At a time when educational exchange programs with Cuba are disappearing, a class from the University of California, Davis, will travel to Havana Jan. 2 carrying money belts filled with Canadian currency and a curiosity about one of the last communist countries.

The Cuba program will be an intensive 10-week experience filled with side trips across the island to African-Cuban and other cultural enclaves, Spanish and music classes, and individual ethnographic studies of Cubans.

It has drawn 10 students who will have an international experience unlike any other, reports UC Davis comparative literature professor Marc Blanchard, a Cuba cultural scholar who has visited the island more than a dozen times in the past decade.

"I take kids abroad to Paris every summer for a class on expatriate literature but it's not a big deal: They have corn flakes and cell phones, and everybody speaks English," Blanchard said. "They will have none of that in Cuba."

"This is one of the last non-global places on the planet," added his co-instructor, music professor Pablo Ortiz.

Students will take four classes during the quarter. Several will interview popular musicians to create ethnographic studies of an elite group who, because of their popularity among tourists, earn as much as $40 an hour compared to the $20-a-month salaries earned by lawyers, professors and doctors.

For the UC Davis faculty and students making the trip, it will be an educational opportunity that is quickly disappearing for others elsewhere across the country. New Bush administration restrictions and a Cuban retaliation for using U.S. dollars have put almost all American educational programs to the Caribbean island out of business, say university administrators.

However, UC Davis was committed to offering students this unusual international educational experience, said William Lacy, vice provost for outreach and international programs.

Under the leadership of Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef and other advocates on campus, international education has become a top priority at the Northern California research university, where nearly 20 percent of the 23,000 students study abroad during their undergraduate career.

"I really do feel that this kind of bridge-building is our best hope for world peace," Vanderhoef said. "What better place to prepare those world citizens, people who can see bridges instead of boundaries, than at our colleges and universities? I hope that a global perspective will eventually permeate our curriculum and our discussions and that the day will come when all of our students will be able to have an experience in another culture."

The federal government changed its rules in June for cultural exchanges in Cuba, boosting the required stay from two to 10 weeks, a logistical and fiscal problem for many universities. Several universities, including UC Berkeley, have suspended their programs.

The added length of stay increased the individual costs for students in the program. That, combined with the uncertainty of changing regulations from both the U.S. and Cuban governments, made for a rough ride this fall for UC Davis administrators and students who wanted to stick with the program.

UC Davis applied for and received a license from the U.S. Department of the Treasury that allows UC Davis students to study in Cuba. While in the country, each student has been asked to carry a copy of the license.

In Cuba, students will be eating mostly pork, chicken, rice and beans, a challenge for vegetarians in the group. The students have been asked to bring vitamin supplements, aspirin and other medicines common in the United States, since such commodities don't exist in Cuba. Often water and electricity will be cut off during the day, and students will be totally dependent on public transportation, Blanchard said.

To gain access to a computer or phone, they'll have to visit a hotel near their rooms in a converted Havana mansion.

Because students will have no access to automated teller machines or banks, they must bring cash for their expenses. In addition, because the Cuban government is charging a 10 percent surcharge on the use of American dollars, the class has been urged to exchange dollars for another currency, such as Canadian dollars or euros, before they leave on the trip.

Blanchard and Ortiz have planned a curriculum that will steer the students away from the popular tourist clubs that attract Canadians and Europeans to Cuba.

The class will take overnight excursions to Santiago de Cuba, a city dating to the 16th century that houses a large African Cuban community, as well as Trinidad and Pinar del Rio.

Three of the 10 students are African American, including Jade Turner, a fourth-year political science major from Roseville who has been dogging the Educational Abroad offices since June because she wanted to go to Cuba. Turner said she is attracted to Cuba because she wants to study the African diaspora in the Caribbean.

Although she's traveled to Jamaica with her parents, this will be her first solo trip abroad.

"I'm excited about being independent and getting out of my comfort zone," Turner said. "Because of the cost to go, I can't spend a lot of money, but I'm looking forward to seeing the big picture in Cuba, the people and what their life is like."

Students will be paying nearly $11,000 for the 10-week program, due to the Cuban government fees on top of round-trip airfare, housing, meals, travel and sundry expenses. That is about $5,000 more than it costs for students living off campus to attend UC Davis for a quarter. Several of the students will be attending with the help of financial aid.

A similar quarter-long educational program this coming spring to London, where living expenses are considerably higher than in Cuba, will cost students about $500 less.

Turner and other students will be reporting on their Cuban experiences through stories that will posted on the UC Davis homepage http://www.ucdavis.edu.