A Few More Differences

I learned something interesting this week about Puerto Rico. I think it might be a perfect place for Anna Moeller to move to. Most people here do not use peanut butter. Our Spanish prof told us that peanut butter and pickles are two things that just never caught on here. Apparently we shipped them a whole bunch of peanut butter for the school lunch programs and they didn't know what to do with it. Adriana (my prof.) said that the first time they shipped it to the school she was in elementary school and they used an ice cream scoop and just put a glob of it on everyone's plate. When no one ate it, they then put it in a glass and filled it with milk. Still not a hit. Haha. I like peanut butter, but that is just nasty. I guess that explains why I went through the isles at Sam's four times and couldn't find any. At least they sell it at the normal grocery stores.

Another thing that is different from home is funerals. Our campus is on the top of a hill that overlooks a ginormous cemetery. There are a whole bunch of trees so, unless you live in one of the dorms that faces the cemetery or go on the roof, you can't see it. For the longest time, Cathleen and I would hear music and could never figure out where it was coming from. It always sounded like there were speakers in the dense row of trees behind the school. It was always this upbeat reggaeton that made Cathleen and I wonder what celebration we were missing. When we first got here we tried to figure it out and after a couple of weeks someone told us that it was coming from funerals in the cemetery. At first I thought it was really bizarre music for a funeral, but the more I think about it, it makes it seem like they are celebrating life rather than playing sad stuff, that makes you even more depressed than you are in that kind of situation.

I really wish that Puerto Rico had a better English newspaper. There is only one that I know of and it sucks. http://www.prdailysun.com/ I feel detached from the politics and some of puerto rican culture just because I can't fully understand everything in a Spanish newspaper. Jim, if you get sick of Rice Lake, I know an island that could use your help Hahaha.

Craziness

I haven't posted in a while, because I haven't really done anything worth writing about. Last night was the first time I have left the "compound" in two weeks unless you count when I walked to Sam's Club for milk and bagels. I have been studying my butt off. I'm drained, exhausted and already starting to study for finals. I am so ready to be home.

Yesterday we had an exam in Optics, which is my favorite class. I won't bore you with a ton of details, but part of what we were tested on was labeling optical systems. Our optics tutor does a great job of going over every type of question Dr. Morales could ask us, so I usually go to his reviews before an exam. Our tutor told us a "short cut" for labeling optical systems, and it seemed to make sense. One of my friends asked Dr. Morales about it in class and he said that he wasn't sure if it worked in all cases, but when we used it for all of the examples in our book, they all worked. Our exam was only 25 questions long and questions 7-18 were on this optical system. I did the problem the long way (not using the "shortcut" our tutor gave us) and didn't have any problems. Unfortunately, about 35 of my classmates used the short cut and it didn't work on this optical system. Every single on of those questions were related. If you got the first question wrong, you got them all wrong. It has turned into a fiasco because our tutor (who is a second year student) took the blame for it and now our professor doesn't know what to do. There is going to be a big meeting about it with the Dean of Students, our prof, our class president and the tutor. Basically, if the grades were to stand, 35-40 people in my class would have failed that exam. I'm glad I did it the long way so no matter what happens, it doesn't really effect me.

So this is officially my first holiday without my family. I thought that we were going to do a big Thanksgiving dinner here, but Dr. Cabello who was going to set it up has been gone due to some family issues. My friends and I were so wrapped up in exams and studying that we never had time to get stuff together for it. Last night we decided that we were going to put something together, but our dinner will be on Saturday. Most of my Canadian friends weren't able to go home for Thanksgiving either. Canadian Thanksgiving is in October so this really isn't a holiday for them anyway. It will be nice to have a dinner with all of them, but I would really like to be with my family. A semester is a really long time to be away. Most of the time I am too busy to be homesick, but today is a little harder than most. I really wish I was in Kathy's kitchen right now helping get everything ready while my uncles watch football and my cousins chase each other around the house...and I really want some of Wendy's sweet potatoes and Donna's homemade noodles. Maybe I'll ask for both when I go home. At least it is 78degrees outside and doesn't feel like Thanksgiving, that will make it easier to spend the day studying anatomy.

Food and Culture.

I have been trying really hard to get more in touch with Puerto Rican culture lately. It is easy to hide behind the gates of our school and not ever get a feel for where we are living. I have decided that every trip to the grocery store I am going to buy some food that I have never heard of and try to learn how to cook with it. This week I bought a Chayote. I cooked it and stuffed it with rice, beef, seasoning and cheese (as directed by my Spanish teacher). I really liked it. It is in the squash family, but is located next to the root vegestables at the grocery store. It is almost like a cross between a squash and a potato. I'm sure that some of my foods won't be that exotic to some of you, but to me they are still "mystery food".

The food isn't the only different thing about the grocery store. First off, everything (except alcohol) is way more expensive than home. Seafood is even more expensive. I still haven't figured that one out. The cuts of meat also aren't the same. They aren't unrecognizable, but they aren't like home. They eat a lot of this really thinly cut steak here. (Skirt steak maybe? I'm not really sure.) They also fry everything. It is extremely hard to go out to eat anything authentic and not have it fried in some way. Because it is so humid, most of the fresh produce goes bad really quickly. I think that is why they have so much processed food here. It is hard to eat right here unless you have the ability to go to the grocery store at least once a week (which I do not).

Another interesting fact about Puerto Rican culture is that they are a people who take pride in how they look. Except for the exceedingly poor, everyone is always done up. Women do their hair, dress up, and wear stilettos all the time. I swear 90% of women here don't even know what sensible shoes are. Fat, skinny, young, old...they still are wearing crazy shoes that I would have classified at home as "stripper heels." They dress like this in the grocery store, at work, and when they go out. I could never last 8 hours in the shoes they wear. As a whole, women wear things that are tighter and smaller than at home too. This is true even if you aren't a size two. Our Spanish teacher is a native Puerto Rican and fills us in on things that we may have a hard time picking up on. One of those things is that Puerto Rican men typically do not like skinny women. They don't like really fat women either, but they aren't interested if you don't have curves. The crazy amount of upkeep isn't reserved for women. The younger generation of me wax everything and they pluck their eyebrows. Everyone is incredibly manicured. It is sort of bizarre. Oh and rat-tails are in style on men. Cathleen nicknamed this one popular hair style the mo-rat because it is a cross between a mohawk and a rat-tail. I would take a picture, but I don't know how without being rude. I'll work on that for a future post.

As for school, it is still going well. I had one test that didn't go as well as I would have liked in anatomy, but I will be okay. It was just frustrating because I worked my butt of and panicked a little when I got the exam. She basically had us list every tiny detail she taught us. Ick and some of the nuclei of the brain sound so similar they are really hard to keep straight. Ugh. I'll keep plugging away.

Life outside of school is still great too. I am so lucky to have a great group of friends. We all get along super well and look out for each other. We went for another visit to La Placita for Krista's birthday on Friday. It was a blast. I danced so much that the back of my leg was sore on Saturday. We are also picking up on some Spanish by getting out. La Placita is all locals and a great atmosphere. I am picking up some Latin dance moves too...and no, I won't bust them out at home. We are starting to recognize some of the music too. Reggaeton grows on you pretty quickly. I will put a link to a couple of the songs that we hear all the time. They aren't the best lyrics, but they are catchy.

Danza Kuduro

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