¡A La Habana!

Dearest readers,

My apologies that I have been lax on my travel blogging, but I have been so fortunate to have a flexible fall with some awesome travel opportunities that I have not quite found all the time in between them to adequately debrief myself in between adventures. Perhaps in the near future I will get to blog about New York City, my road trip from Minnesota to California, down the coast, and back, and Portland, but tomorrow, I depart for my final international escapade before I need to settle down (at least for a little while!).

And I am so lucky that it is to a country not many Americans get a chance to go to, as we have the whole special political relationship with them. But my boss is the reason I am able to go. I am working for her as an assistant organizer, and our organization Witness for Peace, is how we are able to put together and go on this delegation for professional organizers. To Cuba. The country that has had a special relationship with the U.S. since the earliest years of our country and continues to mystify economists, political scientists, and your average person with opinions. The country that has been of special interest in my own studies, as I minored in Latin American Studies, took a seminar course devoted to Cuban politics, and dedicated a special focus on Cuba in my International Relations senior thesis on sustainable development in Latin America. I am so thankful to have this opportunity to learn from Cubans themselves, to add that piece to my still-limited understanding of our countries' complex relationship, and to see for myself how Cubans are organizing in their own communities.

For a little background, Witness for Peace is a national grassroots organization that started in the 1980s as concerned Americans held peaceful presence in Central American countries rife with conflict and documented many of the human rights abuses and effects of U.S. foreign policy in those nations. Now, Witness has international teams in several countries in Latin America who work in tandem with national and regional staff in the States to work for peace, justice, and sustainable economies in the Americas, mainly focusing on what we can do on the U.S. side of foreign and trade policy. And while a large part of the organization's work in the U.S. is advocacy and awareness, part of today's "witnessing" is taking delegations of U.S. citizens down to Latin American countries to see firsthand the effects of U.S. policies on the peoples of our hemisphere to better know how to advocate for peace and justice here.

Months of hoping, planning, setbacks, coordinating, emails, logistics, proposed date changes, actual date changes, applications, forms, flexibility, and patience later, it has come together. I feel I cannot be truly excited upon excited until I board the plane from Miami to Havana simply because there have been so many complications up to this point. So, 3pm tomorrow I am hoping dearly to be on a plane from Miami to Havana. Wish me suerte!

Oh, and there will be little to no internet access while we are there, so the rundown on my Havana Nights will definitely happen when I get back. No news for a couple weeks is good news!

Hasta Cuba!