In the interest of nostalgia type stuff and skill set-broadening (and general coolness) I’ve taken out an old Minolta camera on loan for the semester from my sweet tiny school, and the film thing is not quite as easy as I had imagined. (I had to do some serious Google-studying to figure out how to even begin to take a picture.) But aside from the complicatedness and giant-ness of the camera, the slowness of manually focusing and adjusting a thousand things, the inconvenience of buying and returning film; it’s far more satisfying to get a handful of pictures when youre done than a slow iPhoto upload. Even when you’re not a clever girl and you leave finished film in a very hot car and addle it a bit. It turns out hot car = funky film, but I kind of like the hipster washed-out look all my odd photos have got going on.

On Thursday I drove to over the long pretty sky bridge to Tampa, camera in tow, to pick up my friend from the airport. It seemed appropriate to go out for Cuban food, and my best friend Yelp said La Teresita was the place. A funny stuccoed building amongst strip malls, just a couple blocks east of the airport, La Terisita was full of a pretty wide variety of folks. There’s sort of an intentional segregation at the restaurant with two dining rooms; regular and cafeteria. When I asked what the difference was I was told “this one is more comfortable” and ushered into our pleather booth. I’m pretty sure it’s just chairs vs. stools, six dollars for a big plate of rice and chicken vs. three dollars for a bigger plate of rice and chicken. Either way, it was kitschy, friendly, and quick. Within minutes of ordering my arroz con pollo (which came with two sides, I chose sweet sugary fried plantains and salty black bean soup) our funny waiter had rushed back, hot plates in hand. School bus yellow rice, weirdly orange chicken, very very tasty. And the plantains were appropriately crispy and sinfully brown-sugary, the black bean soup thick and salty and good. And the pre-meal bread can’t go unmentioned: big toasted halves of baguettes, slathered with butter. Not a regular amount of butter at all, I mean slathered in a big big big salty amazing awful way. Then post-dinner to-go cafe con leches, extra creamy and extra good.

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