After two days of cycling all day long, we arrived in Pinar del Rio, quite a big city in the very west of Cuba. We came to our hotel at 06:30 pm and so we just had dinner there and then went to bed.
The program for the next two days was to go to the “Federico Engels-School” which is a boarding school for the best students from all over the area of Pinar del Rio focusing on science. When we arrived at the school the students welcomed us impressively with an excellent dancing show. In the following we had a group conversation where some of the students from Cuba explained to us what life is like at school and we told them about the KUS-project and our life on board of the “Thor Heyerdahl”. Surprisingly there were many habits which were similar, such as cleaning hours and individual working phases.
After that, we were shown around in the school. The boarding school is a very big area with many buildings. There are rooms where the intern-students sleep (dormitories), classrooms, music rooms, a cafeteria, laboratories and much more. We also had lunch at school. It was a lot and most of us didn’t eat all of the very different food on our plates.
The next day we even had lessons at school. While one half of us worked on a poem, written by one of the “five heroes” of Cuba, in Spanish class, the other group learned something about the history of Cuba since the discovery by Columbus in 1492. After one lesson the groups changed.
Later on we had lunch again and then we had PE. We were split into three groups: football, basketball and volleyball. All in all the matches KUSis vs. Cubans were almost equal and all of us had a lot of fun. But I’m afraid Marlena who played basketball had a pretty serious accident and tore her ligaments – we all hope she will be alright soon.
Every evening we also had dancing lessons at the school. This was the favorite part for everyone, because the Cubans danced excellently and it was fantastic to dance with them in a group of about 70 persons.
To sum it up, we had two more than interesting and impressive days at the “Federico Engels- School” and we are looking forward to the final evening which will take place in three days, when we will come back from Viñales. This evening there will be many cultural shows and we will have to present some shows as well – but we all are confident that we will manage it.