el primero de mayo

So today is may 1st, were basically halfway through our program, and today is international workers day. Aka labor day for everyone in the world except the U.S. because they believe it is associated with unions and socialism...lame. We woke up at 5 this morning to go march in the parade which is through plaza de la revolucion. There are hundreds of thousands of people marching through the parade. We marched with our school, casa de las americas, which is one of the most renowned instituitions in latin america so it was really cool to get to be a part of that. We had flags from countries all over the world, mine was Granada, and huge banners that had like 10 people carrying them at least. Music was everywhere, cuban flags, these huge stars that were painted were in front of us and were massive pieces of "plastic artwork". The announcer had sayings like "viva cuba libre!" then the crowd responds "viva!" "viva fidel y raul!" "viva!" "viva la revolucion!" "viva"!! it was all really cool and we were chanting along just like all the other cubans. Tourists also loved taking our pictures because we were international with our flags from all over the Americas. When the national anthem started playing, EVERYONE was silent, with the exception of those singing along quietly. It was an amazing site to go from music and people yelling and dancing to silence and people standing upright quietly humming the national anthem of Cuba. Cubans take so much pride in their nation it is truly amazing and it was an amazing day to be a part of regular people celebrating themselves! Its only ten in the morning now but the parade goes on all day, we were one of the first groups to march apparently (Even though we couldn't see the front of the line!). Until next time, viva!!!