Lame Travels: To Kentucky and Back

Exactly one year ago, I traveled to Richmond, Kentucky. There, I visited my friend Danika and her family. My mom went with me to simplify the traveling process, and to help take care of me when we reached our destination. We flew Delta, which was amazing; the stewardesses were so helpful, and we had a number of unexpected bonuses that made our flying experiences that much more special.  

I have decided that flying may be a good way to pick up my husband, since I am always the first to enter the plane and I am always sitting in a normal plane seat like any other girl would my wheelchair is not the first thing others see. I actually had a guy check me out; this was somewhat embarrassing, but exciting at the same time, as this had never happened to me before by an able bodied guy who was not drunk or high. I have noticed that young guys tend to act differently around me when I am in my wheelchair than when I am not, and I also have witnessed the difference with able bodied girls as well. It seems easier for people to talk to me when I am in a plane seat versus when I am in my wheelchair. I find this interesting, as in both cases I am sitting down!

The landing in Kentucky was incredible; I could tell that we were declining in altitude, but the weather was amazing and the pilot had such great control that the touch down was so smooth, and we just glided  right onto the runway. When landing, the sky was so blue and there were lush green fields all around with white fences that encompassed neat patches of brown. When we exited the plane, the setting sun glowed red in the sky, and the air was thick and warm. I fell in love with Kentucky for a second time. Danika, her sister Ellie, and her dad were waiting for us in the terminal; I was so excited to see her, and I am pretty sure she topped my excitement. We went to her house and just talked for a while, then went to bed.
The next day, we all went shopping in Lexington. Danika, Ellie and I went to Victoria Secret. As Danika and I were browsing through the store, this lady came up to my mom and asked if we were sisters. My mom told her that we were really great friends out shopping, just like any other two girls would do. The lady replied with "How ferocious!" How ferocious? What type of response is that? That lady also seemed to not be able to get it through her head that Danika and I were not sisters, but Ellie and Danika were sisters. I love Danika so much; I love her as a sister, but just because we are both in wheelchairs does not qualify us as sisters.

Danika and I out shopping

During that same shopping trip, we decided to get some pizza. Washington is not alone when it comes to "separate but equal" entrances. We all found a place to eat and the main door had a one step up to the entrance; fortunately, there was another door around the corner so Danika and I could enter this building!

Danika enjoying her pizza

For the next two days, we all hung out at Danika's house. She lives in a beautiful area, and the weather was super nice, so we did a lot of hanging out outside and taking pictures. We hung out by the pool, and one night, we made s'mores (this reminded me of MDA camp, where Danika and I met and made many wonderful memories together)!

Hanging out on the patio

Twinning

So beautiful

Making memories together

Exploring the neighborhood 

Ellie braided my hair!

S'mores!

Gorgeous sunset to go with a lovely evening 

On my last full day in Kentucky, we went shopping in Richmond. We explored around the mall, and then went to lunch at a favorite sandwich shop of Danika's.

At Panera Bread

During our exploring, I only found one thing that was not accessibly safe at this mall; there was not a curb cut out at one of the crosswalks in the parking lot. This meant that Danika and I both had to exit the sidewalk early, drive in the parking lot with cars driving toward and past us, and then enter back onto the sidewalk beyond the crosswalk. In contrast to the Richmond mall, I found that at the Lexington mall many of the curb cut outs were amazing, and I would love to see all curb cut outs constructed like these; they are super easy to navigate!

Amazing curb cut out at Lexington Mall

With regards to accessibility, Lexington is more accessible than Bellingham to my knowledge. I have not done as extensive of adventuring around there as I have here. None the less, there were two things that I did notice that were a plus. We were always able to find a handicap parking spot (AMAZING!) and so many people went out of their way to open the door for us. There is definitely an awareness that I do not see very often here in Western Washington.

After we were finished shopping in Richmond, we went home and hung out as late as we could, spending as much time together as we could! I am so glad that I had the opportunity to travel to Kentucky, and create a week of memories with Danika and her family.

On our return home, we had to fly from Kentucky to Minnesota, and then from Minnesota to Washington. The night before our departure, my mom checked our flight schedule. She found out that we had been bumped to an earlier flight. When we arrived at the airport, we found out that our flights had been messed up, in that we were bumped back to our later flight from Kentucky to Minnesota, but not Minnesota to Washington. Therefore, we would be sitting in the Kentucky airport when our airplane in Minnesota was taking off. My mom went to the information desk to talk to someone about our tickets. She asked if they could please change our flight back to the earlier flight so that we could catch our connecting flight from Minnesota to Washington, and they did. We went through customs and went to wait for our flight. After about twenty minutes of waiting, we were informed that there may be a slight delay as there was a mess-up in the pilot's paperwork (it had not arrived, so the pilot could not fly). Another hour went by before we were able to board the plane. We had ironically missed our connecting flight (in Minnesota), and for all the trouble, Delta bumped us to first class. So, when we arrived in Minnesota, we walked through the airport, and boarded our next flight.

The first sweet factor about first class was that the stewardesses allowed my mom to just push me right onto the plane in my manual chair; no need for a squishy ride through the plane in an isle chair! After we got situated in first class, the stewardess brought us drinks. Unlike in coach, where a person only gets a drink every so often, in first class, one can ask for a drink any time. After boarding the plane, we were informed that due to the weather, we would be stuck on the runway until the thunderstorm passed. That was fine with us; we got to sit in first class for an hour longer, and we were not in a hurry. Another thing that separates first class from coach is, we were given lunch. On all the domestic flights I have been on, I have never been fed anything more than peanuts!

I had an amazing time flying cross country, and hanging out with Danika and her family. Thank you Ellie for all your help while I was there, and thank you Danika and your family for opening your house to both my mom and I! I miss you, Danika, and cannot wait until we meet again!

Oh, and next time we should go out to coffee! Maybe we can do that when we meet in Portland!     

A Time of Growth: A Spring Quarter Review

I love springtime so much. Spring is probably my favorite season closely followed by Summer and Fall.     Springtime is when the ornamental cherry trees are in full bloom and the deciduous trees are green once again. The garden is now baring veggies and herbs, and the sun is finally making warm appearances. I also love the watercolored skies and the scattered thunder showers that show up every now and again.
As I type this, the weather is spectacular; it is 70 degrees and sunny. Today is the first day of the quarter that I have actually been able to spend the entire day soaking up the sun as well as having an enjoyable Saturday. The first five weeks of this quarter have been emotionally exhausting. I signed up for a history class that I wish I would have never got myself into. Due to this one class, I would have to say that this Spring quarter has been my least favorite quarter at Western.
To start off, the reason for my disgruntled attitude started at the very beginning. The DRS provided me with an ebook of every textbook that I needed for this quarter except for the one I needed for Modern Japanese History. Another problem that occurred before the class even begun is the professor of the class sent us an email recommending that we buy our needed textbook on Amazon, rather than from the bookstore. However, she failed to inform us that she would not be ordering the needed textbook through the bookstore at all. So, as a student who gets books paid for on scholarship, I showed up at the bookstore the day before classes started to receive my books. This is when I found out that the bookstore did not have the textbook required for Modern Japanese History. This meant that I then had to order my copy of the textbook a day before class started. This did not make me too thrilled. On the second day of class, I took my paperwork (which I was able to get on the first day of classes because I was finally able to get the DRS secretary to make me an appointment before we left for spring break), to this history professor. When I handed the paperwork to her, she filled it out in a very huffy manner while scratching the pen across the page. I also informed her that I was legally blind and had a concern about the movies we were going to be watching. I asked about subtitles and she said that all the movies we watched were going to have subtitles, but that the ones showed in class would be read by a narrator on the film. However, she did not seem interested in my accommodations, so I said I would just figure it out. The majority of movies that were required for the class were old and extremely difficult or impossible to find on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or any provider that is similar. However, there is one copy of each reserved in the Western Library. Now, the movies are old, which means the tapes are old (yes, I said tapes). These tapes had to stay in the library, so they had to be watched on a library monitor that plays VHS. They are super tiny and for a legally blind person, I have not been able to "watch" the movies that I could not find legally on the internet. On a side note, the professor told the class that we needed to watch the movies and if we needed to pirate the movies, then do so. Ok, back to watching the videos; I needed someone to read the subtitles to me and when watching the movie in the library, I could not see the picture. So, for two and a half hours, I listened to my mom read the dialog to me. Thank you, Mom, for reading the subtitles to me while watching an extremely long and slowly plotted movie. For each of the movies watched, a reflection essay/synopsis was required. A primary source (something like a letter, document, article or poem, written during the actual time, not a textbook or someone writing about the past) was also needed to be tied into the paper. The teacher's instructions for the assignment were vague and it was not clear how she wanted us to cite our source. So, one day after class, I asked her how she wanted the information cited. She told me to cite it however. I also asked what she meant by "one page" when talking about the primary source. I asked if that meant we needed to complete a separate write up on the primary source itself and she said no. During this conversation, nor in her directions, nor in class did she mention that the directions for "one page" meant to bring a copy of the primary source that was used. When she handed back our first paper, she informed us that we all did a terrible job and that we were not to come talk to her about it until our second assignment was returned to us. She had marked up my entire paper, but instead of explaining how I did not follow her expectation (directions that were not clearly stated in her instructions, or orally when asked questions in class), she changed my words and gave her opinion about my interpretation of the movie (a movie that was not easy to see in the first place). She also marked up my citation of the primary source that I used; even after she said it didn't matter how I completed it.
Another thing that happened in this class was we had maps to study for the tests. The map of Japan that ended up on the test was warped (scrunched up unlike the map provided to study with - this is very difficult for a legally blind person to deal with). Also, the maps that were provided online to study with were not of good quality either. So, when they were blown up, they became fuzzy; the words were not legible.
To top it all off, my professor had posted an introduction slide on Blackboard of a picture of a cat with evil eyes and claws drawn that says, "I don't do touchy-feely. I do scratchy-bleedy."
I have talked to a lady from the President's office as well as taking a meeting scheduled for this Monday with a lady from WWU's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) office. This class has been the last straw. And now that I have finally found who I need to talk to after two years, I am relieved! I am hoping that these problems will be straightened out, not only for myself, but for other students dealing with similar experiences as well.

Okay, so I wrote the information above in the middle of Spring quarter and now the quarter is coming to a close. Two days after I wrote the previous paragraph, I met with the lady from Western's OCR office. She seemed pretty nice and she gave me the opportunity to tell her all my concerns about everything I had experienced with regards to certain things that have happened with the DRS and different professors. As I was talking, she took notes and tried to document everything that I said. I asked if I could come back and read everything she typed and she said that I could.
In that meeting, I also had the chance to meet the head of the DRS, who happens to be the head of the Admissions office as well, so he is never actually in the DRS. I did not get a good first impression of him; he told me exactly what he thought I wanted to hear, but at the same time, he gave the same excuses that I have heard from the other DRS workers many times (i.e. We have over 600 students that we accommodate, we are short staffed, we are doing the best we can...). That meeting ended and I left. Within a couple hours, I received an e-mail from my DRS counselor, "Just checking in." She was offering to help me plan out my schedule and just wanted to make sure my quarter was going well. What? She wants to help me? In my two years at Western I had never received an e-mail like this ever! Was it a coincidence?
The next week, I returned to read over the notes that the lady from the OCR office had typed; I only found one minor mistake and she fixed it so the sentence would make more sense. After she fixed the mistake, we started talking. She told me that she had personally taken a trip down to the DRS and talked the lady in charge of proctoring the tests, about the mishap with the room for nursing mothers. The OCR lady questioned the lady in the DRS about the table incident (see last post for background information); the lady from the OCR made it sound like it was the DRS lady's fault. The DRS lady started making all sorts of excuses (i.e. I thought her chair could fit under the table in the large testing room, I did not know...). However, the lady in the DRS, who the lady from the OCR talked to, was not even there when the mishap happened! So why did she feel as if she had to make up excuses? The OCR lady also told the DRS lady that she needed to start allowing me to use the room with the higher table again. However, the lady from the OCR office got this wrong! I specifically told her that the lady from the DRS, who has the responsibility of proctoring tests, had nothing to do with the table and room incident. I also told the OCR lady that every test since the mishap, the DRS testing lady had been there, gave me my test and allowed me to use the lactation room for mothers, as it was always vacant when I went to test. In the OCR lady's notes, all this information is written down in CAPITAL letters! How in the world did she get the information wrong when she went to talk to the DRS? Why did the OCR lady talk to the testing lady when it was not her fault? Why did the ADA lady not talk to the two counselors who were involved? And why did the OCR lady not pay close enough attention to her own notes to make sure she got the story right before she went and talked with the DRS? When I called the OCR lady on taking the wrong information to the DRS, she seemed shocked. The correct information was at her fingertips, and she missed it.

Another occurrence that happened at the very beginning of this quarter is I went to my DRS counselor and talked to her about my classroom on the fifth floor of Old Main. This building is the oldest one on campus and has beautiful staircases. However, this means that if a fire was to occur, there would not be a safe place for a person to sit, as the staircases are open with no ventilation system like in newer buildings. I asked my counselor what the best plan would be in case of a fire. She did not know and told me she would talk to Health Services and get back to me; she sent me a link to their website. A couple days later, I was talking to a lady who works in the President's Office. She explained to me that there is a special chair (located on the fourth floor of Old Main) that is specifically for evacuating disabled people from a burning building. Now, can you tell me why a counselor from Disability Resources for Students would not know about an evacuation system for students with disabilities? Due to this questioning of miscommunication, there is now a committee being formed and they are going to discus the plan of action that needs to be taken for making set evacuation plans for students with mobility loss.
If you read my last post, you may remember that I talked about how the room that I had always taken my tests in was turned into a lactation room for mothers. Here is an update on that situation. During the meeting in which I addressed the fire safety issue with my counselor, I noticed that the table that I had always tested at in the now lactation room was sitting in her office. At first, I was not sure if it was the same table, but when I began taking my tests in the lactation room, my table (the one high enough for me to fit under) was no longer there. Instead, I had to test at a table that was a good height, but had such a big lip underneath that I could not fit under it. I continued to test in this situation, as is was the lesser of the two "painfuls". By the way, there are still no new tables for the large testing room.

Warm Hearts Triumph the Cold: A Winter Quarter Review

Overall, I had a pretty good winter quarter. I really only had one mishap with the Disability Resources for Students (DRS), and I would have to say that it was my favorite quarter so far at Western. I had an amazing professor for Macroeconomics whose passion for teaching made the class so enjoyable. My professor wanted us all to do well and I really liked his class; for the first time at Western, I was a little sad when the quarter ended. I want to thank my professor, John Hayfron, for giving me a better appreciation for economics and for helping me, as well as others, to succeed in your class. Another amazing part about Macroeconomics was that I had the most spectacular note taker that I have ever had! Kate you are awesome; thank you so much for your incredible notes and I enjoyed studying with you! I hope we will be in another class together in the future.
Unfortunately, the one mishap with the DRS turned my sweet quarter a little sour. It occurred towards the end of the quarter. I was informed that the college decided to make one of the rooms in the DRS the designated spot for mothers to nurse their babies. Why the college decided to do this is beyond me; I am for the campus to have a designated room for nursing mothers, but there are many other rooms that are more appropriate to choose from to accommodate mothers. This room that has been designated for mothers in the DRS happens to be the room that I take all my tests in. When being informed of this new decision, one of the ladies from the DRS told me that I could still take my test in that room, as long as it was not occupied nor going to be occupied by a mother. She said she could do nothing about it and had raised the question of why that room had been given priority to mothers to nurse, as the room IS in the DRS. The next week I went to take another test. The lady who informed me about the room was at lunch, so one of the counselors gave me my test. I went into the room, like I always have, and started taking my test. I saw one of the other counselors walk past the room and then walk back past the other way. Shortly after this, the counselor who walked passed the room started talking to the counselor who gave me my test. The counselor who gave me my test then came into the room, while I was in the middle of my test, and told me that I could no longer test in the room I was in, as it was a lactation room for mothers. I followed her to the large testing room and I explained to both the counselors that if I could no longer test in the room that I had always tested in, then I needed a higher table to be placed in the large testing room. This room is filled with desks and does have a table; however, this table is so low that my wheelchair cannot fit under it, and because I am legally blind, the paper is so far away from my face, it is difficult for me to see the writing unless I lean way over. This is not comfortable, as my back is fused, and who wants to be physically uncomfortable while taking a test? I have taken two tests since this occurrence, and an accommodating desk has still not been placed into the large testing room. Since the incident, I have taken my tests in the lactating room because I have asked the lady who proctors the tests, and she has approved this. The lack of communication that caused the interruption of my testing is frustrating.
Even though there was this frustrating bump in the road, I still would have to say that Winter quarter has been my favorite so far at Western! Thanks again to my Macroeconomics professor, I really enjoyed your class! And, thanks again to Kate for being an amazing note taker!