The second week of school, I was scheduled to teach 21 classes.  The classes are an hour long and run every day Monday through to Saturday.   With the task of teaching nursing process to the 1^st year students, and community health and nursing research to the 2^nd year students, I used the whole weekend to prepare for the arduous week ahead of me.

Not surprisingly I became sick that weekend.  Perhaps from the high workload.  Perhaps from all the adjustments my body was trying to make.  Perhaps from a bad apple, literally.

Ultimately, I missed classes on Monday.  Down to 17 classes this week.

Classes with the 1^st year students went well.  They are new, eager to learn, and the content was very easy to comprehend.  We had already spent a week together learning about the assessment phase & nursing diagnosis phase of nursing process, and conducting assessments on the maternity ward in the Indore Christian Hospital.

Classes with the 2^nd years were more challenging.  I was the newcomer.  They had all ready adapted to the teaching styles of the institution during first year.  They were more confident in their place at the school, and rightly so, but this conflicted with my insecurities (and still does sometimes). As a whole, they were resistant to change.

Community health class, which I had thought would be starting in the second semester, was difficult at first.  (Actually there is only one semester that runs from July until the end of May). Teaching 4 classes a day in an eight hour work day, with one and a half hours of break time, left me with two and a half hours to prepare for all 4 classes.  I needed far more than that to ensure I was teaching a relatively culturally appropriate class.

Luckily, nursing research included teaching the students about computers.  Seven students at a time, seated in the computer lab, would formally learn about computers from me.  It makes me laugh, because I am one of those behind the techno curve back at home.  Here the knowledge I do have takes on more meaning when I am teaching students who have never touched a computer before.  Of my 22 students, only four had used a computer before.  It was for email.

Computer class is exciting and difficult.  It is difficult because there is no demonstration computer hooked up to a projector to show them what things are.  I just pace up and down the line, chasing 7 students going in all different directions.  Truth be told, I enjoy this class partially because of the hilarity of the whole situation: me teaching computer class, the questions the students ask about culturally different parts of the computer (what is a wizard?).

Some days there is no electricity.  I tried teaching computer class the first two days this happened, but am not anymore.

Success came one day when a student in computer class exclaimed “I will be able to use the computer better than my husband by the end of the year!”  She explained even though there was a computer in the house she never used it.  She simply did not know how or what she was capable of.

Not surprisingly, by the end of the week I was exhausted!