Leaving tomorrow for Cuba Segunda

I am currently (and hectically) making my last minute preparations to head to Miami, the second largest concentration of Cubans outside of Cuba, where I am limited to 44lbs of total baggage, checked and carry-on at the airport.
I'm also looking for a camera charger (the two closest Best Buys are sold out) and a new razor for my electric shaver. Then there's setting up the voicemail account in Cuba, reading my required pre-departure articles, saying good-bye to the people I haven't yet, making sure I've got money on my Amigo card (and finding a cheaper way to have money deposited), finding the two books for my classes that we were given the list of at most five days ago, and getting any other little necessities.

Just as a quick explanation of how I chose this journal name... A lot of my friends that have a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish pronounce Jake literally - "Ha-kay". When I tell native Spanish speakers that they can call me "Jaque" if they'd like, they laugh because in Spanish, "jaquemate" means "checkmate". In Spanish shorthand, they change "qu" or "que" to "k", so I'm now JakeMate, which sounds sillier in English than in Spanish. I put Cuban in front of it because someone else already took jakemate.blogspot.com plus it signifies what this thing is all about a little better.

I probably won't update again until I get settled into Habana and figure out where the internet cafes are. I will try to make this a weekly or twice-weekly journal, and hopefully I'll be consistent about that. I'll also add pictures discriminately, so be ready for a bunch of those next update.

Hasta...