I am having a hard time focusing on school work today.  I'm really tired and just trying to stay awake so I can get stuff done.  I have to write a paper on a disability within the population I'm assisting with this quarter but can't decide what my exact topic should be since I don't have access to any medical records or charts.  I can just guess maybe, or write it about developmental disabilities as a whole?  It's surprisingly hard to find good articles on this.  One more day until it's due...yikes.

I am trying to keep this blog mainly about my experiences in school and in practicum but there are just so many elements in my life right now that directly influence how I experience everything.  Today I had another dentist visit.  I liked this dentist a lot more than the last one.  I was 20 minutes late though because my bus route was wrong and I had to call a cab.  The dentist recommended me to a specialist who could advise me further.  Basically my options are I can get my root canal redone or I can extract the tooth and get a bridge.  Whatever I do I know it's going to be very expensive and I get super stressed just thinking about having to borrow money from my mom or from Jeris. I definitely have a set of challenges in front of me every day.  Right now I am focusing on: pushing through my homesickness, practicing music every day In a way I feel like I am failing already in Portland because I can't do it on my own.

On the upside I really love Tuesday's and Thursday's because I have Guitar and Music Therapy in Recreation/Special Needs.  Tonight we mainly played xylophones, glockenspiels, tone chimes, and played musical games.  Next week I have to teach my own musical game that could be used in a music therapy intervention.  I SO got this.

Side note: tonight I used my food stamp card for the first time.... it was amazing.

Second Quarter, feeling even more overwhelmed

Today I had my second practicum session at Port City Development Center.  The session went just as well as the first but I think my energy level was significantly lower.  I'm not sure if this was noticeable to anyone....I hope not.  I sat next to the same two clients today, not really on purpose, it just happened that way.  The client to my left (I'll call him "David") really likes rock music and always has his tape player and head phones with him and will randomly blast his music during the session.  A little distracting but whatever....  The client to my left, (easily my favorite so far, I'll call him "Sammy") is really into randomly naming holidays.  I definitely couldn't understand him at first but after hearing a staff member repeat what he said a couple times I started to catch on.  He turned to me several times saying "happy mother's day" or "halloween" and then "happy birthday" and "icecream cake."  I'm slowly figuring out how to respond to things like this.  So far I find myself just repeating back to him whatever he says or I'll say something like "I love icecream cake."  Sometimes I think I sound really stupid.... 

Adults with developmental disabilities is for sure a new population for me.  I'm comfortable with kids and pretty comfortable with the elderly but anyone in between sort of makes me nervous.