Culturally Challenged

One thing that UIC's med school is known for is its diversity, both in terms of patient and student population. These are two reasons that I wanted to come to UIC, aside from some other obvious ones.

Having said that, I'm pretty lacking in the diversity department. Being around all sorts of different people with different backgrounds this past week, I came to realize just how culturally retarded I am. In Harold and Kumar terms, one might consider me a "twinkie." Here's to hoping UIC can help me out in that regard. So in terms of foresight and getting some culture, I give myself a gold star.

Even within my own cultural background, I'm a bit lacking. My parents came up this weekend for our white coat ceremony. (About the WCC: what it sounds like, where we get our first white coats.) Anyway, after the ceremony we went up to the north side to visit my parents' old stomping grounds. Up there, we shopped at a Filipino grocery store and ate a nice, purely Filipino cuisine restaurant. Even though I'd had some of the stuff at both places, some of it didn't have a name as far as I knew, and even more of it was unfamiliar to me. Ah well, it's all good stuff as far as I'm concerned. My parents even bought me a decent amount of food to take home. Later on, we met up with a cousin of mine had dinner at a Filipino cafe. At least here I'd heard of most of the stuff. I even knew what was in some of it.

Soo, hopefully over the next few years I'll learn a little culture, along with the whole medicine deal. On both notes, I'm looking into taking a medical Spanish class through UIC. After around seven years of Spanish, my handle on it is pretty sad.

On a random note: since I don't feel like making a separate post, I've got a few pics from the day of the white coat ceremony. We've been told that the WCC celebrates getting into med school. But it still feels weird having a white coat ceremony, since we haven't done anything in med school yet. Whatever though, it is what it is.