#todayithought

#adventurehands

its been seven days since i started my 2.5 year journey into the world of Australian Sign Language. I find it creative and enchanting... it's a transparent space where your communication failures and successes are brought to the surface and there is something very vulnerable in that. Our teachers are deaf and we communication with our hands, with our face. It's a learning environment unlike any other.

In many ways i feel like a child again, yet now i'm completely aware that i'm discovering things for the first time. Every common noise is heightened; the sound of pen to paper, someone drinking from a water bottle, even breath and breathing but the silence is still louder than any of that. The room is full of  the sound of things we've never put thought into before, because we can hear them. I can't imagine what it would be like to never hear someone sing or to feel the beat but never hear the music...
Even now I'm starting to see things differently, I feel a change in me already- the way i see things, my senses and the ability to observe and read behaviors. Its a powerful thing to be able to communicate effectively in this way and this study will open up, for me, a whole new community of people to know and love. 
A language so expressive and beautiful should be learnt by all. Imagine how much more effective we  could communicate if we were aware and controlled our face and hands, our body language.

the silence is deafening, deafeningly beautiful...

#todayithought

#waterlife

i wish that no one lived by the beach
i wish that land was free
for all-
to stay on
to play on
to holiday on

i wish that when i walked down the street;
the ocean would sweep me off my feet
i wish that while driving my car;
i wouldn't have to look far
to see the deep blue sparkling

i wish that wherever i go
the sea would know
and it would be right there to find me


i don't like to surf or collect shells,
i'm not that interested in sea-life or
building sandcastles and
i don't even want to swim;

it's just that when im so close to something
so blue, big and grand-
i feel so much closer to Him.

#todayithought

#kidsilove

I never really know how to feel on camp. It's interesting. At the staff meeting the other night someone talked about Mondays [pick up day] I said "I'm glad I wasn't on pick up day this wk, nothing messes me up as much as seeing where they live does..."
I never knew I thought that way but its true.
You spend two, sometimes four weeks with these kids and later you can forget their filthy language, bad attitude and behavior

, the violence the exchange between themselves- that draws blood and leads to the emergency room. The hurt they inflict on each other, while at camp, which must have some lasting effect...

But I can't forget the smell of their house or the look of their father or step dad or "mums friend joe" and his beer gut, and him dressed in his best underwear at 2pm and how the sun reflects off his bald head as he slurs his words and asks me to read out the questions because the daylight is too bright, for him to read the form. And he makes excuse about why the kids clothes are in a garage bag instead of a suitcase like "the cat had kittens in the suitcase or ferrets ate a hole through it- YES FERRETS.
And as you walk away that child clutches your hand and wish that smell would stay with the house but it follows you in the garbage bag and you think to yourself "there must be more i can do!!"
Because you know that what you're walking away from is what this kid is coming back to...and that's only your experience at the front door."