After months of hard graft in my penultimate year studying medicine, spending days practising sticking needles into people and evenings with my nose in a pathology textbook, we are to be rewarded with a ten week medical elective. Whilst it will be a much-looked forward to break and is an excellent opportunity for travel to far-away climes, I will be putting my new-found skills to use by working for two medical charities providing free healthcare to indigenous children in Guatemala and Mexico (www.primerospasos.org; www.oaxacastreetchildrengrassroots.org).

You can follow my (mis)adventures here, and hopefully learn a little about the social and cultural aspects of these two intriguing countries along with me. And I promise swine flu virus cannot be transmitted via the web (if I have learned anything from my studies this year!).