logos said:
I participated in this program last summer and had a great time. I'll give all of you the low down:
-I don't know how many of you have gone abroad before, but living with a Mexican family is the best part. I had the most awesome abuelita! I don't know if it's too late, but you should really try to get in a house where you are the only student if you are not fluent in Spanish. I had a great time, but I didn't learn nearly the Spanish I wanted to since I was living with 3 other american girls.
-They've had many groups come in since last year, so it's possible it's more organized...but when I got there, it was shocking how disorganized it seemed to be. They told us that we would have to go from school to home for lunch and back to school in like a 2 hour span...which is tough when you live a 45 minute walk away. Some people lived closer, and all the families are on bus lines, but it was too much of a rush. A lot of people just decided to suck it up and go out to eat every day, or have their family give them lunch in the mornings. My clinic group, however, convinced our driver (the person who took us to the clinic) to go ahead and pick us up at our houses. I highly recommend this. The drivers are incredibly nice people, and they will try to do anything to make you happy.
-If you are fluent, or near fluent in Spanish, you can probably get a lot more out of the clinical aspect of the program. Basically when I started, I had my high school Spanish that was long lost, and had trouble understanding the patients. The first couple of weeks there were students in the clinics and they did most of the work since they have a certain number of patients they have to see. But after that, the students stop coming because they are done, and it's just you, whoever else is in your program at the clinic, and the doctor. That was waaaay better. At the end I was taking full patient histories, doing the typical blood pressure, heart beat, kind of stuff...and I even got to give a shot to a patient, and draw blood from the doctor!
-Basically, this program is really what you get out of it. If you have strong Spanish skills, you can probably function pretty independently, and if you ask, the doctors will let you do pretty much anything. If you don't have strong Spanish skills like me, it's a lot of fun, and you learn a lot, especially about Mexican culture and medicine.
-One of the problems is that some of the clinics don't get too many patients, and at every clinic, there will be times when you are sitting around doing nothing. Use that time to practice you Spanish (unless you're already fluent) and make friends with your doctor. My friend and I developed a really good relationship with our doctor and it made the slow times fun.
-Also, make sure you take the weekends to travel. I highly recommend a tour of Michoacan. Try to get a big group of people together and the travel agent at the school will arrange for a big van and a tour guide (just make sure before you leave campus that the tour guide actually agrees to give you tours without you having to pay him a crap load more money...and make sure when you stay in a hotel, you get it in writing that your breakfast is free, otherwise, they'll charge you about $20 US for it). Also, I highly recommend a weekend to chill in Puerto Vallarta. I would stay in Nuevo Vallarta, not the places that the travel agent will initially suggest, even though it's more expensive. There's lots of other places to go, and I left every weekend, so take advantage of the opportunity.
Well, I hope you guys have a lot of fun, if you have more questions feel free to PM me.
