Day 3 of Travel

I will say that when we came here, I was expecting to see more signs of poverty. I expected it to look a little more run down than it was. I have found out that this is not the case. I have also learned that a lot of the people here are more willing to speak with us because they want to be able to teach us the true ways of their culture and not the stereotype. I also did not realize how touristy this area was going to be. When learning about their history today I found it very interesting how they created their items of daily use. I thought it was interesting that they were able to use various parts of animals to help them make things like string and glue. It blows my mind that they were able to figure out the different ingredients it would take to create this and how creative and patient of a culture this is. I learned today how family oriented they are. When a member of the family is in the hospital or having a procedure, the whole family shows up for support. Kayla brought up a point that her mom was going in for a procedure and she did not think anything of going in with her mom, and I would have felt the same way. This is not something that I would have been worried about either, but in this culture it is normal to make sure that you are there with your family during something that may not seem like a big deal because they believe that you never when the end is the end. They have a school that the parents can send their children to where they learn everything about their culture. The parents even sign a contract stating that they will only speak that language at home, and they also go through training so that they can help their children to be successful. We also learned today, through Dorian from the museum, that at their high school they do some things that help them learn more about her culture. She spoke about a mentor program that they do to help to teach the children about their own culture. While writing this I can only think of the many differences that we have and how I hope that we can someday adopt these values. The way they have set up their hospital is in the most holistic way by making sure that the patient and their needs always come first. They want to make sure that the patients keep coming back and get the best care that they can receive, by also making it the most convenient. They made sure that they can get almost all of their services done in one place because they realize that if they do not they will have to drive many different places and some of these places are far and most do not have the means to travel that far. I will say that throughout school I can see how it is turning, because we learn all about how it is important to look at more than just the illness that presents in the person, but looking at them as a whole person and realizing if they are not healthy in other aspects of life they will cannot be fully healthy.