First Day of Teaching

After a quick breakfast of toast and jam, it was off to class for the first day of teaching.   I started by talking about my journey as a scientist and the work I do at the University of Washington and the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering.  The monks were very curious about how I became a neuroscientist and found it strange that my father did not tell me what to do or what career I should pursue.

The history of neuroscience was next.  Of course, it is difficult to do the entire history of neuroscience in 60 minutes, so I just hit a few milestones:  trephining, Eqyptian contributions, Aristotle, Hipposcrates, Galen, Vesalius, Galvani, Volta, Phineas Gage, Broca, Golgi, Cajal,  Loewi and Huxley.

After lunch, I worked with a group of monks who is making teaching boxes.  These boxes are filled with supplies and activities about a particular scientific topic.  The group I worked with was creating a "vision" teaching box.  The activity they showed me was an eye model made with agar (a gelatin-like material), a small clear bead for the lens, a plastic sheet for the cornea, a string for the optic nerve and various colored papers for the other parts of  the eye such as the retina and sclera.  They had me explain how the right and left visual  fields end up on the opposite sides of the brain.

 I also watched another group present their activity to the other monks.  This group was creating a box about the circulatory system and how exercise changes heart rate.  After a baseline recording of pulse rate, the monks raced outside and jumped up and down to get their hearts going.  Then they rushed back inside and took their pulse.

In the afternoon, Modesto and I walked down to a small tea shop by the main road, a 10 minute walk from the Songsten Library.  Instead of tea, we got small boxes of guava juice. It must have taken me 20 minutes to drink the juice because the thin straw kept collapsing.  I was back at the same tea shop later that evening for chai (tea); one cup of chai for
8 rupees (~17 cents).