Hola! Halfway through my internship and I am so excited to share with y’all about my journey so far. I finished 2nd week in the clinic. I have learned so much. I have been able to interact a lot with patients by shadowing the doctor and she has taught me so much as well. I am not only picking up on medical vocabulary in Spanish but also experiencing the integral doctor-patient relationships that build and define a practice.
This past weekend we went to the Limón Province on the Caribbean side of the country. We first went to Cahuita National Park and did a wildlife tour. I saw a sloth for the first time ever and some pretty scary spiders and snakes. We also were able to hang out on the beach and swim in the sea. Saturday night we went to an organic farm near the town of Bribri. The farm is run by a matriarchal indigenous tribe of the same name as the town. We toured the different agricultural products and talked about the Bribri tradition with the current matriarch. It was amazing to hear the many stories she had to tell and of her special connection to nature. To end our trip in Limón, we traveled to the city of Limón. There we attended mass in the cathedral and walked down the town center and talked about the African diaspora that occurred in the industrial age of Costa Rica in order to bring workers for different projects.
For this post, I’ve been tasked to talk about stereotypes and generalizations. To start, an auto-stereotype is one imposed on myself about groups I belong to. A hetero-stereotype is one that other people impose on me. We were asked to talk to someone in our host country about the stereotypes there are for United States Americans. I talked to my co-worker, Jennifer, for this project.
We started our lunch like we normally do, talking about how busy it is today, the class Jennifer is taking at night, or our dogs. But then we brought up the perception of United States Americans in Costa Rica. Jennifer had never been to the US, so a lot of her perceptions were based on interactions she has had with another US student and the media. She mentioned that there seems to be a large sense of patriotism for US Americans. She also brought up a certain degree of arrogance and and ignorance with other groups of people.
I think that solely relying on media to make assumptions about a whole group of people is not the best modus operandi. I also think that media tends to highlight the worst of things– in this case the bad actions of US Americans. But I think she is not entirely wrong. There is a large degree of patriotism that we see in the US– one could argue it is growing day by day too. Also most of the times US Americans do seem to be arrogant, but I think that anyone from any group can be arrogant; it just shows in different ways.
I was really interested to learn about her perception of US Americans and I can’t wait to update y’all soon. Hasta Luego.