Osmel Almaguer’s Diary

When the Training Program for Chinese Youth was taken over by the Ministry of Higher Education, the Chinese students studying Spanish in Cuba began to experience the concrete effects of the project’s decline.

In 2007, at the initiative of Fidel Castro, it was decided to create a program to teach Spanish to Chinese young people who in their homeland were less likely to attend college. This would not only reorient the lives of those foreign students, but would also provide China with the personnel needed for penetrating the Spanish-speaking market in the Americas.

Yesterday we gave the final exam in Spanish literature for seniors at the high school where I teach. For them, this was the last step before graduation. Giving the test was a complicated process as there were nearly 200 pupils that had to take it though there are only three teachers of the course in the entire school.

With a week to go before the conclusion of the regular season of the Cuban Baseball Leauge, two essential features have marked its course. The first and most striking has been the decline in batting averages, while the second has been the hard fought rivalries in each of the clashes that take place.

Yesterday, after showing up to put money in my cellphone line at one of the offices of ETECSA (Cuba’s phone company), I read a notice posted on the door. Two things caught my attention, or — better said — two things pissed me off.

For many years I’ve been hearing my father say “it was the consumption of meat that enabled humans to develop their brains.” I’m sure that he obtained such information from his vast readings, always based on his understanding of Marxism.

On the news, here in Cuba, it was reported that an American student used a machine gun to shoot five of his classmates – two of whom later died. Though the incident was unfortunate, so too is what lies behind the apparent “humanity” of its reporting.

I woke up today to blasting music, but it wasn’t coming from my mother’s next door neighbors. In the homes around here there aren’t any sound systems capable of pounding the walls like this music does.

A few weeks ago I participated in one of the most impression-making meetings in all of my short life. It took place in the school where I’m currently a teacher, where those present consisted of the teaching staff as well as most of the administration.

The first class that I had with my students was focused on me getting to know them and visa versa. I was interested in learning about why they were attending that particular school, and I was especially curious about their plans for the future.