W.S.

I am on the move again!  I moved all of my stuff out of the apartment that I was renting in kMG...moved it into K and L's and packed a suitcase to take with me to W.S. where I'll be for an undetermined amount of time.  I am already about half way through my time in Chn... WOW, it is going so fast!  

I am loving the site here in W.S., there is so much to get involved with.  They have two projects that I'll be working with.  One is a therapy program for kids with special needs.   They have about over 15 kids at the site.  Most of them have cerebral palsey and four have Autism.  They don't currently have an SLP so the kids are mostly doing PT.  One of my responsibilities will be to evaluate the kids, write goals and train therapist and parents on treatment.  Another part will be to train a local SLP to work with these kids but to also begin simple assessment and treatment around the province.  I'm sooo excited about the model here!  One thing that I LOVE about this site is their heavy focus on parent training and parent support gorups.  The encourage the parents to develop relationships outside of the therapy room and also have a parent retreat that allows them to have a break from the kids and focus on their marriages.  I LOVE that they see beyond just therapy and are working on family relationships.  Another project is working in an orphng... There are six or seven special needs kids that we are working with, again they are doing PT but I'm hoping to start up a speech/special ed group.  There are so many factors that play into a kid being institutionalized (the special needs kids don't attend school).  Kids pretty much always have severe language (very limited vocabulary) and educational delays.  I would like to start doing some small gorup activities that will expose them to vocabulary, academic skills such as counting and writing and work on social skills.  I'm REALLY excited for this next part of my time!   

A Little (because I don't know much yet) about W.S....

W.S. is a smaller city than kmg.  It is still a city and has a lot of people but it has a different feel.  For one thing there are not a lot of foreigners... I got a lot of stares when I went out today!   Also, it has a rural city feel... there are big buildings but on the side streets it almost looks like the mainstreet in a rural area.  I have seen a couple of horse drawn carts which is something the kmg wouldn't have.  There are quite a few ethnic minority groups that live here or that come from villages on the weekend to sell food.  I think that the three biggest are the Miao, the Yi and the Zhuang.  This brings up another difficult thing... they don't speak Mandarin here!  Some people do but they have a local W.S. dialect and then the minorities all have their own dialect.  I was really hoping to get much better with my Mandarin but it looks like that won't happen!  Well I don't know much more than that so that's all I have! 

Miao

Yi 

Zhuang