Friday, May 25, 2007

Going to the Velodrome

Yesterday was Kit Day - Keeping In Touch Day for all the Hearing Impaired primary school kids in Southland. What an absolute fabulous day it was! We met at the offices of 2 very wonderful ladies Gretchen and Karen for a whole lot of fun with Michelle from Dunedin who played games with the kids and then gave the kids a pile of neat bits and pieces to make bookmarks and cards.
Michelle came to our house on Wednesday night and taught us some very basic sign language. We are very keen to learn but there are no teachers in Invercargill!! We now know the alphabet and how to count to 20 and a few very easy signs like 'name', 'who', 'what', 'nice meet you', 'go'. We need to learn more - it will take forever to have a conversation if we have to spell every word out!!
I got side tracked didn't I? LOL ;o)
Anyway after the fun with Michelle we went to an Indoor mini golf. This mini golf place is just a tad different than the rest - its played in the dark. All the holes glow! The balls glow! Its actually quite disorientating walking in there! Because we had a group of hearing impaired children we had to turn the lights on. But they all had a crack at the last hole darkness. Its quite cool watching this wee ball rolling along apparently in thin air!
After lunch we visited the Velodrome. Now this place rocks! Its is so cool. The kids had such a blast racing each other and some of the dads had a go at racing quite fast! I even had a go - LOL - bummer about this track is if you decide half way round its not your cuppa tea - there is no exit, except right back where you went on!! So Ashleigh and I had a wee race back to the bike stand. I won - for the record - LOL!And for other news today - I have a job - I am registered with Workbridge - they help people with disabilities get jobs. I have to be honest - I have always felt my biggest disabilities are not my hearing loss, but more my lack of confidence and lack of marketable skills. I went for the interview on Wednesday morning and got the email today to say I start the training course on Monday. I will be working for Access Home Health as a personal caregiver. I have a long week ahead of me next week with some pretty full on training. But the beauty is I can take that training further if I want! I'd like to get the full certificate in Elderly Care and then think about the Dementia papers. Both of my big sisters are in health care, Donna is nursing in Perth and Gaye is a midwife in Christchurch. I don't want to be a nurse - both my sisters tell me its twice as hard for them because they have to be twice as alert but they love their jobs. I think I would love to work with the elderly.
For now I'm impressed with the whole deal because I can chose my own hours and work as much or as little as I want. and while I want to work, I want to be there for my kids as well. So keep your fingers crossed for me!!

Guy, 17 years old, lives for cycling competitions.
He trained hard in his cycling club, and the day came when he was to take part in his first real race.
His parents went with him to the starting line, giving last-minute advice.
Suddenly, the starting signal was given.
His mother shouted, "Guy, be careful! Don't go too fast!"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great day you had! LOVE that glow-in-the dark mini-golf place, bummer I didn't know about it when I was down there because we love mini-golf and it's always fun to do something different. Like the Caddy Shack in Queenstown.

Great that you had a day to raise awareness of hearing impairments. All the best with learning sign language too! My cousin is a sign language therapist and I always love it when she signs while talking to people who AREN'T hearing impaired, I just love watching her, how fast she is and how fluid it looks. So cool. I bet you guys will be fast and fluent in no time!

Congrats on the new job, I'm sure you'll love it and be really good at it!!

Mrs Frizz said...

Congratulations on the job front - you have to believe in yourself.

Love the mini golf - they were talking about setting it up when we took DS and his mates to Lazerland for his birthday last year.

Sounds like you had a brilliant day with the activities for Keeping in Touch Day.

Neen and Mike said...

LOVE THE MINI GOLF! Uber cool!
Comgrates on the Workbridge placement. Its all got to be a good thing :)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on the job front - thats awesome and you will be good at it. Takes a special person to work with the elderly in that line of work. Enjoy your training.

Love the mini golf - Thats pretty cool, must be quite disearning playing in the dark.

Go you for leanring some basic sign languages, Isn't it great that this will be included into the school curricululm.