First Day of School

Today was my first "official" day of school even though everyone comes back next week. My first/only class today was general Biology. It was pretty much a waste of time because there were so few people there. We talked about the history of biology and stuff like that.

I then went back to the international student department because I sill hadn't registered. Come to find out, I was able to register the whole time, they just do a crappy job of explaining how to register...either that or I do a crappy job of listening!

Here are some interesting differences in education here and the United States:
1. Here we take between 20-25 credits per semester.

2. Also, when you sign up for school, you do not sign up as undeclared, you come in with a career in mind. You can change you career path, but there are very specific classes that each student takes for their career path. I can look ahead 3 years and know exactly what classes I will be taking.

This is awesome! There are no liberal education credits. There is no need to waste your time because the "system" thinks that taking worthless classes will make you well rounded! The only way to not graduate on time is to change your career path.

3. In the states, if you take a 3 credit class, it is usually for one hour three days a week. Some schools have block classes, night classes, or summer classes where you will have more than an hour of class at a time, but that seems to rather rare (at least at the 2 I attended).

Here, when I am taking a 3 credit biology lecture, it is 9-12 on Monday. My 3 credit chemistry class is 2-5pm on Tuesdays. It is really nice actually because I have one or two classes a day, but I can spend the rest of day studying and doing the homework for the class.

I only have one class that is split. I think that is because it is a 4 credit class. So I have it for 2 hours twice a week.

Although, due to the fact that I don't sit still well, I can see this being a problem, but I have to maintain a GPA above a 3.0 to finish with this program, so I will concentrate!

4. The first couple weeks are more laid back. School officially started on the 1st, but we were told not to come to class until the 5th because no one would be there, including teachers. When I told someone that I went to school today, they looked surprised and asked why I was going to class the first full week. Evidently, due to the fact that majority of the medical school population is from outside the DR and they don't want to pay a bunch of money to take a two week vacation, the hard stuff doesn't start until the third week.

5. This morning in my biology class the teacher showed us part of a text book that had been copied. She asked how many people wanted a copy and let us know that it would be 15 pesos ($0.40) for our first week's reading assignment. You got to love no copyright laws! But that makes up for the fact that I will have to spend about $700 on all my other books. :(

My Spanish is progressing well. It is hard to go from NEVER speaking Spanish to hardly ever speaking English. I went from understand about 60% of what was said (due to the dialect) to understand about 98% of those actually speaking Spanish. Those who speak ghetto Spanish...I don't know if I will ever understand them! I feel better about it because my friend from Cuba, who has spoken Spanish her entire life, can't understand them either!

Speaking it is coming back, faster each day. I give it a couple more months before I'm back to where I was before deciding to stay in the place that probably has less Spanish speakers than anywhere but Alaska!

I left my window open the other night on accident and woke up with about 200 mosquito bites. I am now prayer that I don't get malaria! I figure with an average 10-day gestation period, I have about half a week more and I am in the clear.

I almost forgot about the shark. We were at the beach in Juan Dolio and all of sudden, two of the guys started splashing and swimming very quickly yelling something about a shark. I thought that they were joking, but sure enough a fin popped out of the water. It was about 10 feet from where I was. I really want to pretend that it was this incredibly life-threatening experience, but it was a baby shark. Although, where ever a baby is, the mother isn't far behind. So I guess if could have been a life-threatening experience.

I was actually more scared about a bracelet I found in the water because I thought that it was moving on its own. My imagination immediately made me think that it was some sort of exotic deadly sea creature! I freaked out a couple of the girls with my continued screams every time I tried to pick it up, but we were saved when it was discovered it was a bracelet!

That's about all for now. I'm tired from not sleeping due to being inflicted with mosquito bite plague!