Cut and Glue

I'm down to my last couple of weeks at the CSL. Where has the time gone?? I've been cutting and gluing for the past couple of days so I thought I'd take a break and blog...(I know! I'm making excuses!) But in my defense, I need to cut 100 pages into five sections and then glue them on to brown paper lunch bags. When I finish I should have 500. And I probably have to do it again when I glue on the stories.I'm pretty sure I don't want to cut nor glue for a very long time after this. All I can say is that the freshmen better like it! We have been working on projects in order to get ready for the Hunger Banquet, which is on August 17, 2010 at 5:30p.m. in the Rinker Field House. These bags are advertising initiatives giving freshmen information on how they can get involved. Sometime along the way, we also have to ask for food donations, make a banner, and finish planning. I think asking for food donations will be the hardest part for me. For some reason, I don't really like it when they say no. haha.

Well, last week I think I had mentioned something about the Pepsi Refresh Project. I logged on at 7am on July 1st thinking I would submit my already written project. But nope...there are already 1000 entries. The lesson learned: submit the project at midnight on August 1st. You guys will have to stay tuned for when I bug you with thirty days of reminder e-mails! :)

Otherwise, Stetson is just cruising along summertime. Florida doesn't quite beat Jack Kelly's 111 degree weather in NJ. But it has been raining almost everyday. Surprising, huh?

Heat Waves

Hey Everyone! I hope you all had an awesome 4th of July..even those out of country! This Reflections blog rocks, and by the way...no other school has one this strong. Woo! So, my car told me it was 111 DEGREES here in NJ today. Yeah. WHAT!? Well, I just put a substantial post on my bloogg so check it out!:

http://northsoutheastcoast.blogspot.com/

Also, so you don't think I'm totally slacking off here..check out some of the new Bonner Training videos I've been working on:



There's some more, but all of these are kind of still secret..so you never saw these, right? ;)

SoS Weeks 4 and 5...Avoiding Pink Eye and New Training

Week 4 has definitely been a challenge to get through. Its the last week of FAU's Mid-Summer session, so we have to make sure that students who receive extended time on exams have turned in all of their paperwork, check to see if the exams have been received my professors (regular font, large print for vision-impaired students, audio recording for physically impaired students or blind students, etc.), double check that the students accomodations have been approved, and finally, once the student finishes the exam, we have sure be 100% positive that each and every exam is delivered to the correct office to the correct professor. Needless to say, there was PLENTY of work to be done during Week 4, but it was all worth it for all of our appreciative students. One memory in particular that was very touching to me was one I met a graduate student who was physically impaired in a wheelchair. I had worked with him before but never realized that extent of his physical impairment. As I was leading him to his personal testing room where he would receive 2.5x's extra time on his final exam, I opened up the audio recording program on the computer since he is unable to use his hands. I thought he was only unable to write, but it turns out that he can't use his hand at all except for the joystick on his electric wheel chair. When we were in the testing room, he asked me to put the headphones on his head and then had me adjust them about three or four times until they were comfortable. This made me appreciate every little movement that I am able to make with my hands.

Later that week, I learned about Asperger's Syndrome which is also known as High-Functioning Autism. I was told that Asperger's students are extremely bright and are often the most intelligent students in a course. They absorb material like sponges, and retain large amounts of information. There disability is seen in social situations...they literally have no regard for how to act in social settings. They don't know what is appropriate or not and have a hard time communicating at all with others let alone communicating effectively. Most Asperger's students are male and their speech is often about random topics that have nothing to do with the task at hand. I witnessed the struggle that Asperger's students go through when on of our Asperger's students used our computer lab for two hours before informing us that he was infected with Pink Eye. Because of his disability, he didn't realize that it is innapropriate to be in public settings with conjuctivitis. We kindly asked him to return only when he had a Doctor's note and quickly went to work disinfecting the lab and the rest of the office. I really felt bad for him, though.

Week 5 has been the most challenging week thus far. Our Coordinator of Notetaking Services is taking off for vacation in England until July 20th and I have been chosen to learn her position and fill in for her. I never realized how much paperwork, computer records, and filing had to be done in order to pair one of our disabled students with a volunteer notetaker. There were literally moments during my training when I wanted to quick, because I was so incredibly frustrated with all of the crazy details to remember. Thankfully, our Coordinator is one of the most patient women I've ever met. I was finally getting the hang of things by Thursday, and by Friday, I was barley asking her questions on how to put the data in the system, match the student with a notetaker, file the paperwork, inform the volunteer that they have a volunteer position, while simultaneously contacting professors who are being stubborn about informing the class that a volunteer notetaker is needed. I am learning to balance all of the tasks at hand, and realize that all of my work pays off when I see that relief on a disabled student's face when they are informed that they have been matched with a volunteer notetaker for one of their courses. Let's see how this week goes...I'm on my own without help! Bring on the challenges!!! hehehe

Thailand post 6

Sorry it's been a while, they're keeping me busy here, as usual. I'll just pick up right where I left off, in Mae Sot:
After a free Sunday, I was able to spend another morning in the Mae Tao clinic, in the surgical department. I also took a break at one point to visit the Acupuncture Department, and it was really quite amazing. A German doctor runs the unit, and they see ~50 patients a day with quite a lot of successful cases. We met a man who a few months ago had a cement wall fall on him, breaking his back and severing his spinal cord near the bottom, leaving him paraplegic. He was early on in his treatment (only several days I think), and he was already moving his legs. It was more than incredible to hear story after story about these unbelievable recoveries that would never happen in the Western Medicine world, but here these patients were, coming back day after day to prove that whatever the medics were doing was working when nothing else had.
Later that day, we headed across the border into Burma. We got there at about 4pm, only to learn that the border closes at 5:30pm. We loaded into 2 tuk-tuks, and booked it to a few temples, in the pouring rain, before racing back to the border into [of course] sunny Thailand. Home sweet home =)


The next day, we left Mae Sot and headed north to the Mae La refugee camp, the largest of the Thailand camps for Burmese refugees. It was weird to be there, as an outsider peering in on the lives of people who are suffering, and for what? The camp is occupied by as much as 100,000 people (this is one of the NGO's estimates, although the boy who showed us around said 30,000, and the principle of the school said 70,000. A lot of the refugees don't register, and just sneak in, so no one really knows). Looking around, it was strangely beautiful-- with the green mountains jutting into the air serving as the backdrop for thousands of handmade thatch-roofed bamboo homes-- until you realize what injustice has created this place. Our plan was to work in the camp clinic during our visit, but when we arrived, the clinic director had left for an emergency and the visiting doctor in charge was afraid of getting in trouble (with reason: the Thai gov't has been very strict about visitors lately, ever since a group of journalist came through and bashed them for the conditions). Honestly, I was impressed (?) with the set up of the camp-- it really was more like a village than the shambled slum I had pictured in my head (it's been established for something like 30 years).


After that, we began our drive back to Bangkok, stopping in Kamphaeng Phet to sleep. When we continued our journey, we stopped in Lopburi (where monkeys have taken over the downtown ruins, seriously), and also Wat Pra Bhat Nam Put AIDS Hospice, which was quite nice as far as those things go.



We finally arrived back to the lung-destroying city of Bangkok, and have been going non-stop this week. We hit up the Department of Traditional and Alternative Medicine (part of the Ministry of Public Health, which is awesome), the Chest Disease Institute (TB is very common here), Songdhammakalayani Bhikkhuni Arama (a women's Buddhist monastery), and more. Right now, we're heading downtown to visit the Chinese Traditional Medicine Hospital, and tomorrow we'll be at the Dermatology Hospital learning about leprosy.


I was telling Warren that yesterday I felt pretty out of my league at the CDI. We met with a couple pulmonologists (chest Drs.) and went over chest x-rays of several cases in the hospital. They would ask for abnormal findings in the film, differential diagnoses, recommended treatment, etc., and I had nothing to give. It was definitely a humbling experience that showed me how much I have left to learn. Yikes.


But I cannot emphasize how much I have learned on this trip. And laughed. And been in awe [of landscapes, architecture, etc.]. The other day we ate dinner atop the tallest building in Thailand, and I realized just how large Bangkok is. No American city knows this scale (maybe LA?); it just never ends. So like I said: a learning experience (I've decided I don't like big cities…).

In a few short days, I will be in New Jersey visiting family, and this experience will be behind me. Thanks for the prayers and support-- it's been an amazing journey!

Girls Inc. Week 2

Hey Guys!

So last week was my second week working at Girls Inc. Things went great! The girls are absolutely hilarious. I mainly just did arts and crafts with them, which is interesting since I'm not really an arts and crafts person. Most of their stuff looked way better than mine. I mainly just stuck to operating the hot glue gun for them. We also decorated large water bottles that we are going to use for a penny drive for Pennies for the Planet. So all of the change the girls collect will go to helping to save wildlife.
One of the main things the girls are all working on right now is their routine for the talent show. Almost every girl is participating in one way or another. Most of the girls are preparing dance routines and lip singing performances. A few girls are going to sing for real...which should be really good. Anyways, it's a pretty big deal so I'm really looking forward to seeing what all the girls come up with.
This week the girls will be starting a garden, if the weather cooperates. It rained everyday last week so the girls couldn't start it at all. That is basically everything we are working on right now. Talk to you guys in a week :)

HoundHaven Week 3

~~Another week at hound haven and it has been so much fun. We have brought in 5 new dogs this week and one was a 5 month old puppy. The others were older lab mix's. I have gotten into some trouble with one of our new dogs. He is a hound/lab mix and a strond dog. He jumps up on all of us but not out of aggression but just to say hello. He is a massive dog so when he jumps it hurts. I now have bruises and scratches all over my body but I have yet to give up on him. Instead of giving up I just keep walking him and trying to deal with him. I have learned that to keep a jumping dog from hurting you is to turn your back on them. The back takes the brunt of the force and they can't hurt the important parts of your body like your face, chest, and most of your arms. There are times that I still get banged up a little but turning your back on them shows them that you will not pay attention to them when they are jumping and the dog will slowly learn not to jump up on the volunteers. I've also had to deal with some difficult people volunteering. Some of the volunteers have been there much longer than me but they still don't know how to do some of the chores as well as I have been taught. Thankfully I work every morning so I know those dogs better than anyone there. I know about what happened to them the day before and how their behavior has been that whole week. I am so thankful to be able to be with these dogs everyday and I hope that before I leave most of them are adopted or into foster homes and are all well taken care of.

The calm before the storm?

This week was a little bit slower than the others. Usually at the beginning of the summer the office of Meadowbrook Academy is full of things that need to be copied, filed, organized and moved around. So far, this has been what I have spent the majority of my time doing and because of that most of it is done! I spent some time this week making copies and transferring files but towards the end of each day everything was finished and I got to spend more time talking with the ladies that work in the office. The week was a little slow for the office ladies too so it was nice for all of us to take breaks together and just hang out.

Next week, the office will be closed and most of the workers will be on vacation. I will be spending my time with a few of the teachers and staff organizing the textbooks that will be used in the upcoming school year. It will involve lots of heavy lifting, moving, and time spent in the sun walking from building to building which will be work. The good news is once everything is moved into the correct location the school will be able to check a HUGE project off their list and I will get a few good workouts in!