No school

   Tomorrow I do not have school   I  normally have one class on friday  but the instructor is sick .  I hope  he gets better   but I am  happy for the day off. 

Wordless Wednessday Feed the birds

What is Italy like

 Please note    This post will only make sense if u know  Welcome to Holland  by Emily peril Kingsley.

  I was born in Holland.  A land of windmills and  trollops.  but sometimes I wonder what is Italy like Most of my family  are Italian  so naturally I wonder what  it is to be Italian too.  I land of pizza and history. 

  I  wonder what it feels to be able to  speak the Italian dialect to  be so easily understood most everyone around  seems to know how to speak  it fluently. Like the  land in which it originated  in Italian seems so grand . I have tried  and tried to speak it but still people do not understand.

 I wonder what it  is like to be from Italy.  To blend in with the crowd. Too not have to prove  myself worthy   and that I do know what  to do.  I wonder what is like too ride a moped  with the wind through your hair. I will never know what it is like to be from Italy.

  I will never know what it feels like to  be a full bread Italian , but I have a rough idea.   I have  met many people from Italy and  have played some Italian games learned some stuff  from the banks of Venice.  Some people  call it  a  Inclusion ,but to me it is  more then  a word.    can help me understand   Italy and it;s people which is so important  because Italy has so many people  and sights and a sounds : while Holland has so few. I learn to be  a Hollander  alongside  the Italian  because  there is so much in Italy to discover  and the more I discover  maybe my parents   dreams  of creating similar thing will come true.   Holland has it  tulips  and is known for it slower pace  and I was  born into  this but   when it comes down  to it  I  still need food  shelter and lots  of love, Because   if I can not get the full   Italian experience I can get the whole experience of love

 Left to right   book gal princess  laid back athlete mom AZ  dad  spring 2007

Back in the Day

  I loved that sweat shirt  u can not tell but it had  woody and buzz on it

A chunk of chapter three

   the backround is Alixes  Bounding  a teenager  with CP   is now a freshman at Algond high school in Medowlake  which is a town in the unitiied states. She wants to try out  for  her high school's basketball team.


Jim Stickler    was  what you  call a   highly  respectable  coach .   His  teams  were the ones that won championships and  his  players were the ones  who got  the scholarships   for collage  and  news  reports  in the   Meadowlake    times newspaper.  He   was a   alumina of    Algon High school and in his day  been  MVP in  football baseball and basketball, now  as a  coach and  head of the athletic department   he  wanted to  keep the   Algon high school  altheic  program  to the same standards  as     they had when he  went there  in his  youth.  This  year  he   was drafted  to coach the  ladies  varisty basketball team  as well as oversee the  freshman and sophomore  basketball  progam   too.

 Tryouts  were   the week after Halloween  on  a  Wednesday.   On that Wednesday  he was assigned to  cheek  in the    junior varsity  players.  So far it seemed  to  go well a  lot of the freshman  girls    had some  height and    fairly  good academic records, Jim had spent the   Tuesday night  looking over the  players   grade  as  was  standard  proitcall for      players  to sign up to clear  grades   before trying  out . It  seemed to be  turning out to   be a successful  normal  season of basketball  for the  Algon   Saber  Tooth  tigers     that was  until   a freshman  showed   up.

  She  was   skinny and     tall   jim would have  guessed that she was around  58  with honey colored  skin and  a  orange  t shirt    shorts and shoes.  A  promiseing  player  indeed     Jim tought  as  he asked “Name,”

“Alecus,”  Jim header  her  say  with doorl. His heart sunk    the girl  was not promising    she    seemed  to Jim to have belonged   in the special  education classes  , a sped  student.

 Sorry   what  Jim said and    strained  to decipher the  name from the  anomaly  speech

Althus       said the girl 

Athena

  No    the  girl  yelled and   tried again with little  success.

       Do u  guys  want more   before the end of the month  let me know

Calling all readers

   So today was the day of our local Buddy walk that I  again did not  make.    I am hoping that  I will  not have to be an odd one at a  walk   because  I am hopping to plain  a Cerebral Palsy walk  this March ( march is Cp Awareness month)     I have a place in mind  but I need your help esp  if u  help  organize a Buddy walk.  How do u do it     A good  place to start  anything  please leave comments  so  I can get this thing rolling

Smarter then I Speak

What if I told you that you had to watch people kick a ball back and forth for an hour and a half? Would you agree to   it?  Would you enjoy it?   It sounds rather boring but millions   of people worldwide enjoy watching soccer.    The difference is that the kicking of a ball has purpose    in game of soccer compared to watching people kicks balls back and fourth. The purpose is a goal that the players are trying to achieve   for there team.     Similarly, in life goals   severe as a purpose outside of the victory that is felt upon achieving them.

      Goals are different    for different people   in various aspects in their lives.   One of my biggest goals in life is improving the clarity in the articulation of my speech.   Speech has never been something that I could have taken for granted as a result of me being diagnosed as a toddler with Cerebral Palsy. Cerebral Palsy   is the result of having   a lack of oxygen before, shortly after, or during birth.     Because     I was born prematurely, the   likely hood of me getting this chronic illness increased.    As an infant using my mouth mussels    to eat was a challenge and to this day my speech is unclear and I   always bite on my drinking straws.  I cannot say all the sounds fluidly in the English language but understand everything that is said to me.  This is really frustrating for me   and to make matters worse I am my hardest critic. To me everyone’s speech sounds clearer than my even those with disabilities.   Due to the reasons above my speech clarity is a goal that I have.

             Goals are the gas in a person’s engine, in that they provide the drive for people to work hard.   When I was little ,I thought that if I worked really hard that when I was an adult I would speak normally.   I did not mind speech therapy back than.  I went and worked hard and did things that the speech teachers asked me to do. I tried so  many techniques from lying on my back trying hard to say sounds to having stuff   in my mouth to   work to strengthen my mouth mussels. I did not mind working hard because my thinking was   I had to do this in order to speak like   grown ups do. Looking back on it, I would say that it was hard work   but   I complied   with the grueling work and stuck to it in hopes of  achieving my goal. My fuel  was my goal and with it I  forged  ahead with speech therapy. 

               Just like in cars, without goals   there is no inner fuel; thus there is a lack of motivation to work  hard  . In seventh grade my speech teacher told me that I   would always have unclear speech do to Cerebral Palsy.    The speech teacher and I got along well   and I trusted her so I took the information   at face value.   The remainder years I had at speech therapy though the school system   were a waste of  time for me and the speech pathologist. I no longer   had a goal   so the work became extremely frustrating. During my junior year of high school ,I stopped going to speech therapy for a while.   I had a class that period that I went to anyway so I went there instead of therapy.   I was taking   Advance Placement  United States history from a guy who had a hard  time understanding ,me and I   once  I  told him that I had left speech he got vary concerned for me and encouraged   me to return to speech.   So I was back to sitting across   from   my speech pathologist    understanding to put my tongue in the roof of my mouth and being unsuccessful. I hated speech therapy after seventh grade because the light that was supposed to be at the end of the tunnel, me speaking clearly was no longer in site   so the work became grueling and painful for me to sit though.   On the rare occasions that I did work hard the vain mussels in my neck popped out , yet   it seemed pointless  because my speech would always be gibberish. It became a chore to go to speech therapy because  I no longer had a goal.                    

              Goals  are necessary for  people to  make hard  work meaningful.  By the end of the  fall 2010 semester I want  to  achieve   the  goal of  getting into speech therapy and working  diligently  at improving the articulation of my speech.  I want  to  do this by  enrolling at  Peninsula  Associates  , a speech center walking distance from my house. A big barrier to achieving this goal will be  being able  to afford the  assessment  and  speech lessons.  It  may also be  hard to focus if I  have  a lot of homework   or other  stuff in my  mind.   I can get around the finical barriers by getting SSI  or  getting my insurance pay for the  therapy. As far as the attention barrier I can try to  get focus as  I am  in the waiting room, and plan ahead by keeping up to date with my school assignments.  Now  that I know  speaking clearly can  be a goal to me,   recent research  shows the brain in more plastic than my seventh grade teacher  thought,  I think I can improve the diction in my speech so that   I could work  in any profession  I chose  ,as well as being a advocate   for  people with disabilities.