Clases de Ingles, Sosuá, y más!

Sept 9

Hey guys! Hope all is going well! I just wanted to tell you guys about one of the coolest experiences I had on Tuesday. (Monday wasn’t very exciting, just had class all day and came home and passed out.) Yesterday or Tuesday was really incredible. As you guys might have remembered, as being in this program, the goal is to really understand how community medicine works. So we had to leave Santiago by 7:30 to get to the community using a Gua-Gua (bus). We got to the Gua-Gua too late and it was already filled up so we had to wait for the next one! Aye dios mios! Well we caught the next one and ended up at Pequeños Pasitos at 8:50ish. When we arrived the place was PACKED! All these people were waiting for medical attention. Most of them being children. The class assigned us to shadow an individual part of the clinic. For example, one person was assigned to shadow the doctor, nurse, pharmacist, receptionist, consulates and public health officials. I was with the receptionist, so I had a lot more administrative work to do rather than real medicine work. Although it wasn’t a terrible experience, learning how the clinic works all together is crucial to understanding how it can be improved. But I can tell you this clinic works incredibly well, I can think more doctors and more machines could really help the clinic out.

The really cool thing was helping out in the afternoon. The clinic closes at 12:30, so once that was over, Mollie, Stacy and I decided to stay longer to help out with anything else that needed to be done. (We didn’t have class the rest of the day-well I didn’t anyway). But what I ended up doing was working with one of the other doctors (actually it’s a medical student from Brown named Micah, who is a really cool guys btw) giving an English lesson to some of the kids of the community. I can’t tell you how cool that is. Those kids in that community really want to learn. Micah and I walked an half and hour to get to the kids but there was like 15 kids there waiting to learn. Micah and I, not being professional educators had some trouble at first coming up with a decent lesson plan, but decided to start out easy doing stuff like; family vocab, the verb to be, numbers (they could count up to 100 without our teachings!), conversation and a game of 2 truths and a lie. It went well, and now we have a bit more of an idea what they know and what we can teach them. It seems like they want more conversational practice and writing practice. MESSAGE FOR TEACHERS (you know who you are!) please let me know how you would begin to teach a foreign language to students! I don’t know anything about teaching English to non-English speakers! I would appreciate it; I need to come up with some lesson plans! Micah and I said we would teach them English every Tuesday! Look at me, becoming a teacher! Haha, que locura. But it was rewarding to teach those guys, I think that’ll be really rewarding in the long run too for them.

Not really much more to stay, just finally I’m feeling confident in my Spanish. It’s taken almost a month just finally its getting to the point of near-perfection. Otherwise things have been going really well. I hope everything is going well for you guys as well! Have fun with classes’ guys! Talk to you later!



Sept 13

Hey guys! Been awhile, but not too much has been going on. Wednesday and Thursday was just class and doing research in between for my independent study, nothing too exciting. Friday was pretty dull too, the only thing we did worth noting, for me at least, was making homemade pizzas. Well I didn’t help make it, but hey it was really good, having a homemade crust with fresh pineapple, red peppers and onion. Muy bueno!

Yesterday though, Saturday, we went to Sosuá. Sosuá is a beach town which is just incredible. Once of the nice beaches I have ever been too. Ever. Just incredible, really small, crowed (I wasn’t a fan of that) but just small as in you could see the beginning and ending of the beach. The water was a beautiful turquoise that I’ve only seen before in St. Maarten, St. Johns, St. Thomas and Cozumel. Just an incredible beach. I think I might have to take my family there when they get here! :) The water was so much fun to swim in, it has more salt, hence the color and is very easy to swim in. Just really incredible. Also at Sosuá we met some recently graduated college students, who were teaching at a bilingual high school. There were all from Wisconsin and are staying for a year teaching. Man, I can’t tell you how many teachers I know now. Haha. Anyway, just chilled on the beach, swam, sunbathed (got a bit of tan), tossed the Frisbee around, and played Paddle Ball for the first time in my life. I definitely want to buy one of those for the beaches in Michigan! Haha! That night we went out to a concert which was ok, kinda snooty, cause they almost didn’t let me in cause I was wearing tennis shoes. But whatever, that was ok, seeing our Dominican friend’s band was cool. But the people inside were kinda douchy, so I was glad to get out there. We went to a chilled bar afterwords and had a couple of drinks and talked. That’s what I liked better, and afterwords we did the Dominican thing; danced in the parking lot of the monument of here. So that was something, I can tell ya that.

Sunday was just a chilled day. Just did homework, napped, watch some TV, and talked to some friends online. Just a chilled day. Later that night we went to Mollie’s house and did homework together and just relaxed and tried to get on the same page for our Medical Sociology class. But just been thinking, I’m a month in already. 3 more months to go. I can’t believe it at times. But I’m ready, I’m adjusting the best I can and I’m ready for the next 3 months. Wow, one month in. At times I can’t believe it. But I should get back to paying attention, I’m writing this in a class right now...oops! I’ll write again soon! Hope all is well guys! Que todo sea bien para ustedes!