Intro

Welcome to my blog. I’m going to warn you now: don’t expect too much excitement from me. I just feel like having a place to relate my tales.

That being said, hello there, I’m Heather. I’m 25 years old and halfway through my 2^nd year of medical student at Ross University. For those who may not know Ross is located on the little island of Dominica way down in the West Indies (between Guadaloupe & Martinique (??). The way Ross works is that students spend 16 months down here completing the first 2 years of their medical education, and then head to Miami, FL or Saginaw, MI for a 5^th semester before starting clinical rotations in US hospitals.

Coming here has turned out to be more of an adjustment than I could have imagined, but so far I’m still breathing, and as time has gone I’ve become less miserable than the end of my first semester. At that point I was convinced that the island hated all of us American & Canadian students, and wondered how I could possibly survive another year here. Eight months later I realize that they don’t *really* hate us. The Dominicans just live differently than we do.

Aside from the people, it is also noteworthy that some of the facilities are a bit more primitive than most Americans are accustomed to. For example, there have been multiple occasions where the water has just randomly stopped working, or my shower switched from the temperature that I chose to freezing cold to scalding hot in a matter of 2 minutes. There’s also the lovely quirk that the internet at my apartment is unreliable [has been in & out of service for roughly the past month, though these past few days the “in” hasn’t happened]. However, these factors likely seem insignificant in light of the fact that some/many of the locals live in tiny concrete buildings with no screens and bathe in the river.

Anyway, that’s enough of an idea to get you started. Unfortunately you’ve missed the tales of most of my time here, but if I get bored I may recount some info.