The exciting life of the blind chick

You are all probably wondering why I haven’t written in a while, or maybe you aren’t, but the Winter break has been crazy and so has the beginning of this semester.

Over Winter break, I joined an adaptive ski program. Of course, I being the daredevil wanted to snowboard instead. Many say that it is difficult to snowboard with sight, well it was time for me to try it with very little sight. It has been such a great experience. I have done it every Sunday until one week where I decided to attempt some tricks. I did a few 360’s which is when you are facing the board down the hill, lift up and completely spin around and land facing the same direction that you started in. After a few of these fun tricks, I landed on my arm and hurt it pretty bad, resulting in my arm being in a sling for the past three or so weeks.

Snowboarding with very very little sight is extremely interesting. It’s quite funny; I wear an orange vest that says “blind snowboarder” on the back of it, just to let other people on the mountain know that I cannot see. The person working with me or being my guide has an orange vest that says “blind guide.” One week, one of the guides decided to try this radio/microphone system out. In each of our helmets, we had an ear piece and a microphone that was always on. This ensured that he could always tell me where to go or which way to turn etc. It also made it so that he did not have to be right near me, we could have some space in between us on the mountain. People would get very freaked out when they saw a man with an orange vest that said “blind guide” and had no idea where the person was that he was guiding went. We got a lot of laughs out of that.

My computer also decided to crash, which is always nice. It was very difficult for me because I cannot just go onto any computer and start using it. The speaking software that I use on my computer isn’t on other computers, which made it difficult to use any type of internet or word processing over the January break.

Enough of all that. This semester is going great! I have quite the load of work and classes, but I am very motivated and feel that this semester will go very smoothly. I am doing my practicum at the Onondaga County Probation Department which is located in downtown Syracuse. I worked at this agency over the summer as an intern and enjoyed it so much that I picked this organization to complete my practicum as well. The practicum consists of 120 hours of fieldwork and it also has a class attached with it. Even though it is a lot of work, it is a lot of fun, very informative and I have met so many great people along the way.

In the spare time of my busy life, I hang out with friends or my suitemates. I am still also involved in martial arts and snowboarding. I will be writing blogs much more often now, sorry for the lengthy break of time between my blogs.