Day 2 - en los médicos clases de español.

Today began another of extreme day of Spanish comprehension and grammar. I have already begun to see how difficult it is for someone from another country to come to a place that is unlike their own and learn a new language. You are accustomed to just being able to ask someone, “Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to….?” They understand what you are saying and they answer your question. Now that I am in Guadalajara I see how difficult it is to communicate when you don’t know the language. I am slowly beginning to understand bits and pieces, but the language is spoken so quickly that sometimes it is hard to pick up on what is being said. My host mother truly understands our frustration. She speaks very little English and she says, “All I hear is blah blah blah blah”, she feels so sad because she wants so badly to communicate with us and we want to do the same.

The professors are very patient and extremely intelligent in their profession. Most of them speak more than one language. We do a lot of practicing with the other students in the class. That is very helpful when you have repetition. I think the hardest part is the amount of information that is given to us in one day. It is like taking a 16 week course and condensing it down into 4 weeks, well actually 2 weeks because we are at clinical for the second 2 weeks. One thing that I always have to remember with nursing is, BE READY FOR ANYTHING!!

Favorite Spanish sentence of the day – Que tenga un buen dia.