Canadian Student Nurse in Bangladesh

That is the current time in Bangladesh. The past 5 days have been....shocking, to say the least. I guess this time, without my sister in a country so different from Canada, I have experienced culture shock. Maybe I've become more observant than when I was in India in 2008, or maybe my sister cushioned a lot of it last time. Either way, it's been pretty difficult the past few days. My pride doesn't like me typing that out, but this is a candid blog and I'm sure, looking back 2 years from now, I will chuckle.

Let me see. I arrived Saturday night and was EXHAUSTED. I slept quite poorly on the plane and fell asleep on my journal facedown after settling into my room, which is quite comfortable. I share a room with cockroaches (too many to name) and some friendly geckos. I shower with some cockroaches, too. The baby ones I can deal with, but the big ones still scare me. My flatmate is wonderful and has taken me to exchange money and shopping for a salwar kameez. The faculty have been very friendly and hospitable. I was so taken aback by the rickshaws and the busy-ness of the streets when I first arrived at night. The roads were shockingly busy. I'm not sure why I was so suprised by that. I swear India's streets at night were less so.

I've taken to journalling a lot. I think it's because for the first few days I was slightly confused by everything and feeling quite lost. I did, however, manage to walk to school by myself after the first 2 days( a task that sounds much easier than it actually is!!!!) The puddles are HUGE on the trek to school, and the local kids shout out 'hi! good morning!' to us as we walk by. It's quite cute. On the walk home one day, I saw some kids playing cricket in one of the vacant plots of land and if I see them playing again, I will ask to join, because I've never played before.

I've assisted in teaching a class (on Tue) and that was on mouth care and bed baths. On Wed I taught that same class independently. A shout out to all the BCIT nursing ppl - you will never know how much PBL can change you until you actually have to execute it and realize that you can execute the concept of 'chairing a meeting' in a classroom so well. Major props to BCIT for teaching me that.

I'm still quite intimidated teaching fellow nursing students. The culture's slightly different here. On my first day, Karen, the department head told me not to be humble about my skills (something that I tend to do) and not to play the 'Oh, I'm still a student, JUST like youuuuu' - another one of my strategies....another thing she said was that I could not be friends with them. I could be their friend, but they could not be my friend. Yet another hurtle to jump over for me. If you know me well, you know that I have this inherent need to be friends with everyone - weakness/strength, you decide for yourself. Therein lies two major things I have to work on but I am so thrilled. This is partly what I came here for, to see how far I can push myself, right?

I'm also supposed to be teaching this diagnostics labs course in July. When I read the course material, I FREAKED out - I honestly did. It was so in depth and I couldn't even understand much of it. But after talking to Karen, she said that I could modify it so that it is more nursing related and I can give her the proposal for her to look over. This is another huge learning point for me because I will need to teach patho in each lab test. This is huge for me because patho is one of my weak points. I'm really glad I've come here. It honestly seems like everything's happening to push me to be better, as weird as that sounds.

Anyway, I have to finish up my first aid course before I go to open lab! BCIT folk, you have no idea how lucky we are to work in a lab like ours. I will post pics soon, if I can.

Love you all, thinking of you.
Cass Ma