The woman is impressive. She pictured herself a mathematician, a dentist, a physician but Dad said girls could become teachers, secretaries, or nurses. So, she enrolled in teachers' college where we met. We had both had plenty of experience dating and yet we still decided that the two of us made a good pair. She got a job teaching 2nd grade but she resigned to help shepherd 40 college students on a semester in Europe. When she got back, she used her minor in school librarianship to land the job of stocking and opening a elementary school library in a new building going up. She retired more than a decade ago with a PhD and teaching experiences at two Wisconsin universities.
Her grandmother was an impressive adventuress, too. She was orphaned as a little kid and lived in an orphanage in her native Cuba. Her granddaughter's other relatives and ancestors were Nordics so the Cuba connection stood out. Nana's marriage to a mining man and relocation to the US led to childhood for the granddaughter in the DC area. She didn't forget Cuba, which is often touted as being close to the US physically. We have taken more than twenty Elderhostel/Road Scholar trips. When she saw one of their trips to Cuba, not only to Cuba, but for once, a trip that didn't just visit Havana but started 700 miles away in Nana's childhood city of Santiago, she arranged for us to go.
Today, she gave a talk on Zoom to our local learning in retirement group. Typical of her, she worked hours and hours on the talk, trying to squeeze 500 years of history and two weeks of travel into 90 minutes. It is not a simple subject since that island nation tired of the domination of the US and joined the Soviet Union as an ally, which has led to all sorts of special situations, especially for US citizens who want to visit. She showed some of the 1000 pictures she took and covered both experiences we had and general topics related to life there.
