Met with the Dean and Assistant Dean of the School of Nursing today...both Professors who didn't speak English!! Needless to say it was a very interesting meeting with the ?office manager acting as an interpreter....we had lots of smiles and nodding so I'm not sure if they understood what I was saying or they were being polite. Anyway the meeting went really well....I think!!

I am teaching first year nursing students (29 of them) Communication skills, second year students (30 of them) Fundamentals of Nursing and then Medical/Surgical Nursing and then I have a postgraduate class of 26 who need intensive English so that they can read and understand the nursing literature. As far as I know I only have 1 male student so it would seem that nursing is still very much female dominated in China. I meet my first and second year students on Thursday when I start teaching them!!

I can't believe how organised the Uni is....class lists, class schedules, teaching roster, bus schedule...they have even organised another teacher to accompany me out to the other campus on Thursday so I don't get lost!!!.....everything has been given to me before I have started to teach!!! Truly amazing for China as anyone who has worked here will tell you.....mind you its not the same for all foreign teachers here either.....I've hit it lucky with my faculty.

I am starting to get really excited now. It will be wonderful to have manageable class sizes to start with. After having 60-75 students it will be so much more rewarding working with smaller groups, charting their progress and having input into their grading.

Having negotiated a schedule I can also start planning my life. Basically I will be teaching Tuesdays and Thursdays and allowing time for some planning and marking...the rest of my time is my own...so will be looking at starting to take some Chinese lessons and maybe some form of martial arts...plenty to investigate and explore here as well.

So its an early start on Thursdays....bus leaves at 0650 but I am back home by 1300....time for a power nap if needed!!! Tuesdays is a little more "livable" with the bus leaving at 0915, back home by 1300 and then my post grads from 1830-2030 at night on my home campus.......a 2 minute walk from my apartment. All in all everything is going amazing well so fingers crossed it continues!!

Bye for now. xxx