El Lobo Poblano: La Primera Semana (The First Week)

Hola from Mexico! Maybe I should warn you that this is my first ever blog entry and I don;t really know what I am doing. I know a lot of people who have kept blogs while abroad in order to let people follow what they are doing. I hope to do the same thing this semester while I study abroad in Puebla, Mexico. Like I said, I'm not an experienced blogger and I'm not super confident in my ability to write interesting, informative, and funny posts for you to read; however, I'll do my best, and hopefully you'll enjoy the updates on how I'm doing, where I'm going, and the things I'm doing here in Mexico.

So... I arrived in Mexico this past Monday at the Puebla airport along with 20 other Notre Dame students. Honestly, none of us really had a good idea of what we would be doing when we got here. Most of our email exchanges with our study abroad coordinators had pretty much ended with "We'll discuss everything out once you get here," which wasn't very comforting. However, we had heard only good things from previous students who participated in the program, so we weren't too worried.

Luckily, we were picked up at the airport by the international student coordinator from UPAEP, the university we are studying at this semester. (Sidenote: UPAEP stands for Univdersidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, which is possibly the biggest mouthful of a university name ever. Nobody ever uses the full name.) We were picked up at UPAEP by our host families and we went back to our colonia (like a gated neighborhood). Our host mom, who is incredibly wonderful, promptly warmed us up some chile en nogado, a traditional poblano (from Puebla) dish which was our first taste of the drool-inducing food that we eat here every day.

First meal in Mexico = perfecto

Since Monday night, we've gotten through our first of two weeks of orientation. This week we had a ridiculously brief, yet incredibly useful run-through of the first year of medical school here in Mexico. (In Mexico, they go straight to med school after high school. Since we get to do hospital rotations twice a week here, so it's kind of a good idea for us to get to know Mexican medicine a little bit before we start). Our awesome professor Ivan helped us cram hundreds of spanish medical conditions, learn how to draw blood on a dummy, and tour the UPAEP cadaver lab. After classes every day, UPAEP would take us to different places in Puebla. It's been an incredible time, and I haven't embarrassed myself TOO much yet.

Some other "fotos" from this week