Hello all,
thought I'll post another one with an update.
Not too many changes with my CI, but I will be in for the test of my lifetime by going abroad for my junior year of college. In January, I am off to England for a semester to study. It has been a dream of mine since I was little, and now it's actually coming true!
In a way, this blog is going to convert to being about England and the reality of how my CI is going to help me out somehow. I was talking to a couple british students studying abroad at my school last week and it was a huge shock to me of how my first few weeks in England are probably going to be my most trying weeks of my lip reading skills and my listening skills. I thought I was able to understand British accents pretty easily, turns out I've been a little off on that considering that most people that I know with a British accent or South African accent have been in the states for a few years now. Though I did feel confident after meeting my boyfriend's mother from South Africa for a few weeks, that I was able to understand her pretty well after a few hours of focusing on what she's saying. And she was a quick talker at times, so I survived lipreading and listening to her without becoming totally exhausted.
There are days where I just am totally exhausted by the end of the day from lipreading and listening, and I hate how people say how can you be tired, I just worked for 8 hours, and you were in class for like 2 hours... For me, 2 hours of class equals 2 hours of lipreading and talking to listen to, is equivalent to a full day of work for me. I feel like some people just don't get that sometimes. Listening comes naturally to hearing people usually, while I am not exactly a hearing person, nor am I a completely deaf person. I am an in-betweener.
Anyways, I rambled off. Back to my main topic of focus of this post, ENGLAND! I am going to be there for 5 months, and I am so excited yet so nervous about being away for so long, and to be in a completely new place with all this jazz on my head. I am crossing my fingers that everything goes smoothly, and that I do not have any disasters relating to my CI or my HA. Ack! I get the feeling there are going to be days where I am completely lost, or days that I am at home with being in England. We just have to wait and see! The Uni I am going to I picked for the reason that they have a good disability service program there and that is a huge factor in any college that I attend. One of the reasons I left URI also, due to the disability program there being jerks to me and putting up a fight with me over everything I needed in order to do well... for example, they gave me the crappiest FM system ever, it was so outdated, and nobody had ever used it since they bought it in 1997? Therefore, it was analong, and also was designed for the senior people to use it, not really for everyday usage in a classroom. Oh and they also had the very nerve to say 'oh you're not deaf...' just based on knowing that I speak very well and can write decently! I may seem like I am a hearing person due to those things, but I still get the whole "accent" thing on a daily basis. It has become quite amusing to me, I am quite curious of what the Brits will make of my accent, if they say "oh! you're american? where from? new york?" I actually got that once when I was in Italy a few years ago... He was surprised to hear that I was from Boston, and started talking in a "Bostonian" accent. It was amusing.
Besides, England. Life is good, just need to start preparing for going abroad, it would be nice to have tips from anybody that was deaf and studied abroad of how to even pack or prepare for being out of my usual environment or having back-ups or someone to go to for emergencies with my 'ears'. Oh well, new experience for me, I'll figure it out! =)
Until next time, probably december since that's when I am seeing my audiologist next.
-Annie
