For the past four weeks, the STEER program has truly been a learning and life changing experience. As a future health care professional and a graduate student in Masters of Public Health in Health Promotion and Community Health Sciences with a Concentration in Border Health, the elective course has helped me make the necessary connections between the environment, public health, and medicine. Being a local resident born and raised in the Lower Rio Grande Valley has opened my eyes to key environmental health issues that our U.S. / Mexico border is currently facing. Living in a predominantly Hispanic Spanish speaking area in the country and having the opportunity to interact with a diverse student body from different parts of the country, international students, with different educational and ethnic backgrounds has truly been beneficial for me in terms of being more aware of the area I live. I have grown through the exchanges of conversations among my peers by listening and questioning to the different perspective and ideas on environmental public health and border medicine. Some of the unique experiences about this program that I really enjoyed was learning about curanderismo and visiting a curandera or folk healer for the first time. This experience gave me a unique sense of our Mexican traditional culture embedded along the border. My encounter with a traditional folk healer broadened my awareness and increased my culture sensitivity and competency for the population in my community who still believe in this type of folk medicine. I also enjoyed visiting and speaking with Ms. Castro who is a seasonal migrant farm worker. Going inside her home and looking at the limited conditions she lives in was a humbling experience for me. I enjoyed being able to apply my skills in Medical Spanish to help translate the conversation between the medical students and Ms. Castro. During our group discussion with her, she mentioned to us that she and t