Balkumari College in Chitwan

The next day was our consultation at Balkumari college. We were greeted warmly by many faculty introductions and then broke into small groups. My group had a focus of health and sexuality, and the group was matched between our public health faculty, myself, some students, and their nursing and education faculty. We exchanged ideas around how our cultures handle health education differently. There is a strong curiosity about what a counseling program would look like, as well as how to be helpful to cancer patients and drug addicts. I did my best to communicate the value of being heard, or giving someone the respect of our rapt attention.

As we joined the larger group for tea, a gentleman approached me and asked for feedback on his English language psychology textbook. He had many pages of his draft, and we excused ourselves from the room where people were giving summaries of the small group discussions.

Much work had gone into this manuscript. Professor Shyam Sedai has had many books published, including another English language text on the subject of physical education. Unfortunately, the references in this book were all woefully out of date, with citations from the 1960s. There were many harmful stereotypes, and the task of editing was too daunting. I am not good at skimming, a practice my roommate Andrea tried to school me in to simplify my grading, but I still have the internalized High School English teacher in me.

I gave a few ideas and asked if my new friend would be able to communicate with me electronically after I return home. Shyam's goal is to receive a doctorate by 2010. I tell him I would be happy to assist via email. I wonder if he is ambitious enough to follow up?

A panel of us speak to a classroom of business students. It was a teat to see that perhaps 40% were young women. This was a first year class, and they asked about education requirements to go to school in the USA. One was eager to know how to improve her English.