Damn, It Feels Good To Be A Tar Heel!

As any former or current UNC student can tell you, this statement always rings true. But in my three years at UNC, the statement above has never been more true than it was Monday night…when we won the NCAA National Championship!

My dad said it would happen. “They’re going to go all the way this year and you’re not going to be there to see it,” he lectured as I told him of my acceptance to the Cuba Study Abroad program. Granted, many people thought it would be this year. It’s Tyler Hansborough’s last year on the team, we had the majority of players return from last year (when we played in the Final Four) and well, as a Tar Heel family we were all pretty much feeling unstoppable. On Monday morning, knowing we would play for the national title that night, I suddenly wished I was back in Chapel Hill, NC.

Still, our celebration here in Havana, Cuba was a good second (to Chapel Hill, of course). We all crammed in one of the rooms at the residence to be able to watch the game together, doing all of the cheers and shouting purposelessly just as we would have had we been there at the game.

“TAR,” one of us would cry.
“HEELS!” the other side of the room would shout.

We did some of the same cheers after the game had ended, as we all “rushed” Avenida G screaming and shouting with delight. The great American annoyance/boisterousness that stereotypes us as a nationality, but on Monday night, we were willing to fit a stereotype. We ran past the Hotel Presidente, where our program director was staying for his two-day visit, shouting up to the eighth floor where we knew he’d be. We continued on until we reached the Malecon, stopping only to catch our breath as we breathed in the ocean air. We then proceeded to dance and sing, taking pictures and essentially, savoring a precious moment in time.

UNC had won the national championship and Tar Heels all over the world were celebrating the fact that our blood runs blue. Carolina Blue.

The Day I Ran a Half-Marathon, Jumped Out of a Helicopter and Starred in a Comedy Show

I would hardly describe myself as a girl of many talents, but Friday was just quite the productive day.

This weekend, the majority of our study abroad group and a few of the girls from American University decided to go to Varadero. Alyssa and I had already been, but three of the guys that were going had arranged to go skydiving and I really couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

With my Ironman training though, it sometimes makes it difficult for me to do what everyone else does with ease, because they’re not worried about their running or swimming schedule (I’m not able to bike here). My long runs are usually on Saturday and this Saturday my run was 13 miles long. To ensure that I would have a relatively care-free weekend, I got up at 5:30 am on Friday and did my 13 miles before class. After that, the fun could begin…and it did.

There were six of us that took a maquina (one of the old 1950’s Ford cars that function, here in Havana, as a version of a cheap taxi) to Varadero and then proceeded to check in to the resort that Alyssa and I had stayed in the last time we went to Varadero. (For $35 per person, the room and all-you-can-eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and drinks are provided.) After checking in, I went to look for the boys who were skydiving and at the last minute, two of the AU girls decided to jump as well.

While this blog entry may make me sound brave, I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t scared. I was terrified! I was thinking about it all day and although I’d been really excited, I hadn’t ruled out the possibility that I would back out at the last moment. But in the end, my excitement had gotten the best of me and by the time I had realized what I was actually doing, I was moments away from willingly flinging myself out of a helicopter.

Originally when reservations for skydiving were made, we were told that we were going to jump out of an old USSR war plane and land on the beach. However, I think the plane was in disrepair and due to the direction of the wind, we couldn’t land on the beach and we were told that we would be landing on the grassy area where we took off from. Just as we began to wonder where the plane was that we would now be jumping out of, a helicopter flew overhead and landed on the landing strip in front of us.

We were going to jump out of a helicopter!

As we climbed into the helicopter and we gained altitude, I realized it was too late to change my mind. First I saw the two camera people go: it looked like they literally just fell out of the helicopter. Next, Heather (one of the AU girls) dropped out and she looked absolutely horrified. Finally, it was my turn. I was literally strapped to the instructor at four different points of my suit and he turned his back to the open door of the plane. “Ready?” he asked. I was singing Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” to myself as we jumped out.

What a rush! Had I not been wearing goggles, the speed at which we were falling felt like it might have been enough to peel back my eyelids! Before we jumped out, the instructor told me to keep my eyes open the entire time so I wouldn’t miss a thing. “Right…” I thought. The only way I could see myself jumping out of the helicopter was if I didn’t have to look when I did it. But instead? I kept my eyes open the entire time.

The free fall ended when the instructor pulled the parachute open. When he did, it was as if time itself stood still. The rushing downward stopped and I looked around to take in all the sights. All around me were farm lands that, from that high up, looked perfectly manicured and green. And the ocean…wow. When we went skydiving, it was about 7 pm and the sun was just beginning to set and the rays of light danced across the ocean’s surface. The instructor even let me steer the parachute for a minute or two and as we floated back towards the ground, I can’t imagine that the smile on my face could have been any bigger.

After skydiving, we went back to the resort to have dinner and a few drinks. According to the itinerary, there was going to be a comedy show at 9:30 pm down by the pool and we all figured it would at least be a few good laughs to watch while we thought of something better to do. While we sat at the bar and waited for the show to start, the show “host” recognized Alyssa from the last time we had stayed there and pulled her towards the stage to come “help with the show.” Having had a mojito and a fabulous day prior to that, I eagerly followed her on stage. Following me was Louisa and Caitlin (from AU).

What we ended up doing hardly constitutes just “helping with the show.” For all intents and purposes, we WERE the show. The comedy show was actually a series of five competitions, with four female contestants competing. Our first competition was to pretend to be a model on a catwalk doing “sexy moves;” the second challenge was to make the male host of the show “fall in love” with us by saying sweet (generally corny/ridiculous) things to him; third, we had to act out the scene of a man waking up in the morning (scratching inappropriate places, etc.); fourth, we had to sing “Guantanamera” with our mouths full of water (similar to playing Chubby Bunny) and finally, beans were scattered on the floor of the stage which the four of us had to scramble to pick up. Whoever picked up the most beans won that competition. Alyssa ultimately won overall and all four of us were probably the resorts most popular people for the rest of the night. What a show!

After the excitement of the day before, we spent most of yesterday lying on the beach, which looked as beautiful as something you might find on a postcard.

*Last but not least, last night we watched UNC play in the Final Four – and we watched the game at the house of the head of the U.S. interest section. We had gone there to visit a few weeks ago, but because the game was only going to be on CBS and we definitely don’t receive CBS via Cuban satellite here in the Residence, we asked if they wouldn’t mind us watching the game there with them. They were kind enough not only to say yes, but to provide us with the means to stuff ourselves silly (popcorn, candy, cake, cookies, soda, etc.). Maybe they’ll invite us back over tomorrow to play for the national title?

Let The Games Begin!

Every year, la Universidad de Havana holds a series of athletic competitions in the spring, known as los Juegos del Caribe. Events range from everything as common track and field to those like karate to ping-pong. Each team is made up of students from a particular area of study/faculty and the different faculties try their best to have at least a few people compete in each event.

The biology faculty, the same faculty that has been giving us free dance lessons, was nice enough to also let us compete in the Juegos as students of their faculty. Some of us competed in the 1500-meter run, another girl from my study abroad group ran the 400-meter and two of the guys from my group competed in ping-pong. When we were asked to write down a list of athletic capabilities, I wrote that I could run and swim. As a result, I was registered to compete in a duathlon of sorts: a 400-meter run, 50-meter swim, 400-meter run.

The morning of the race, I was excited, but also a little nervous. I hadn’t run a 400-meter race since 10th grade and even then I wasn’t very good. I also looked around and saw students from other faculties that had the indisputable build of skilled swimmers. What I didn’t anticipate being the problem was understanding the rules and regulations of the race. How mistaken I was.

The race was at a beach, Bacuranao, just outside the city of Havana. It took race officials about an hour to set up, but the course wasn’t very formal and/or structured. The race began with the 400-meter run in the parking lot, then taking off your shoes and jumping in the ocean to swim to a buoy and back, and finally repeating the same run in reverse. “That’s simple enough,” I remember thinking. I had also “sized up” the other girls in my heat and after realizing that two or three of them had muscular thighs that each were about the width of both of mine put together, I figured that they would be in front of me and I could just follow them. And then the whistle blew.

I set off running and about 200 meters out, I took a look around me: there was no one there! “Awesome!” I thought to myself. I really hadn’t anticipated being in first place and while these competitions are mostly for fun, I was excited. I made it to the beach, kicked off my shoes and jumped in. As I was swimming to the buoy, I heard race officials shouting at me and Spanish and then finally realized what had happened when I swam into the girl who had been behind me. “What are you doing?!” she yelled in Spanish.

If you can get a mental image, picture this: we had to swim 25 horizontally, parallel to the beach. What I had not fully understood is that we were originally supposed to swim on the side of the buoy that was closest to land and then swim back to get our shoes on the side of the buoy that was farther from land; I had done the opposite. As a result, I came out of the water in second place. Then another problem: my shoes.

I couldn’t manage to squeeze my sand-covered feet back into my shoes and then I just decided to leave my shoes and run barefoot on the asphalt. It was only a 400-meter run anyway. So I left my shoes in their designated basket and proceeded to start running. Again, race officials shouted at me. “Grab your shoes!” they said in Spanish. “Even if you’re not wearing them, you at least have to have them in your hands!” As I turned around and went back for my shoes, another girl passed me. I was now in third place.

Funny enough, all of this is now irrelevant because I ended up getting disqualified. Because of my misunderstanding in the water, I had not “followed the rules” and thus, my race results did not count towards the total points of the biology faculty. It’s funny now, but at the time I felt pretty dumb.

Haha. As if I didn’t stand out enough as the American, I had to go and swim the wrong way.