It's all of 9:45 pm on a sweltering Monday evening here in our new home. I'm sitting at our very nice dining table on our very attractive, albeit very uncomfortable, kitchen chairs marking past graduate assessments. I'm not sure that I like the fact that doing something as strenuous as marking causes me to break out in a sweat.
It is hot.
This week is an atypical week for us. Our humble little office has welcomed in throngs of our colleagues from throughout the South Pacific for a week of workshops.
Well, our office didn't welcome them as we're holding the workshop at a local hotel but we welcomed them.
I'm not entirely sure on what the definition of a workshop is but our workshop is basically a series of sessions where people from around the region share their concerns, problems, solutions, questions, answers, etc. There are short lectures by some facilitators and then the workshop breaks off into groups based on their profession (ophthalmologist or nurse or student) or home country.
Since Nicole and I are not from the region we don't participate in the small groups but sit off on the side biding our time. It is a tad boring but I had the pleasure of
being told volunteering to facilitate one of the focus group sessions about 45 mintues before it occurred.
Its been interesting because a lot of the higher ups from our funding agency are here for the workshop. I met them but they have been quite busy with other things so I wasn't able to make a real connection. I'll try to be good and send cards to them saying it was nice to meet them and blah, blah, blah.
Monday was actually a busy day for Nicole and I. Monday was a holiday here (Prophet Mohammed's birthday aka Muslim Christmas???) so the workshop couldn't start until Tuesday as none of the nurses or doctors from here would come in on their day off.
So on Monday Nicole and I assessed about 9 past graduate nurses on their practical skills and on a written exam. A bunch of others should be assessed but their flight schedules didn't allow them to be assessed on Monday. If there is time we may do it later in the week.
So for the past week or so I was busy developing an appropriate series of practical tests as well as developing an appropriate written exam.
The written exam that was approved by my "bosses" was actually a lot of fun to create but looking at the results I'm not sure it was well understood.
The first half of the test involved me telling a bit of a patient story. The first part of the first question read:
"A 67 year old woman presents to your clinic complaining of blurry, hazy vision. Her general appearance is that of a healthy woman although she did require the assistance of her daughter to guide her into your examination room."
I then gave the students a limited amount of time to tell me what other information they wanted to know about the patient's presenting complaint and what other history items they wanted to know. Nicole collected the papers after the time was up.
I then read more of the story (and put the pertinent information on a powerpoint slide). The second part of the story basically answered the first questions by telling all the information about the patient's main complaint and the rest of their genearl history. I then asked what tests they wanted to perform. And after a set amount of time collected those papers. I then gave the results of the tests I would have conducted and showed a picture and asked what their diagnosis was. How would they manage the patient and how would they counsel the patient?
I did four questions like this (it took about 90 minutes or so to conduct) and then wrote another 10 regular short answer test quesitons (I stole some of the short answer questions from the test bank...)
We did the written test in the afternoon.
In the morning I watched 9 students do part of an eye exam and Nicole watched 8 of them do a different part.
It was exhausting especially because I had to watch two people at the same time (due to time constraints). By the time I got to the 9th person I could barely stand but at least for the 9th I only had to watch one person and I could sit down for 5 minutes of the 45 minutes it took her to do the testing.
We were lucky enough to have morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea provided.
Unfortunately morning tea was at 11:00 am, lunch was at 1:00 pm and afternoon tea was at 3:30 pm. A lot of food in a short time.
The menu the caterer provided in their "bid" to provide food for us mentioned that we would be blessed with:
"Ass sandwiches, Ass scones, and Ass cookies" throughout the day.
Nicole was very disappointed that when the day finally arrived we only had ass sandwhiches and ass cookies. She was really looking forward to the ass scones.
This post is going backwards but that's ok.
On Saturday we went absoulutely crazy and ate out for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
For breakfast we tried yet another coffee shop and had some really good croissants. The best we've found so far. After that Nicole went and had a pedicure and I went and wandered the streets looking for a hardware store so we could buy a broom and a mop.
After the pedicure we went to our favourite Chinese place for lunch where for a mere $7.50 (local currency), about $4 US we shared a lunch that we couldn't finish.
We then went home for a bit before going to our first movie here!
It was a lot of fun despite the strange odour in the theater and the strange tasting popcorn. The popcorn almost tasted like it had some type of spice in it. I wouldn't get it again but it wasn't terrible.
We made the mistake of going to a movie we knew nothing about. Watchmen.
It is extermely violent and contained a fair amount of nudity. Imagine our surprise.
Futher imagine our surprise when as we realized what type of movie we were in we saw that their were many, many kids in the theater. The kids directly in front of us had their eyes covered by a concerened parent once in a while but the 12-15 year olds attending sans parent had a VERY good time. haha.
No ratings here I guess. Back home its rated 18a I guess. So funny. It was neat to watch because the movie goers are not a silent bunch here. A lot of interaction with the movie.
We'll make it a regular occurence to go to the movies here. Its quite cheap and it was fun.
Yesterday (not to make this post too confusing temporally)we were treated to a nice dinner by our funders. About 10 of us went to a Japanese restaurant. The food was decent. The service? Meh.
After waiting for some time to be acknowledged someone finally waved down a waitress and gave her order. Much to our surprise as soon as she finished her order the waitress ran off. She returned a number minutes later and only after being flagged down again. The second person ordered and the waitress ran off again. The first time was funny. The second? Bizarre.
We waited and waited. The waitress finally returned and I firmly asked if we could ALL order before she left. She looked very, very confused as she scanned the table. I said "I'll start and then we'll go around the table this way" (waving my hand in a clockwise fashion). She relented and eventually we all ordered.
The food took forever and then arrived in no particular order. People who ordered first got nothing. Others who ordered later got half of what they ordered. I waited forever! (Luckily I could sneak some sushi from Nicole). Some people never got what they wanted. Our CEO didn't get anything I think. She ended up getting full just by sampling from others. It was annoying but a funny memory. This was really the first time we've had any trouble with service. Its usually slow but this was ridiculous.
Next week we start a whole new module that we haven't prepared for so our days and nights are going to get a lot longer over the latter part of the week. A lot to do but we're having fun and are comfortable here finally.
We are expecting our first visitors in June during our break and will be spending that time in various parts of the island finally getting to see what all is out there.
We have another long weekend next week (10 days from now) and are trying to find a cheap resort to spend a couple of days at.
We'll see.
Well thats our big update.
Its hard to write thoughtful things when I actually have to work for a living now.
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