The humidity is thick and oppressive, as is the air pollution from 1950s U.S. cars burning leaded gas.

SIGNS OF HOME I was at a conference in Cuba this year, at a town east of Havana named Cojimar. The setting was strange. Traveling to Cuba is still illegal for most American tourists, except for journalists or those with a license from the U.S. Department of Commerce. (Americans who are allowed to visit are not allowed to support the local economy by spending American dollars, a restriction that makes travel difficult.) I had a license to attend the conference at which I was giving a paper, but that did not dissipate the strangeness. I know very little Spanish. The heat is not unusual for someone used to Davis, but the humidity is thick and oppressive, as is the air pollution from 1950s U.S. cars (or dilapidated Ladas) burning leaded gas, or from diesel engines. The landscape is lush, like wet Mexico or southern Florida: coconut palms, royal palms, banana trees, gorgeous poinciana. And set on the landscape are crumbling 19th-century Creole buildings with marble stair-cases, elaborate facades--and buckets hauling water to upper floors--and equally crumbling recent Russian cinderblock buildings. Before the conference began, I went to the local post office to purchase stamps to mail postcards home. (I've been home three weeks as I write this, and the cards still have not arrived.) Cojimar contains a Pan American village that was built in 1993 for the Pan American games. There are accommodations, restaurants and a sports complex. While we were there, young athletes from throughout the world were competing in water polo; the week after we left, the Junior Olympics were held there. So it was no surprise to see an International Olympic Committee calendar gracing the post office wall. What was a surprise was to see "Miss July," a female athlete leaping a hurdle that plainly read "UC Davis." There I was, 3,000 miles from home, but UC Davis is everywhere. -- Peter L. Hays, professor of English