Rochester: Day 2

Today I took my parents to see the FingerLakes region. We visited Skaneateles, Seneca Falls (where there aren't actually any falls), and Canandaguia. The weather was also determined to live up to the Rochester mantra of "if you don't like the weather just wait 5 minutes". It was great to be out and about in the community, poking around craft boutiques and picnicking in the countryside.

Statue in Canandaguia

St. James’ Episcopal Church

After our busy day we headed into Rochester city to enjoy a relaxed dinner with my fantastic coach Vincent.

Rochester: Day 1

This morning I caught the Amtrak from Toronto to Rochester with my parents. I have a big week of adventures planned. This week will be the most I've been off campus and out and about in Rochester since I arrived last August. As their tour guide in Rochester I've spend weeks consulting with my friends to come up with the ultimate list of things to see and do.

First order of business was a tour of campus to show mum and dad where I've been for the last eight months. I know that you might not get this impression from my blog, but I do spend most of my time in my office working!

RIT staples: Tiger statue, Java Wally's, and a statistics textbook

Dinner was a relaxed meal in my apartment with my parents and Dr Jessica Trussell of CERP. 

Visit to Toronto

My parents have come to visit me! They landed in Toronto tonight and I took the bus from Rochester to meet them. This is the first time that I've spent more than a few hours in Toronto There is so much to see and do. I was able to see Lake Ontario from the northern shore and we visited the Allan Conservatory Gardens, Chinatown, and Kensington Market. Dinner was amazing and could not have been more Canadian. The restaurant had the Stanley Cup Playoffs (Toronto Maple Leafs vs Washington Capitals) on one screen and the baseball (Toronto Blue Jays vs Baltimore Orioles) on the other screen!

Mum, Dad, and an adopted puppy

Kittycat play time

Exploring Colorado Springs

This week as my first visit to the West region of the United States and I had an extra day to stay and explore its remarkable geography and meet many friendly locals on my travels. The must see attractions were obviously all skating related, including the US Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame where I saw skates from hundreds of years ago, journal entries on the correct tracing of a rocker (something that I still struggle with) and a lot of Sonia Henie memorabilia.  

Historic skating journals

Next, it was the US Olympic Training Center for a tour of the amazing facilities available to the very best athletes in the United States. Facilities include a weightless treadmill which reduces your body weight by up to 85% so you can continue training even with fractures and a training and sleeping chamber where the oxygen level can be changed to simulate conditions at different altitudes.

Sarah Hughes statue

Next, the Garden of the Gods. This is a magnificent public park in Colorado with stunning red rock formations set against the piercing blue sky. The rock formations in the park were created during an  upheaval along a fault line millions of years ago. This means that many rock types are simultaneously visible: deep-red, pink and white sandstones, conglomerates, and limestone. Upheaval and erosion have led to formations that are sharp and unusual, and distinct from the surrounding landscape.

The Garden of the Gods

A quiet moment of reflection on my journey

World Synchronized Skating Championships

After Wyoming it was time to head a little further south to Colorado Springs, Colorado for the International Skating Union World Synchronised Skating Championships. April 7th and 8th Broadmoor World arena was inundated with skaters representing Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States. I was there to support my amazing friend Blaise who moved to Germany to train with Team Berlin 1 who were competing this week. 

Opening Ceremony

Blaise and Kate reunited after a year

As a bonus, my friend Flea had joined the Perth team who qualified to represent Australia at Worlds so I was also able to see her skate and hang out in the grand stand with all the proud Aussie families, who had brought an abundance of flags and props to support their girls.

Team Australia's Long Program

University of Wyoming

I have come to Laramie in southern Wyoming to visit Associate Professor Mark Guiberson at the University of Wyoming. Dr Guiberson is the director of the Communication Disorders program and Associate Professor of Child Language. Dr Guiberson examined my PhD thesis and we have common interests in the area of working with families of young linguistically diverse children, including children with hearing loss.

The faculty, staff, and students at the University of Wyoming were warm and welcoming. I was privileged to be given a tour of the department and to enjoy the stunning campus with bright yellow sandstone set agains clear blue skies. Dr Guiberson and I spent two days working on the initial stages of a project related to intervention practices for children with hearing loss from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. I joined Dr Mary-Jo Cooley Hidecker in watching her class make their end of semester presentations for their Aural Rehabilitation class. I also sat down with students (and donuts) to describe life in Australia and how university life and speech-language pathology practice was different. As a bonus, I was able to have dinner with the inspiring Professor Mary Hardin-Jones and Professor David Jones.

Off campus, Dr Guiberson showed me some of the beautiful sights of Laramie, including driving as far as the road was plowed in Medicine Bow National Forest. We did make it quite a way up the mountain before all that could be seem by the side of the road were massive snow banks, and eventually the road itself disappeared. We had a walk around and found paw prints in the snow that were definitely too big to belong to a dog, but too small to belong to a bear. Mark suggested it was most likely a mountain lion, one local that I was not keen to meet!

Spring snowbank

Mark and I blinded by the afternoon sun on the snow

Shepard Symposium on Social Justice

The Shepard Symposium on Social Justice is an annual event at the University of Wyoming which seeks to generate discussion and solutions to eliminate social inequality. The symposium focuses on issues related to inequalities based on race/ethnicity, gender,  orientation, disability, geography, and class. The symposium is names in the memory of Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student to be a living reminder of the need for information and continual dialogue about social justice.

This was the 21st symposium, and this year's theme was "Rebel Health: Wellness Without Borders". Participants presented posters and papers on topics as diverse as Nonconformist Dancers (Mariah Brewer, Katherine Schultz) and Linguistic privilege and monolingual ideology (Erica Barton, Jose Rivas). Professor Mark Guiberson from the University of Wyoming presented a paper titled Using Graphic Novellas to promote Health in Spanish-Speaking Workers. More information about this project can be found here. 

Associate Professor Mark Guiberson