First week summary

On the non-medicine side of things, my first weekend there I wanted to take a trip to the Monte Alban ruins but unfortunately woke up Saturday morning with a tough cold. I decided that since it was the weekend, it was the perfect opportunity to indulge in all the tea my family could provide and hide under mountains of blankets.

Los Tios
I could write an essay about the
amazing meal I had
at this restaurant.

That’s something I haven’t talked about in detail yet: my home stay! We were told we would be placed with a middle-class family, but that “middle class” in Oaxaca could be closer to low income in the US. In other words, “keep your expectations low.” I did exactly that, and thus was pleasantly surprised when my room was about the same size as my room back home. I was hosted by a lovely retired couple who lived with their daughter and grandchildren. My actual room/bathroom was located in the Senora’s sister’s home which was next door, and then I would only go into my host family’s home to eat. They provided me with breakfast and lunch, then dinner was on my own (which allowed me to explore the hundreds of restaurants downtown).

Torta de quesillo

Because I had to leave the house by 7:15am to be at the clinic on time, my family had their maid leave me a packed breakfast of fruit and cereal (or a sandwich). Once I would finish at the clinic at 1pm, I’d be back home by 1:30pm and eat lunch around 2-2:30pm. The program warned us that lunch was usually eaten at later times in Mexico, so I expected that I would have to adapt, but my family was super accommodating. They would ask if I was hungry as soon I’d get home in the afternoon. If I wasn’t too hungry, I would wait a bit so that I could sit with them at the table and get to know them better. I emphasize this because I think they really appreciated me using whatever amount of Spanish I knew to hold a conversation with them. This in turn helped me practice my Spanish!

After lunch, I’d rest/do my homework for my Spanish class which was from 4-6pm. Because there was no one else in my program, my classes were 1-on-1. Which was great for my learning’s sake, but sometimes would be a bit intense if I was tired, because there’s no spacing out when you’re the only student in the room! Luckily my teacher, Manuel, was wonderful. The placement test I took last weekend put me in intermediate which is the level I was when I last took a class in college, so it wasn’t too intimidating. The classes were split with one hour of grammar and one hour of medical vocab – a little long and exhausting, but definitely learned a lot every day. Sometimes I would hear the medical vocab I had just learned while in the clinic!

Overall, the first week was adjustment week where I got to know the family, the town, and my bus route to the clinic. All of it went smoothly, so I was excited to see how the rest of my stay would be.