Volunteering
I shouldn't actually be updating my blog right now. I'm supposed to be working, or at least reading through some material for my meeting tomorrow with my mum's friend's sister, the UK doctor. I want to ask her some questions, and so I need to be updated on the UK health system and some other ethical medical issues. I'm in the computer suite of my boyfriend's university right now so that there is no music, bed, fridge or chocolate to distract me. Unfortunately, the distracting influence of my blog is a greater influence than the surrounding ambitious physics students with their fingers flying across the keyboard typing away at their 100-page lab reports.
Saturday's volunteering experience, as previously mentioned, was a good experience. One thing about working and interacting with disabled people is that it may seem very scary at first, because you don't know how to deal with their disability. I remember when I worked in a centre helping mentally disabled people in summer 2008, I was intimidated by the members when I first met each one of them. Each one had a different disability, and some of them looked and behaved so strangely, that I had no idea how to interact or treat them. How should I greet them? Should I help them take their jacket off, or will they manage? How should I talk to them?? So one thing I learned from working there was to be very, very open-minded about the disabilities people can have. I also learned that there's no reason to be intimidated really, because quite quickly, you will actually learn automatically how to interact with a certain disabled person. Trying to keep all this in mind, I arrived at the volunteering place and tried to keep an open mind.
When the members started arriving, I was introduced to everyone. I helped set up some plates and food, and we all ate together. The food we had was so typically British: sandwich, a breaded egg (I know, super weird, why in the world would you bread an egg??), and some tiny sausages. It was disgusting, tasted absolutely bland (hence why it was so British). Pudding was a bag of crisps and a choclate thingy. The only thing that tasted good was the pudding (and government wonders why British kids are so addicted to junk food).
I sat beside a blind man and it was extremely inspiring to sit beside him. He carried a radio with him and it was tuned into BBC. He would listen to it every five minutes and stay updated on the news (especially football results, heh). What was so interesting and inspiring about him was how he had learned to deal with his disability in life. The radio to him is kind of like what internet is to us - a gateway to the rest of the world and a way to stay in touch with the world. He has "normal" hobbies, and especially loves books. He accesses books by borrowing audio books and listening to them through his casette player. When we chatted, he would always keep eye contact, and I was amazed at how he knew where my eyes were. Sometimes he would lose my position and the eye contact and would then locate me again by finding my head and then re-establishing the eye contact.
I don't think the members work, so they have a lot of time on their hands. This free time has allowed them to develop incredible knowledge and skills. For instance, I sat beside this other half blind woman, and she is really, really good at Scrabble, and have even won prizes for her talent. The blind man above knows everything about music, he can name all the artists and songs that BBC played, from music of the 1950s(?) to today's contemporary pop music. It's funny how he (a middle-aged man) is far more updated on today's pop music than I am ("Who's that??" "Justin Timberlake!").
Today I have another volunteering shift. We're all gonig to a pub to have a drink. Hopefully it'll be inspiring and fun!
