Foodsick

6/4/2012	DEBIT	Checking withdrawal @ ATMCANARA BANK KUSHALNAGAR KUSHALNAGAR	$181.85
6/2/2012	DEBIT	SPECTRUM INTERNET NOTTINGHAM GB	$4.68
5/31/2012	DEBIT	BAJIO GRILL- RIVERWOODSAMERICAN	$7.52
5/26/2012	DEBIT	BARRY FAMILY DENTAL GROOREM UTUS	$165.00
5/25/2012	DEBIT	CAFE FRESH OREM UTUS	$8.03
5/25/2012	DEBIT	NICOLITALIA PIZZERIA PROVO UTUS	$15.07
5/24/2012	DEBIT	CAFE RIO OREM OREM UTUS	$5.66
5/23/2012	DEBIT	CAFE FRESH OREM UTUS	$7.50
5/22/2012	DEBIT	AMAZON MKTPLACE PMTS	$19.99

Kushalnagar.

Today I looked at my bank account to see how it’s doing.  It’s doing good.  Nothing’s being done or doing.  I’m in India.  The blue stuff is my life since leaving America.  I’ve been to an Internet café thing in the airport in London (which totally ripped me off now I know!) and to an ATM in Kushalnagar.  Kushalnagar is a little town about 10 minutes away from where we live by rickshaw.  We go there to buy supplies and I’ve made copies of my consent forms and other things of the like.

Vegetables and fruits near the place of chocolates.

I actually haven’t gotten homesick at all really except for a few moments while sleeping on the bathroom floor with my vomit.  But looking at this bank statement seeing especially the food places made me somewhat homesick or I suppose foodsick, rather.  I am definitely not dentistsick.  I hate that man.  Anyway I’m missing Nic’s and Bajio, woo, I love those joints.  The food here is incredible too, but after throwing almost every different kind of meal up, I am not too stoked on returning to it straightaway.  In fact I kept telling Britney what I would give to have some chocolate and soda.  One Saturday while in Kushalnagar she grabbed my hand as soon as our feet hit the pavement from the rickshaw and dragged me straight to a shop with dozens of kinds of chocolate and cold sodas.  When I realized where she had taken me my eyes started gushing out of my head and my hands I rubbed together like a greedy little American girl and I began dreaming of the combinations of chocolate.  I took one of each kind of chocolate, mostly American stuff and Cadbury, and rushed to the sodas to get a nice cold soda.  I waited patiently in line tapping my foot and licking my lips until finally it was my turn to pay (which I did gladly and quickly) and as soon as the items were legally mine, I began opening and devouring them with sips of soda in between.  We walked along the streets of Kushalnagar for a bit and I just had a good old time with those treats and thought I was in paradise.  I was in paradise.

The remainder of the treats.  I'm going to eat the Cadbury like I'm Charlie Bucket.

Britney’s been saying to me how she’s never met someone who loves food so much.  She’s right.  And she never will in the future.  I always knew food and I were lovers, but being here amplifies my strange relationship with food.  I just love it!  We literally eat our meals at the sound of a bell on weekdays, so sometimes I’m like Pavlov’s dogs about the whole thing.  I’m Pavlov’s dog in too many respects.  That’s why I’m a master’s student at 23 I suppose.  And I’m tired and smell bad.

Cultural Barriers to South Indian Families' Access to Services and Educational Goals for their Children with Disabilities

Kalyanpur, M., Gowramma, I.P. (2007). Cultural barriers to south Indian families’ access to services and educational goals for their children with disabilities. The Journal of the International Association of Special Education, 8(1), 69-82.

•       A common concern was the difficulty of accessing information on services in a culture that continues to hold traditional negative perceptions of disability and lacks the infrastructure for dissemination of information (p. 72).
•       Familial attitudes toward disability were a primary barrier…
•       Additional barriers included negative professional attitudes in an environment that does not support parental rights…
•       In this study, the parents repeatedly spoke of service agencies and refused admission to their children on various grounds, including ineducability relating to severity of disability, or age in terms of the child being too young to benefit from intervention, and having to accept these unilateral decisions (p. 73).
•       …the local pediatrician “did not know anything about autism and told [her] that he was hearing this [word] for the first time” (p. 75).
•       In south India, each of the four main states has an official language and every child is expected to learn to speak, read, and write the state regional language, Hindi, and English (p. 76).

      Negative cultural attitudes about disability held by both professionals and families, lack of knowledge about diagnosing disabilities, language demands, and difficulty in getting services are all barriers in education in South India (Kalyanpur & Gowramma, 2007).  In addition to professionals having negative attitudes derived from cultural beliefs, many doctors, especially in smaller cities, are unaware of what disabilities exist, and of course of how to work with these individuals.  Also, parents have been known to feel shame and embarrassment about having a child with a disability where such perceptions are so commonplace.  Parents also fear revealing or bringing attention to disability because they want their child to access education.  Kalyanpur & Gowramma found that the parents in their study “repeatedly spoke of service agencies and refused admission to their children on various grounds, including ineducability relating to severity of disability, or age in terms of the child being too young to benefit from intervention, and having to accept these unilateral decisions” (p. 73).  Fear of revealing disabilities in India is a common theme in the current research on disabilities in India.