What I, Kikita, Learned in Cuba

Kikita here.

There are plenty of things about my trip to Cuba that I haven't written about for various reasons. One of those reasons is that I went back to school this semester. School started exactly 4 weeks before I left for Cuba so I made sure to clear my trip with my teachers. I went back to study Spanish, so my teacher was happy to excuse my absence. I was back in class exactly 12 hours after my plane landed in LA. I was back in class, but I was lost. They were in the middle of discussing past preterites and my (recent) past was all too present in my mind to worry about their preterite past.

(Are you confused yet? Yeah, me too.)

One of the reasons I had taken the class was to learn the very thing I'd missed while I was away, but that's not important right now.

Where was I? Ah, yes. The past. Cuba.
I've already talked about how excited I was to attend a meeting of Cuban Dissident Bloggers, but I left out some of the mind-numbingly boring stuff.

Kiki, "mind-numbingly boring"? In CUBA? With DISSIDENTS? Seriously?

Well . . . mostly. . . yes.

It was an hour on "signos de puntuación."

That's right.

A whole hour of learning about punctuation in Spanish. While I was thrilled to be in that room and feeling like I was a part of history, I was also feeling pretty bored and thinking, "When is this lecture ever going to end?"

I hate to admit that in such an amazing moment I was beginning to wonder if it was worth it.

BUT, ignoring my internal boredom, I paid attention and even participated a little.

Then I took pictures with some of my heroes and continued my journey. The journey that has no coincidences. The journey that helped me get caught up in class. The journey that eventually brought me to today.

I have been down with an ugly case of tonsilitis. Without going into detail, just know that I still have my tonsils and when they decide to get sick and swell, they do so with gusto and great pain. (Basically, I was in bed for 3 days sipping water, sleeping, missing school and occasionally reading.)

I wasn't feeling 100%, but I knew that I'd be taking my Spanish final early since I would be in Miami(!) the day of the test so I dragged myself to class to learn one last thing before I take my final next week.
The first thing we did in class was have a test. GREAT. And my teacher, who knew I had been sick, handed it to me anyway. DOUBLE GREAT.
Now I had to take a test on a bunch of stuff I'd never learned and my grade would suffer and . . . wait.

NO. WAY.

I thought I was hallucinating when I looked at the title of the test:

"Signos de Puntuación"

Needless to say, I aced the test and am not too worried about my final. ;-)

**Note: I am well aware of the fact that we abuse punctuation in this blog. That there are times when we use unnecessary commas, parenthesis, etc. We do it on purpose. We do it to sound more conversational and make the reading easier on your eyes. =D