Just Arrived...

  So, here I am, in Bangalore, India. I've had an absolutely slammed day. The day started, I guess, with landing in Bangalore at 4:30 am local time (that's 7pm Eastern). Then, it took a good solid hour to get through customs and get our bags. I'll tell you, waiting in a mob of 300 or so people waiting for your bags for 45 minutes is not what you want to do after traveling for 22 hours. After all that, we met Mickey and our driver for the ride into the city. We had a way to drive, so we were at the hotel at about 7 am.

Traffic is just a completely different beast here. There are lanes painted on the road, but no one follows them. Traffic moves fast and decisively. It's pretty impressive that there aren't lots of accidents what with the variety of vehicles, people, and animals in the street. People here walk in the street instead of on the sidewalk because the sidewalks are super dangerous. The streets I've seen so far are pretty nicely paved, but the sidewalks are insane. They are uneven, and often, there are sudden drop-offs of about 10-12 inches. Everyone walks in the streets. Everyone. It's just how things are done.

Speaking of the streets, we've been stared at a lot. I haven't felt unsafe at all, apart from the “oh my goodness, I'm in a big city feeling.” I think people are just genuinely curious. In fact, we are the only white people I've seen so far. Everyone else is Indian. I've seen a handful of people who look like they might be from southeast Asia, but other than that, we are the oddity.

The hotel is small. There are a four rooms downstairs and a few more upstairs. There's a sort of living/dining room between mine the rooms, so it's nice to have a bit of space to spread out. Our room has a nice little entryway, a main room with lots of closets, and a bathroom. The bathroom is a bit different. We have a regular toilet (yay!), tub and shower, but there is no shower curtain, so the whole bathroom gets wet when we shower. The mattresses are super hard, but we have an air conditioner AND a ceiling fan, so we will sleep well.

Two random notes... The weather is actually really nice. It's upper 70s low 80s. It is really humid, but when it's only 80, it's not so big a deal. So, I'm sweating, but I'm not dying. We had a nice little rain shower this afternoon, but it just lasted a few minutes, and it was cooler afterward. Number two: English is written everywhere; almost every sign has both Kannada and English, and some are exclusively English. Many of the people here speak English and one of many, many other local languages. In fact, I learned today, that though Hindi is the state language of India, in south India, more people speak English than Hindi. Interesting, no?

After checking in and taking a short nap, because well, I'm still on Eastern time, we headed to Enable India. There we had real Indian food for lunch. I was indeed spicy and vegetarian, but nothing I couldn't handle. Then, we headed off to a nearby park to work on sighted guide and diagonal technique. With Mickey leading the way, Lauren and I worked with the groups as they practiced the techniques and teaching how to use the techniques.

Almost all the future instructors know English, but at varying degrees, so that made my teaching both easier and harder. It was nice to be able to use words and not gestures, but I think there were times that I assumed they knew what I was talking about, and no one stopped me. I think I'll have to check in to be sure that I'm being understood. It's not only a knowing or not-knowing English thing, but there seems to be a different way of saying and phrasing things and our colloquialisms that they might not get.

As tired as I am, I really enjoyed teaching this afternoon. Before the trip, I was worried that I wouldn't be very good at the teaching O&M part, but I really think it's going to work out well. I'm really excited to keep teaching more. Tomorrow morning, we get to meet a real live blind kid, so that'll be fun. This is going to be a wonderful month, I think.

So I know this was a nice and lovely blog. I'm trying to stay up so I'll sleep tonight. I'm hoping all the rest are this nice and long, but if not, forgive my exhaustion.

Oh, and the internet connection seems to be good and reliable, so email or facebook is the best way to reach me.    

To India we go!

Tomorrow evening, I'm headed to India.  For real.  I have been so very busy with school and moving apartments that I hadn't had a chance to really process what's happening.  So, here it is; I'm going to India.  I can't quit saying it. :-)  I'm going to INDIA!  We're leaving Sunday night and we'll land earrrrly Tuesday morning local time.  I've never been on a plane that long; I think I might go a little crazy.  For that matter, I've never been out of the country.  I anticipate some earth-shattering experiences.  I'm ready.

In incredibly excited about the opportunity.  For those of you who don't know, I got the chance to go to India through my program at FSU.  Our O&M professor, Mickey, has founded a non-profit organization, Ability Beyond the Horizon, which sends O&M instructors into developing countries to teach and create more O&M instructors.  This year's the pilot run, and my classmate and friend Lauren and I get to join in on the fun.  

By the way... If you're not sure what O&M is, then you're not alone.  O&M stands for orientation and mobility, and it's a branch of instruction for people who are blind that focuses on teaching people how to move through space, usually that involves using long, white canes to move safely indoor and outdoors.

It seems like we'll be splitting our time between teaching actual blind people and teaching sighted people to be O&M instructors.  I can't really fathom what the traffic will be like in Bangalore, but I did watch a video of a man crossing the street on YouTube, and it made me a tiny bit nervous.  I imagine crossing the street will take a bit of decisive action and a lot of nerve.  

I want to try to blog every day, we'll see if that can happens.  Maybe if I write it here, I'll make it happen.

Look for the next post sometime Tuesday.

Bus Travel

I think I was right there with everyone else because I was not excited at all about getting on the bus.  I was really anxious about having to solicit help.  I just hate asking for help in general, and I think that combined with not knowing exactly how the trip was going to go made for an interesting trip.

I was also pretty anxious about making the bus transfer.  I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but in the end.  It worked out fine.  Since Lauren was the first off the bus, she got sighted guide.  I tried my hardest to follow them, but after a few steps, the only way I knew where Lauren was to follow her was to call out to her.  It worked, but if I were really blind, I would not want to depend on that strategy.  I thought it would be easy enough to follow her, but because of all the bus noise, I could not tell where she was.  Still, it worked out, and I only felt really uncomfortable when the driver tried to move me to show me how to get on the bus.  I’m sure he was trying to be helpful, but his grabbing me really just distracted me from using my cane properly and surprised me, making me a little mad.

Like Billy, I felt a lot safer traveling in the mall than I did on the bus.  I guess that’s because the mall is enclosed.  I feel like there’s only so much trouble you can get into inside, but outside, the problems are limitless.  That’s interesting, though, because I feel like we probably looked more competent on the sidewalk and the bus than we did in the mall.

I did find that it was really hard to focus on the social aspect of us being together in the mall when mobility was such a challenge.  I was thinking so hard about all the sensory information that I could hardly focus on the fact that I was on a trip with my friends.  I think this was especially apparent in the silence on the bus.  I think another big lesson here might just be that you really have to be flexible when you are traveling blind.  Things will probably not go the way you imagine, but things will work out in the end.

I think that after the bus driver handling me and other experiences over the past semesters, I think I’ve learned to keep my hands off students, even if they are really inefficient and bumbling around.  As long as they are mostly comfortable, it is better for them to move under their own power than for someone to move them.   First, it preserves their integrity as a competent person, and that is of course, incredibly important.  Also, though, it makes them think about what they’re doing so they don’t go into autopilot and miss learning about the world.

Billy's Drop Off

I was really impressed watching Billy travel on Thursday.  I’m sure he was nervous, but he kept moving forward, so he didn’t seem to get bogged down in all the details.  He just looked great traveling along his path.  I was totally wowed by how quickly he finished that route.  It seems like he was able to pull everything together in a way that I didn’t.  Go Billy!

I am also a bit nervous about the bus trip we’re taking.  I just don’t have a lot of experience with buses in general.  I mean, I’ve never even made a bus transfer with sight!  It will be interesting, for sure.  

Double Drop-Offs

Amber’s Drop Off

When Amber was so lost at first, I really felt her frustration.  It was so hard to watch her be totally and completely lost.  There’s something inexplicable about being overwhelmed with sensory information and frustration.  It seems like staying in a straight line really benefitted Amber.  I’m so glad she was immediately successful this second time.  I’m sure she feels very relieved.

Lauren’s Drop Off

I felt very invested in Lauren’s performance on the drop off.  Of course, I wanted her to be successful, and I knew she would be, but I wasn’t thinking about how her performance would reflect on my teaching.  I wanted her to be successful so she wouldn’t feel how awful it is to be lost.

I was pretty nervous when Lauren got to Call and MLK.  I was worried she still didn’t know where she was and would walk off the grid.  She’d been walking so slowly that I was nervous she didn’t know where she was.  I’m grateful my read on it was wrong and that she knew exactly what was up.

It was so, so hard not to prompt Lauren or offer any sort of feedback at all.  I really had to bite my tongue and not give her any information at all.  Along those lines, the few times Lauren was in the road a little bit, I tried to balance being in the road with her to make her more visible with needing the cars to be near enough to her to give her the right information.  I think I did a decent job of that, but I remember thinking about how my presence in the road impacted traffic.  Maybe I reassigned the energy used for verbal feedback to thinking about traffic patterns.

Drop Off, Round 2

I feel successful from Thursday - somewhat.  I felt surprisingly blah about it once I’d finished.  I thought I’d get this great rush of positive feelings, but they didn’t come.  The successfulness I thought I would feel was tempered with something; I’m not sure what.  I’m not sure if it’s the regular I’m-too-hard-on-myself-crap or if there’s something else to learn from the little bit of disappointment I feel even though I was successful.  I wonder if others who aren’t like me would react this way.  Maybe it just felt too easy (even though it wasn’t!) compared to how hard Tuesday was.  Because when I look at it objectively, I feel like I had a decently challenging route.  I think anything would look easy compared to how much I struggled on Tuesday.  Maybe after I see how everyone else does, I’ll have a standard to compare my performance to, and I won’t be quite so hard on myself.

I did notice, though, that I was very slow to trust that I had my orientation down.  I was fairly sure I knew where I was as early as Park and MLK.  Then, I got to College, and I was pretty confident of my location.  I just needed that extra bit of information to really sell myself on my orientation.  So, I probably didn’t have to walk to Jefferson, but I would have felt pretty reckless crossing MLK at College.  I think on any other day, I probably would have taken the risk, but after Tuesday, I was a little gun-shy about getting off my line of direction.  I think the best feeling, though, was when I just KNEW I was oriented.  There was a real sense of relief and competency in that moment.

I did notice, though that it’s so much easier to walk confidently and take chances when everything seems to be right and go according to plan.  Everything fit into the schema I was developing, and that felt nice.

I do wonder how my drop off would have worked if I’d turned left and walked back toward Tennessee.  It seemed intuitive, though, to move in the direction the car was facing.  Because, if I’d found Call and MLK and needed to keep walking to the next intersection, I would have been totally thrown at Tennessee.  Because MLK was so unusually busy, I first thought it might be College or Call, so add that with Tennessee, and I might have had my mental map set at Macomb.  I’m glad that didn’t happen…

Oh, and I didn’t even use the sun at all until after I was sure of my location.  It helped, not perseverating on determining the location of the sun because the sun is still pretty high at 2:30.  When I did use it, it was just a confirmation of what I’d determined by listening and moving. 

Oh, and Mickey didn’t spoil it for me by mentioning the cemetery.  When he said it, I already had a fair idea that I was in the neighborhood, though I didn’t know if we were next to it or a block away.  Even then, the clue didn’t tell me which side of it I was on.  I could very easily have been on Call near Bronough or Macomb at Park with the mention of a cemetery.  So, the “clue” really wasn’t that helpful.  No worries.

I’m excited to see Amber go on Tuesday, and I’m still planning for Lauren.  I want to be sure she’s successful, so I’m really thinking hard about how to make that happen.

"Practice"

This is going to be pretty long and rambling because I just cannot seem to streamline my thoughts into a concise little bit, but here it is anyway, for your reading pleasure…

I started out just jotting down things to write about in this blog like I do every time, and by the end, I’d written, “I tried to do it right, but I couldn’t seem to make it work” or some variation on that about six different times.  That pretty well exemplifies how I felt about the drop-off.  Like I tried really hard, and I just did it all wrong.  The more I did wrong, the worse I felt, and then the more wrong things I did.  It was a pretty vicious little cycle. 

It’s no surprise to anyone that I have trouble living like I’m confident in my abilities. One of my biggest frustrations is to be/do/think wrong.  Nothing makes me madder quicker.  So, I’m still trying to swallow not being successful Tuesday; I haven’t gotten there yet.  When Mickey asked me the first time if this was a practice run, I thought it probably would end up that way because I was crazy lost, but I couldn’t really bear the thought that I wouldn’t be able to finish. Because this last run was only “practice” because I wasn’t successful.  It wouldn’t have been practice otherwise.  We can call it practice all we want, but I still screwed up the drop off.

At the end, I could tell by my own manner that I was defeated: I talked softer, I didn’t answer questions with words, but rather nods and sounds, because I was afraid I’d cry if I talked.  I was so done by the end that I couldn’t even figure out how to get into the car.  I just couldn’t put the pieces together.

I was so focused on the fact that I was lost.  I tried to keep moving, but it was like everything I did was wrong.  I just couldn’t put together two intersections at a time.

I just got stuck and couldn’t seem to do the right thing.  I don’t even have the words for it.  It was really a two-hour mess of sounds and textures and fears.  I tried so hard to keep moving.  So, I’d cross the road, not knowing where the heck I was, and then I’d get across, and I’d be screwed because I couldn’t find the sidewalk, or I couldn’t find the other way to cross the street.  Or, I’d think I was still in the road and I wasn’t or I’d really be in the road and think I was on the sidewalk.  I really didn’t do a good job of sorting out information.  I was totally overwhelmed by the options and possibilities.  I tried to fake confidence and just walk but it just didn’t work.  I’ve said all this to say, I tried to be aware of my tendencies to move too little and think too much by reacting more and keeping moving, but in the end, I couldn’t seem to get over my hang-ups.  You know when you’ve just got too much information in your head, and maybe you’re on the phone or the TVs on, and you have to stop some information in order to process the rest?  It was like that.  I couldn’t even think through which intersection might be which because there was too much in my head: too much sensory information, too much fear, and too much self-doubt.

I never did know where I was, really.  I mean, I thought I started by the library, but I didn’t know for sure until y’all confirmed it.  I was just hoping I was right.  By the end, though, I thought I had moved away from that original point.  I kept trying to move, but it was not very organized.  I thought I was at least four blocks away from where I really was.  When we stopped, I was convinced that I was on College at Bronough or Duval.  I knew I had moved a lot, but apparently it was just really non-productive moving.

I remember thinking that I’ve never been this lost in my whole life.  For real.  I’m not one to get lost in life in general, so it’s really a new feeling.  I just don’t get lost, except for a little bit in O&M.  I might go somewhere I’ve never been before or get a bit turned around, but I always know how to get back to where I came from.  I can’t explain it, but it just works that way.  Apparently, Lauren had a really hard getting me lost in the first place.  But, once I hit the streets, I couldn’t sort out the information and got way overwhelmed.  So, having few experiences with “lost-ness,” I was even more uncomfortable.

In retrospect, I think walking in the street shot my confidence.  It scared me, a lot, and I really don’t know why it impacted me so much.  Intellectually, I knew I’d be safe, but on some instinctual level, I couldn’t act on that knowledge, because, well, I was in the road, and it’s pretty well engrained in me to not be in the road.  I was I was pretty sure that I walked up the middle of the road, but I couldn’t tell which way to turn to get out of the traffic.  At first, I thought I was on the sidewalk, so I moved toward the traffic, but now, I think that I was in the traffic already, and the cars were going around me, so I wasn’t getting reliable information.  Still, it’s pretty scary, knowing you’re in the road, and not being able to process through how to get out of it.  It’s kind of a helpless feeling, and I’m no fan of feeling helpless.  Thinking back, I probably just should have committed and moved laterally to get out, but I couldn’t even square off on the traffic to know which way to move.  I don’t know if they were curving around me, or if I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t localize the traffic.  Looking back, though, I think that because I got scared in the road and couldn’t get out, I took fewer risks later because I REALLY did not want to get back in the road.

So yeah, I’m really disappointed, and I don’t have a great plan about what to do differently to make tomorrow better.  I’ll try harder to move more and think less.  I know I won’t cross the street until I know EXACTLY where I am, and I’ll just say a little prayer and do my best.  That should work, right?