The real blog starts here …… out of Cuba!

 

well not yet …… but just wanted to write a few things here before I get back on my blogging horse.  I didn’t realise how many people have been reading this and how some of them were not very nice people.  But hey they obviously found my life interesting so that says something.

We lived in a very beautiful house in Cuba, thanks to the film school.  WHen I arrived it was a house full of corruption with a pretty good business being run out of it.  I kicked them all out.  My first mistake maybe ……. the house was then burgled a few weeks later by people who knew exactly what our movements were and how to get in.

We had parties once a month for the teachers of the school to thank them for their love and support over the years.  To these parties we would invite a handful of Havana friends, diplomats, musicians, artists and personalities.  I did manage to do around 5 official dinners in 2 years but our house was always full of people passing by to say hello and sit by the sea and chat with us, people from all walks of life and many countries.  That is my spirit, my door is always open to friends.

Everything I bought online was using my UK credit card.  IN Cuba you can’t buy too much.  Family would transfer money for my children’s birthdays and we would buy things on trips for them.

We did not have one safe car most of the 2 years to drive my children around.  Rafa’s car was worse than anyone’s and had faulty brakes for most of the two years.  After a near fatal crash in the rain in my family car, Rafa hired me a car once for the school holidays and this has been jumped on by everyone from the fiscaleria to vicious little students.  It was the only time my children all had proper seat belts.

We were transferring money to buy a car as it was clear that the school would never be able to provide us with a safe car for an 8, 7 and 3 year old.

I am a self-confessed fashionista and I like to look good, friends arriving from UK and Guatemala would always bring me clothes ordered online or bought in the packa (second hand clothes market in Guate) and I had a very good taylor.  I left most of those clothes behind in Cuba when I had to run like a criminal.  But I will always be glamorous when I can manage it.  Style is not about money.

We left Cuba poorer than we arrived, which was quite an achievement!

Last summer when everyone was flying out for the summer we stayed in Havana through the heat of August and managed 4 nights in Cayo Santa Maria.  Partly as so much money had personally been stolen from us.

I will be back with more truths soon.  Children just back from the donkey sanctuary with grandparents!

But just to say that I received so much love and friendship in Cuba and was never really good at protocol, I just liked dancing a lot!