I am using this blogging site to keep friends and family informed about my life for the next 7 months or so of blindness training at the Colorado Center for the Blind. I have Usher's syndrome which results in hearing loss and progressive vision loss. Now the state of Colorado is paying for me to go through an extensive training program. There will be lots of challenges ahead for me and I am both apprehensive and excited!!!! The training consist of being blindfolded 8 hours a day 5 days a week and learning how to function completely without sight.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Grocery shopping

For travel we were sent to the grocery store. Very interesting experience doing this blind. I'm grateful my travel instructor went with us b/c we had to cross an intersection and I veered. He hits my leg with his cane to keep me going in the correct direction. He really had to whack me a bunch of times b/c I kept trying to veer more. Anyways when you grocery shop blind you need the help of a shoppers assistant. A young gentleman helped us around the store and my instructor had us take turns using our canes and pulling the cart behind us. The assistant would say left or right and we'd steer the cart. I personally like hanging on the back of the cart and being led around...less mental work that way. So we had to rely on the assistant though to tell us pricing and where certain food items were and then we could touch and feel them to decide if that's what we wanted. Mark, one of the other students, knocked a rack of something over...so I had fun teasing him about that. I on the other hand did very well...but only for half the time. I bet if I had to navigate the same twisting path Mark did I would have knocked over a whole rack. It was a fun adventure.

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