I woke up this morning thinking "why am I hearing this obnoxious alarm instead of the regular obnoxious alarm," before realizing that I'm back in St. Louis. Sleep-deprived and having lacked the time yesterday to get the work done, I decided that I probably should just sleep. It's for the best, I think. It sounds so weird for the people around me to be speaking English. My Japanese has grown terrible in my excessive Spanish usage. Going to Subway for lunch today, reading the RFT, I felt a weird kind of sense of freedom. I was just looking at the Subway menu, like "wow, I can get that here!" I love the Cuban pork and congris and cabbage and sandwiches, but there's something nice about being able to go somewhere and get a chicken teriyaki or spicy turkey sub somewhere, quickly. The RFT simply would not exist in Cuba. It felt kind of nice to have it, even if it's been kind of a letdown after the New Times purchase. St. Louis' obnoxious lack of social racial integration is jarring to me. Havana is definitely vice city. I feel like half of the group is probably going to come back with new bad habits. Got O'Connell's with mein padre. So good.
- posted by Eric @ 12:22 AM