Definitely mandatory... and no you don't live with anyone in the community.
The schedule for the first four weeks is pretty much 8am-5pm M-F but it's only for those first four weeks. The morning is Spanish from 8am-noon (it's conversational and the point is just to help you learn how to get basic communication skills so you can build upon them medical spanish during the normal school year). 1-5ish are public health/cultural education type classes which are part of "Society, Community or Individual" aka SCI. You also have SCI during the school year but it's 1 hour every Thursday.
While the days may seem like long days, like I said, it's only for the first 4 weeks of school. The spanish classes are really helpful and they try to make it fun. We do skits, have "field trips," make projects (some of the groups made video skits) and play games. For spanish you're broken up into small groups of 8-9 people and it's based on your Spanish level.
The SCI classes are interesting. You're learn a lot about El Paso, the Hispanic culture and how culture plays a large part in your practice/interaction with patients. We also have a group project where we are assigned to a part of El Paso, you spend a day or two in that area and talk to school officials, the police departments, emergency services, etc. to get a feel of the area and culture (the professors set up the interviews). You then do a powerpoint presentation about the area to the class and listen to everyone else's presentations about El Paso.
The first 4 weeks are fun. It's a great time to get to know your classmates without the stress of "real" classes yet. It's kind of a time to ease you into the schedule of med school as well. It was a good time. We spent the time going out, getting to know each other, having fun and getting to know El Paso before we had to dig into the harder stuff.
gl y'all
I'm not alone! 
