Walk around Ho Chi Minh City

Orchids welcome me to breakfast. Veggies for breaky! This vegan is happy with good coffee, too. I meet Paige and pose for photos by cute bellhop. See pics of my room and 'the window' for my fun people watching. Meet friendly Finnish woman in lobby. Dodge traffic. I realize that all the pushing away of cars I do while riding in the front passenger seat at home has been in training for crossing the streets of Saigon! whew! I run while Paige walks.We see this bustling city alive and hopping. Say prayers at the cathedral for Lisa...Queen of Peace. I get up close to another orange street sweeper. Paige loves the "snowball". They think it is winter here with ornate poinsetta lights and huge white wooden snowflakes. I am sweating and I know it is snowing real live snowflakes at home. So many faces, so many memories associate with the new I see. wow. Again I check the red flowers to make sure they are not plastic.

Good Morning Vietnam - first morning

Waking early with birds singing and early traffic buzzing, I see amazing views from my window on January 8th Saturday in Vietnam.

I arrive at HoChiMinh City airport at midnight. I am a midnight rambler! I love the orchids lining the halls as we walk to the immigration and customs lines. The white delicate beauty astounds me, I check to be sure the flowers are real. Remember I am traveling for 30 hours to get to the other side of the world.

Luckily Paige Stringer recognizes me as I gaze out at the swarm of people waiting for friends at the gate. I finally meet this amazing woman who invites me to join her Global Foundation for Chidlren with Hearing Loss. A van drives us through the quiet streets of the city to our nice hotel.

Out my ninth floor window, roof gardens, clothes lines, and new construction interest me. I can people watch! In the open doorways and windows that have no glass, I see a lady ironing, a man doing push-ups, and a mother reaching for her clothes pin basket. The construction workers start their tap tap tapping. A street sweeper dressed in orange drives his orange bike cart.He is up before the sun. He works so hard with his primitive grass broom. He inspires me like an orange sunrise.

On the way to Vietnam

In the seat across from me a girl writes in her notebook with great zeal. She is using a silver pen that clicks when she changes the color. I wonder what she is writing so intently at 6:20am EST as we both wait to board the United flight 835 from Boston to Chicago. The way she holds the thick silver shaft it resembles the big silver bird we are about to ride.

Jim just dropped me off at Logan. He made me coffe & oatmeal before he carried my bag to the car - thank you JIM! He forgot his cell phone so I an not call him with any detail of the check-in which all went smoothly, Thank God.

After two months of planning, I am starting my journey to Vietnam and Cambodia with a gorgeous sunrise.

Out the oval
pinks purples line the
sherbert oranges
waiting for brilliant glow
emerging
moments on the runway
like me ready for
what the sky can offer

These planes can appear so simple with their complexity hidden beneath the silver body. I am in an amazing contraption. With a few clicks and switches just like the girl with her pen - this plane takes me to see and understand another side of our world.

The engines roar and we take off. I look down and see everything familair slowly disappearing. Away to the west I fly expecting to become familiar with a new place.

The gold sun ball makes me smile as the silver wing covers it and dips - playing peekaboo with the sun - until the nose turns and we float high about the coulds to the west leaving my peekaboo partner in the east.

January 4, 2010

This second grader finds Vietnam on the globe and shows his teacher and classmates where Mrs. Watson is going. This 11 month old loves to read books. His mother takes the photo as his social worker and I enjoy every minute of his cuteness.

This preschooler compares Amarylis and Paper Whites in her journal,big flower & little flowers.

Getting all my Auditory-Verbal Communication Center students off to a good start this year is important to me. This week I meet with them, their parents, their teachers, and connect with their audiologists/social workers (if need be) to be sure they are all set for the weeks I will be gone. I am happy to say that all the AVCC kids are listening well. The great thing about AVT is that if I have been coaching the parents and supporting the teachers in the right way, they should all be fine. My amazing Auditory-Verbal partner, Jim Watson, will see them for interim AVT sessions while I am away. I can also connect with them on skype (if need be).

January 3, 2011

1/3/2011 Monday

Jim and I are back to work sharing a Happy New Year with our students. Here we are having a fun and crazy time! Kids and parents are interested in where Vietnam is on the globe!

Since November, I have been e-mailing, conference calling, and phoning arrangements, schedules, writing and re-writing materials, power point presentations, and plans. Our team is comprised of professionals from New York NY, New Orleans LA, Ottawa Ont, Seattle WA, and Gloucester, MA. You can read about our team on the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss website. http://www.childrenwithhearingloss.org/

Paige Stringer wrote a great article detailing the work done last summer which was published in the American Speech and Hearing Association Leader: www.asha.org/Publications/leader/2010/101123/The-Ripple-Effect-of-a-Powerful-Idea.htm

Paige was interviewed by American Academy of Audiology. This is the link to that article: www.audiology.org/news/Pages/20101208.aspx

Our mobile mission will pick up where the summer team left off and get the teachers, students, and parents ready for the work that the June 2011 team (which Paige is orgainizing) will do.

January 2, 2011

As I pack my bags to meet the team of professionals in Vietnam, I find some old photos. I am very excited to spend more time working with my mentor, Judy Simser. In this photo, Judy was presenting a full day conference on Auditory-Verbal Therapy prior to the Australasian Conference in Brisbane, Australia in 2007. Everyone wanted their photo taken with Judy!

In another photo, Jim and I stand with our mentee, Hillary Ganek, as she received the 2008 Rookie of the Year Award from the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf. We are proud of Hillary as she worked hard to fullfill all the requirements and become a Listening and Spoken Langauge Certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist.

January 2, 2011 Sunday
Paige Stringer founded the Global Foundation For Children With Hearing Loss to help children in developing countries access the quality education and resources they need to achieve their full potential as contributing members of society.

The first I heard of Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss was from an American, Hillary Ganek, a Listening and Spoken Language Specialist working at John’s Hopkins in Baltimore Maryland, USA.

Hillary was part of the American team of 13 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, early intervention specialists, and auditory-verbal therapists launching the multi-year Vietnam Deaf Education Program. Last summer Hillary taught at Thuan An Center, a school for hard of hearing and deaf children in Lei Thieu, a country village situated about 20 miles north of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Ninety teachers from 35 schools spread across 20 Vietnam provinces came to learn at the Thuan An Center. For a month, professionals and teachers engaged in a summer intensive about how to help young children with hearing loss develop listening and spoken language skills and acquire education. I talked with Hillary before she decided to go and skyped with her while she was there. Why?

Hillary was one of my Auditory-Verbal Therapy trainees. She gave me the distinct privilege of asking me to be her mentor for the practical aspects of becoming a Certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist. How we met was funny. She wrote me a letter in 2006 requesting my training. Her letter was addressed to my private practice, the Auditory-Verbal Communication Center in Gloucester, MA, USA, but got forwarded to me while I was teaching in South Australia!
The letter followed me to Australia and then so did Hillary!

My husband Jim and I were offered an opportunity (by our mentor) to help train therapists in the land down under for 2006 - 2007. We enjoyed our Aussie year helping the Cora Barclay Centre move from an old ‘school for the deaf type location’ to a new more user friendly parent guidance house/clinic. We trained talented teachers how to do more parent guidance especially with infants. One of the speech-language pathologists we trained was Hillary! She followed us to South Australia to gain the necessary training in Auditory-Verbal Therapy.

Our career long mentor, Judy Simser from Canada, was the one who recommended us for that consulting job in Australia. Judy is currently the A G Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Global Ambassador. For 40 years, she has been starting programs and training teachers – in Ottawa, Canada, in Taiwan, in Singapore. She is also the mother of an amazing guy who is profoundly deaf. He is all grown up now – a successful lawyer, father, nice person, etc. I will tell you more about my idol, Judy Simser as I work alongside her during our January mobile mission.

I remember that January night in 2006 when Judy called asking us if we wanted to share our expertise of teaching parents of children with hearing loss in an established Auditory-Verbal center needing some help. I was on the phone upstairs and said; “YES”. I felt like I wanted to do anything Judy asked me to do. Jim was on the phone downstairs and said; “What?” After careful consideration, Jim and I could not think of a good reason to stop our busy life in Massachusetts and travel to the other side of the world to do what we love. We were happy we answered the call to help kids in South Australia have better access to Auditory-Verbal Therapy.
Well, this past November when Judy called me again and asked me to assist her as she consulted in Vietnam. I felt the same compulsion to do what my mentor asked me to do.

After teaching listening and spoken language to children who are deaf and hard of hearing “for over thirty years”, my passion now is to share what I love to do with young therapists who will continue to teach “for over thirty years”! I have a lot to learn, a lot to share, and I am ready to venture off to a land where young teachers are demanding more knowledge and training for advancing their skills in helping children who are deaf communicate with spoken language.
I feel lucky to go with Judy Simser who was one of the therapists who stimulated me as I started my Auditory-Verbal Therapy career all those years ago.

January 1, 2011

Today is 1/1/11- Saturday Happy New Year!

Hiking in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, USA with Jim and our puppy, Brody, was a great end of year afternoon excursion yesterday. Warm temperatures, sunny skies, and soft snow made walking through the wilderness easy. Brody ran along the edges of the Greely Pond Trail in and out of the snowy brambles hopping around the trees with glee. He wondered why we remained on the hard packed path already showing many bare spots due to the unusually warm winter week. When Jim and I asked Brody to cross the Mad River he was a little skeptical. That water was rushing fast. We guided him across on the safest part. On the other side, breaking trail heading up the Scaur, Brody delighted in all the hiking through fresh snow. “Now my owners are hiking on the kind of trail I like.” I am sure he was thinking in his dog thoughts!

We reached the rocky over look just as the bright sun was setting. A panorama of the entire Waterville Valley stretched out before us in the alpen glow as we leaned back on the granite ledge basking in the final sun rays of 2010.

Following our tracks back as the woods turned purple, we reminisced about our last hike up the Scaur which was in September 1993 with our children Keara then age 13, Xander age 11, and Fraser age 6. We shared many fun memories of our years skiing, hiking, and skating in this winter wonderland. Waterville has been such an important place for us. Winters became magical. Over the years, we celebrated most New Year’s Eves here with our friends and family.

This year I was happy Fraser and his girlfriend, Erin, joined us after skiing for the day at Cannon Mountain. Xander and his girlfriend, Sam, flew over to France to celebrate New Year’s with Keara and Charles who live in Saint Genevieve des Bois just outside Paris. “Bonne Anne” which we always joked about at every new year’s here has real meaning this year – in France!

For New Year’s Eve we gathered at the Hansel’s condo near Tyler Spring for a delicious lasagna dinner, walnut boat fortunes, and dancing into the new year! Three families – Hansels, Tullers , and Watsons have been sharing fortune walnut boats this way first to show the kids that an old year was passing and a new year was starting, but maybe because we are all sailors the floating of these tiny boats became a tradition!

My half shell walnut boat with a lit birthday candle floated to the edge of the water filled pan. The paper attached on the rim closest to where the nut-boat landed was mine. I untied the ribbon and opened the paper to read:

‘ “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” John Quincy Adams
Your confidence and momentum will keep you going to make positive results that will be personally beneficial in the year 2011.’

Personally beneficial? How nice! This is perfect for me.
In 5 days, I leave to work in far off Vietnam! I am joining the team of volunteer professionals with the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss.

I can be patient. I have perseverance! I like magical effects that make difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish! I can go with confidence. I am excited about my adventure in Vietnam. I feel grateful to be part of the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss.

New Year’s Day was great relaxing time. Fraser, Erin, Jim and I relished the special “Brody time” we shared. This puppy has made us pay attention to things like; ‘early morning’, ‘just hanging out’, and ‘quiet moments’. He does not ask for much, just our undivided attention and love. This puppy has helped us stay in the present moment.

Jim shared his quote from last night’s walnut boats;
“We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, not drift, nor lie at anchor.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

Fraser’s: “If you obey all the rules, you miss the fun.” Katherine Hepburn

Erin’s: “The best things in life are the nearest. Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life." Robert Louis Stevenson

Interesting quotes to ponder as 2011 begins.....as I pack for my adventures.....