It begins

You walk into class 5 minutes before it starts and take a seat by the aisle. You look around and see some of the familiar faces of your classmates talking, smiling, all and all having a good time. The professor is in the front of the class setting up his computer and clipping the microphone to his Tommy Bahama shirt. Now that's how you know you're at a Caribbean med school, you think.

The professor begins speaking to silence the class and dims the light so everyone can see the powerpoint slides projected onto the screen. The professor introduces himself and goes into where he's from, where he studied, what he has done with his research and life... and then he starts lecturing.

You stare at him for a moment. He's speaking, but it can't be English. No, no this is definitely not in English. You're in the wrong class. You don't have a clue what he's saying. Is it his accent that you're having a hard time with? No, no that can't be it because you can recognize some words like, "the" and "and". The pictures projected on the screen look somewhat familiar but all the text written is unintelligible. Is this all in Chinese, you wonder. You continue to stare dumbly at the professor who's gesturing, pointing, and speaking animatedly of what's on the slides, but you can't make sense of what he's trying to say. His words mean nothing to you, his whole sentences mean nothing to you. Someone raises a hand and asks a question using the same strange language. You don't even know what the question was. Everyone else is scribbling notes or typing furiously and you look down at your empty piece of paper. After 50 minutes of this nonsense, class ends and you are able to understand the people around you again. Most are discussing what's next, what to study, their hunger, their sleepiness, etc and the few... the few just like you, are pale with that look of horror on their face, thinking exactly what you are thinking.

"How the hell am I going to pass anatomy?"