Plaza Major, Trinidad, Cuba. February, 2012

Here’s my friend Lisa, chatting with the sweetest security guard in the world, going through the book he’s using to learn English. He’d heard us speaking, asked if we would pronounce something for him, then showed us the sentence: “You carry on straight on.” We surmised quickly that he was learning British English and told him that Americans would say, “Go straight ahead.” He smiled, told us he meets a lot of tourists and that he thinks Americans pronounce their Ts like Ds, whereupon he kindly mimicked for us how USA folks say “beDDer” instead of “better.” I asked him about mantequilla, and he slowly said, “buDDer.” Our lovely midday conversation with this amiable man would have been reason enough to travel to Cuba. Hope he’s still there guarding the main square the next time we head back to this beautiful Caribbean coastal town.