Day 3 in Kabul

Day 3....the first day to teach. My classes are being held at the IT Center at Kabul Polytechnic University. The first week of classes will consist of 5 half day classes to teach the Introduction to ArcGIS I class to the faculty of both Kabul Polytechnic University and Kabul University.

The lab is nice and consist of better machines than what I use in the lab at CDC. The downside is that the AC is broken and it is very hot in the afternoon....so the students looked tired and it can't be because of my teaching style. :)

The ESRI Afghanistan distributor provided the books for the class and that is where the first problem arose.....they did not have the CDs in them with the data for the exercises. Luckily I had it on my thumbdrive so we were able to load it on each machine but then ran into the next problem. They had put 9.1 on the machines instead of 9.2 so ArcGIS could not read the 9.2 mxd files for the exercises or the file geodatabases since they came out in 9.2. So I lectured first and then tried to rebuild the mxds in 9.1 so that they could continue...but it didn't work very well so we ended the day a little early.

For my lectures, I have a translator who translates each lecture slide so this really slows the class down and then of course you have Afghanis reading english manuals which slows it down some more. So it will take every bit of the 5 days to finish this class.

That day was my first access to the internet and email since my guesthouse didn't have it yet. It is amazing how disconnected you feel when you do not have access to email or the internet.

So far my diet has consisted of a lot of bread, Naun. For breakfast, I get Naun and jam and for lunch I had Naun and Kabob, and then for dinner Naun and a potato/meat mixture. It is good bread though....maybe not for every meal...but good.

After teaching, Jim gave me a ride back to the guesthouse where I had my first dinner there since I had eaten dinner at the wedding party the first night and then Sofi's house the next night. Then to my room for some work on my advanced class for next week.