Day 2

This morning, our home-stay mother Sra. Cecilia Ruiz took Nick, my housemate, and I to get breakfast. We stopped at this roadside cart to get tamales, but I found out that tamales are cooked in pork oil, so that wasn't an option for me. Still, it was interesting to see that they cooked meat and certain ingredients inside corn stalks and banana leaves, which gives the meat a distinct flavor. It looked amazing, so I'm hell bent on finding halal forms in the U.S.. On the way, we also bought sweet bread; and I must say, Oaxacan sweet bread is AMAZING!!! It's soft, sweet, and flaky, all at the same time.
After breakfast, Sra. Ruiz walked us to the Becari Language School, where we met up with the rest of the class. From there we walked with Nick Penco (CFHI program administrator) and Dr. Del a Torre (Main UCD program professor) to Hotel Anturios, an upscale hotel in which our orientation took place. In the orientation, we went over logistics, such as the types of hospitals and clinics that will host the rotations and the types of care offered by these institutions. Our student coordinators, Sonia and Rocky, provided us with invaluable knowledge taken from their own clinic experiences. According to what they said, like it's easy to see surgeries and get hands on clinical experience, as long as students demonstrate interest and seriousness. Hopefully, I can learn enough Spanish before my rotations start to convey my interest to preceptors because I'm literally dying to see surgeries and learn clinical procedures first-hand.
We got our cell phones today, which finally allowed me to call my parents. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to hear from your parents when you're this far away.
One unique benefit of this program, which I notice now, is the ease in which relationships are built with the other students. Everyone just clicks with each other. This benefit is immense because allows the formation bonds between students that will benefit them both on a professional and personal level in the future. In my opinion, the reason it's so easy can be attributed to the fact that we all like medicine and are on the same page in ours lives. The differences in backgrounds and ethnicities doesn't even factor into our interactions. I've never experienced something like this before, but I know that it's essential, not only in becoming a doctor, but a better human being. The social aspect of the program makes the program worth while all on its own, yet the program offers even more! We haven't even started rotations so I can't imagine how much more there is to gain.
After the orientation was over, we all walked to this really classy Mexican in El Zocalo. The food was amazing.
After dinner, we recharged our cell phones minutes (luckily it was a double-day->ask me in person). Me and my house-mate, Nick, explored Oaxaca for a few hours before meeting up with everyone else at Santo Domingo. We found that the city center, or El Zocalo, was the most active area we've seen so far. El Zocalo, is more or a less a large central park surrounded by restaurants. Inside the park itself there was a market as well as public performances. The performances today, consisted of clowns doing random things but it was pretty uninteresting, mostly due to my age. However, there was a live mariachi band playing to tourists at the restaurants, which was really cool. An interesting thing you'll notice in Oaxaca is that everyone is in love, and I'm not exaggerating. It literally seems like everyone is in love, and I'm serious when I say forget Paris, I've been there it's not the city of love in comparison. There are countless couples that are on these like romantic dates, and they are fully into each other, paying no attention to their surroundings. Romanticism definitely characterizes an important part of Oaxacan culture.
Finally, I could enter my first blog entry !!! I was really happy I found an internet cafe. It's called Italiano, and its pretty upscale. I really like it, and it's probably going to serve as a kick it spot for me.
At 9 p.m. all the students met back up at Santo Domingo, a church that serves as a popular meet up area, we went exploring El Zocalo, and it was pretty fun. I'll keep you posted, and count on these posts being this long or longer because the experiences are hard to contain in a few sentences. Salamz.