Guam 07

Wow! Time flies when you are working hard! I arrived safely and on time. The typhoon missed Guam and then headed toward Saipan and then eastward heading away from Tokyo. Although we had a bit of turbulence while flying, we did okay time wise. We flew quite far south out of Tokyo before heading east toward Guam in order to get around the storm. It really covered a large area over the Pacific Ocean.

We have been really busy preparing and teaching our courses. Ray teaches Research Skills M-F afternoons in the Library from 2:30-5pm and that is the same time I teach Keyboarding and Introduction to Computers in the computer lab. My course includes word-processing, databases, spreadsheets, brochures, etc. etc. On Tues. and Thurs. the students come either to the Library or the Lab to work on their assignments and projects, to ask questions, etc. 2 1/2 hours is a long time to have to teach and keep the students occupied. We are both wiped out at the end of the day. We stay at the apartment mornings to prepare and then spend our afternoons at the College. I have been away from computer basics for a long time so it has been a lot of work to catch up with what is new.

The Lab computers are a constant challenge. Today 3 of the computers wouldn't work, two keyboards would not work and one computer would not save. HELP!! They were supposed to have new. There are PCs, MACs, IMACs and Linux in the lab. All with different operating systems. HELP!! To top that off, there were four different word-processing programs on the different computers. We finally got it down to two (MSWord for PC and MAC and OpenOffice). When I was asked if I would teach the course at the College again they told me that all of the computers had OpenOffice (which I had never heard of but learned). Then I get here and surprise, surprise!!

I have 11 students. Some know a bit about computers and keyboarding. Some know nothing. However, we have to have them all in the same class. You know how that goes. You don't want to go to fast for those who know nothing and you don't want to bore those who know something. So you ROLL, ROLL, ROLL. It is a lot of work as I am trying to teach both wp programs at the same time. I find I type out a lot of "How TO" handouts for the students. It keeps me out of mischief, keeps me very busy preparing and teaching, but I am feeling challenged and enjoying it. I certainly have not had time to get bored. I believe Ray feels the same way about his Research course. So life is busy, fun, rewarding, relaxing at times (I don't know exactly when), and challenging and we are loving it.