semesters in college, I was very hesitant to try to speak it. But I understood the song lyrics, and I understood much of the sermon. Which was good because we only had one translator and he wasn't anywhere near me. After church, we headed back to the hotel. We would be returning the next day to help sort all the materials we brought.
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