Famous Last Words Week 10

Well, this past week has been the craziest out of all of the crazy weeks. I feel like I write that every time I write a ‘Famous Last Words’ post, but it’s true! This past week I had a big paper due, an exam, the post-lab from Hell, two experimental proposals, and career advisement to try and get my life together. Whew!

The week before last, Spring Break, was mostly spent lounging on the warm sandy beaches of North Miami. Yes, it was glorious. Even though I was still in the United States, it felt at times as if I had traveled to a completely different country. This is because Miami is heavily populated with Cubans and other peoples with Latin American ancestry and almost every shop I walked into had five or more conversations held completely in Spanish.

Probably the most fantastic thing I found there was not the sandy beaches, or the seashells, or even the Keys West salad I discovered at the Publix by our hotel (a delicious combination of shrimp, imitation crab, bell peppers, tomatoes, and mozzarella): it was the Cuban coffee.

Let me tell you about this coffee - it’s not ordinary coffee. It’s the breath of life itself. I went with a total of five people (including myself) and we had to share two beds in a tiny hotel room. It goes without saying that we didn’t sleep comfortably, but we slept hard. 6 hours was the perfect amount to cram a restful night into what we needed to take on the next day.

But still, no matter how well I sleep I will need coffee in the morning. I’ve had to switch over to decaf due to health reasons, but after having a cuppa every morning for the past ten years (I started drinking it regularly when I was 12), it’s hard to give up.

So me and one of my friends would go on the hunt for coffee every morning when we first woke up. Within a block of our hotel was a Latin American Cafe, a Latin American Market, a Peruvian cafe, and down the street was a Publix, a Buenos Aires cafe, and countless other small cafes, bakeries, and restaurants. Each morning we went to a different place and got a shot of Cuban espresso ranging anywhere from 60-80 cents a shot.

A tiny shot of heaven - Cuban espresso. Yum!

Image: The Ground Bean

You might be thinking, “One shot? That’s it?” But trust me - one is all you need.

These little shots of Manna are brewed with with darkest Cuban roast along with two teaspoons of sugar to give a beverage that’s black as night and sweet as sin. Ever since I came back to Norman my heart and taste buds have cried out for something more than what starbucks can offer, but to no avail. I would try to make some myself, but I’d likely screw it up to the point where I’d never be able to have coffee again.

Unfortunately, our hotel had crappy Wi-Fi, so I couldn’t work on anything while we were there, which meant I had to scramble to do stuff on Sunday evening when we got back.

But I feel refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the semester with vigor and drive! Yay for Spring Break, and YAY for almost graduation!