Happy Monday

So I definitely took a zolpidem (“Ambien” for those with awesome insurance) last night. I always get nervous before starting something new. I don’t think I’m alone in that. Anyways, it’s usually hard for me to shut my brain off enough to relax, and then I usually end up tossing and turning (more than usual) to wake up BEFORE my alarm. So this morning, I woke up to the gentle vibration of my Fitbit. So, for Monday, my day is going pretty well so far.

I woke up at 5:45, made some breakfast, got dressed and left by 6:45 to walk to my shuttle bus. The walk takes about 5 minutes. The shuttle bus is near Shanghai Children’s Medical Center (SCMC) and leaves at 7:00am on. the. dot. I mean, the driver, is very serious about keeping things on time. The clock flips from 6:59 to 7:00 and he’s off. So, I settle in, and listen, first to a Chinese lesson on saying “Thank You” 4 ways, to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” I have seriously missed my NPR. I am happy to at least keep up a little with the “news” from home. The episode, “Lance Bass”, as he was a featured guest, was very timely, as Kiki and I just watched “Fifty Shades of Grey” last night. Shameless, but we had to see what all the hype was about. I mean, research, right? I also learned that Kenny G helped to invent the Frappucino. Seriously? I was subjected to the gentle earpiercing melodies of Kenny G as a child (sorry Mom), and now he has to go ruin Starbucks for me? I can’t drink that crap anyways. *Lactose intolerant* girl here. And, now I have more random bits of useless info in my head to whip out at parties.

And today, I will be sharing not so useless information to a group of young, bright, shiny minds. I am teaching my first class at San Da University for my volunteer experience with Project Hope. The class is “Introduction and development tendency of intensive care nursing”. I’m sure something got a little but lost in translation there, but nevertheless, I am teaching the overview of critical care nursing. The most challenging part thus far has been creating ALL OF THE COURSE CONTENT. This class is 2 – 80 minute periods, so I basically have to talk for almost 3 hours. I’m not such a fan of public speaking, but I am thankful my class of 7-9 students won’t be as intimidating (I hope). I was kind of left to my own devices creating this content, as the ICU book the students have is about 100 pages and all in Chinese. Maybe the book is small because the Chinese characters take up less space? Any nursing book I had in school was at least 500 pages, and became useless the next semester because the 113^th edition just came out. Sorry about your luck, but you can’t even get $5 from the university bookstore to “sell it back”. So I held on to those giant books for years because I had paid good money for them. Only to eventually donate them to Goodwill. Hey, it is a tax write off after all.

So anyways, I had to create a PowerPoint, which I haven’t done since at least 2010 for my MSN. It lacks bells and whistles, and if I can get the VPN to work while in class, I may actually get to show a YouTube video. I’m nervous and excited. I don’t know if that will cross the cultural barrier, but I hope I can get these students as excited about nursing as I still am.

Happy Monday everyone!