Upon arriving, at our hotel, Tejadillo, in the old port of
Havanna, Cuba, I learned something right off the bat: life is simple here.
And in that way, it is nice and cozy. Picture America in the
early 1950s. Old cars- pink and baby blue, polished and preserved . Little boys
run past us as they play baseball in the parks. Small drugstores are filled with
medicine hidden inside porcelain vases. Pastel- colored houses line the streets
with women drying their clothing on their balconies and children lining up for
ice-cream cones. 
And I think this is how it was for us to at one point too,
right? Children weren’t locked instead their rooms playing video games? Parents
put family before work?
I almost feel as though I have traveled back in time. I want
to warn them of what the future has in store. I want to remind them to always
put community first, and limit the use of electronics.
It is this simple way of life that many people in America
want to go back to. In some ways, I feel as though that is what bring people to
Cuba in the first place. They like shaking that fragile snow globe and watching
as everything falls right back to place.
But at the same time it is scary to think that this will all
change soon. That the government will fall, embargos will end, and large
American corporations will sneak into the market. Soon, there will be McDonalds
on every block and AT&Ts selling IPhones to the kids.
And this lifestyle in which Americans fled from will soon
take over. This fragile, simple snow globe will be broken.
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