Putting the Intense in Intensive

Our first week back in Las Cruces has been full. Full of lectures, full of reading, full of discussion as well and conception and organization of our research ideas into proposals. Our days are long, with class from 8 am until 8 pm (sometimes even 9 pm) six days a week. Admittedly, we get short breaks throughout the day, but when class adjourns for the last time at 8:30 pm and only then do we have the chance to start our fifty page reading for the next morning, it feels a little overwhelming sometimes.

Everything we're learning is fascintating. We had a really good discussion on ethical research. We are considering the validity of non-empirical medical practices in other cultures (cool, related article here). We watched a video about the public health rock stars who were on the ground working to eradicate small pox in the 1970s. We've been hearing lectures on all sorts of tropical diseases and delving into plant identification and collection techniques and cultural sensitivity issues in ethnobiology.

Clearly, the volume of information we've received this week is rather large (I've taken 35 pages of notes since Tuesday), and this is great in the sense that there are lots of interesting points to ponder, but at the same time, as a slow and methodical learner, I have found it difficult to really absorb what I'm learning on a deeper level (the way I like to learn), because there simply isn't time to sit and ruminate on what I learn because we are always moving quickly on to the next subject, the next topic of discussion or the next activity.

Just days after arriving in San Vito, I found myself missing immersion into Tico culture that was characteristic of our home stays in San Jose. I crave the challenge of being in a place where I cannot fall back on my English. At this stage in my acquisition of the Spanish language, the only way I'm going to improve is if I don't have the option of reverting to English in order to communicate my thoughts. Studying with American students has been great; I enjoy my classmates a lot. I'm thankful to have people here that I can communicate easily with when I need to, but this experience, in which we exist predominantly in a buffered cultural environment (a Gringo bubble, so to speak) has also reaffirmed my desire to experience a culture by immersion into it. I envision this desire being fulfilled in the future through service in the Peace Corps.

Among other things, I'm starting to miss certain foods that are staples of my diet at home. In the past week, I have craved macaroni and cheese, hamburgers, pesto, pasta in general and temperate fruits (peaches, berries and Minnesota apples). Rice is getting old. It's a treat when the ladies at the dining hall serve pasta at the station, and today for lunch, they made fresh homemade pizza. Muuuuuy rico.

Since it takes so long to upload videos onto my blog posts, I decided to try another strategy to let you see short videos I've taken while in Costa Rica. My solution: YouTube. Enjoy.

Also, I added some more photos to my Photobucket page yesterday and added some titles and descriptions to the ones that were already uploaded. See the entry below for the link. I don't think you need me to post it again, do I?