The Christianville Spirit: No IQ to Judge Me

The Christianville Spirit

The Spirit that Keeps Learning with Hope and Resilience

August 29th, 2018-TCS # 604

Hola, My Readers! I am happy to be on My Regular Newsletter Writing Schedule! I missed you guys! So, There is Something that came to My Attention This Past Week that Made Me feel “Special”, and Not the Good “Special”. You See, in Having Special Needs, which One would think is Easier than being Typical, don’t have to worry as much about Life’s Worries, It is an Easy Life! Or, so We think anyway. Okay, Given having Special Needs, gets you some Bypasses and Help as well but with it, comes those Times. This Story is one of those Times. You See, In order to have the Help You need as well as Trying to be as Independent as possible, You have to get Services to help you. Services can be given via The Government or The State in which You live in. In Texas, That means It is given via The State of Texas. Basically, It’s getting The State, Medicaid, and A Coordinator Company to all agree in Giving You Services. It is really complicated! Basically, I have a Case Manager that I see every month and They basically check in to How I am doing. The Extras like Supportive Employment, In-Home Services, and so on, You have to request. Anyway, so Along with The Coordinator Company checking in, The State checks in to see How you are doing in terms of Your IQ, to see See if You need The Services or not. This only happens once every few years, The Last Time being in 2013. Now, It was not The Test itself that bothered me, It was that I was not prepared for It. Now, Truth be told, An IQ Test is not something You need to be prepared for, unlike School Testing, The SAT, or ACT Tests. But, A Psych Person told us to come in, and We thought it was only to Update Yearly Paperwork but, It turned out to be that They were going to Test My IQ, I was Tired and still recovering from Going to Sweden. So, The Person told My Mom leave the room to do The Test. I tried My Best, even with My Perfectionist Ways. Now, They is No Wrong or Right Way to do The Test, Just give it Your Best Shot! But, The Thing is, The Way in which You are treated when comes to IQ Testing as well Other Ways of treating People with Special Needs, tends to swing towards, (In a Child-Like Voice) You be Careful Now because This Person is Speecial! In Other Words, Asking something like “Can You do This?!; Match Shapes?; Numbers? (Frontwards, Backwards, and in Order); 2 Plus 2; Geography Questions (Nailed It!); Science Questions; and, Sometimes, Psych Questions (Luckily not This Time). If It were You, It would make you feel Less Than. Thank God that They changed The Name in which They call Someone with a Low Score, (Pardon The Language here) Mentally Retarded. Today, They use The Term “Intellectually Disabled”. Ya Know, to My Mine, that Sounds like a Machine or a Robot that is messed up a little bit. Not quite that It is Useless but, Quite that It needs a little Tune Up. Computer Nerds, On It! Another Theory is an Office Printer that You need to go to The Printer itself to press “Print” instead of on The Computer. If You do try Pressing Print on The Computer, The Printer say “Intellectually Disabled”. Now, In My Mind, One could read that as a Joke like “A Priest and Rabbi walk into Bar..” and Truth be told, It could be a Joke. But, To Me, It is not. I have known that I have Special Needs and I embrace It! PTLS makes me who I am. But, My Readers, It is NOT Who I am or What I am, if that makes sense. If Someone introduced me as “Hey Guys, This Christian, He has Special Needs, He has PTLS” versus “This is Christian, a Great Friend of Mine”, It makes me feel better. I am proud of Have Special Needs, but to Reminded of It, Is basically Putting a Label on The Office Printer saying It does not work when, It just takes getting up to Clicking “Print” on The Machine and Surprise! It works just Fine! Now, I may not excel in Certain Areas like Math, unless It is showed in a Better Context. I may not be up to The Social Level of People that are My Age. But, I do excel in Other Things, like Geography, History, and Politics. Not to Mention; Road Signs, Human Emotion, and Intuitiveness, to name a Few. I don’t need an IQ Test to tell me about that, because I already know about that. Heck, A Couple Years Ago, I was able to Fix My Computer after It had a Virus. All in all, PTLS makes Me Special, but I like to say that It makes me Unique.

Thanks for Reading The Christianville Spirit. Don’t Judge, Don’t Limit Us Incredible People!

The Christianville Spirit: My 31st Birthday in Sweden

The Christianville Spirit

The Spirit that Keeps Learning with Hope and Resilience 

August 22nd, 2018-TCS # 603

Welcome Back, My Readers! Yes, My Readers, Welcome Back! Thank You for Staying with Me! So, Wow! It has been 3 Weeks since The Last Time I wrote to You. The First Week Reason was not so Fun but, The Other Two Weeks were Much More Fun! The First Week, I had to take off because The Air Conditioning in My House went out and We basically had to wait Several Days before It could be Fixed Completely. They pretty much had to Replace The Whole Unit. Such a First World Problem! But, Such a Necessary Thing Here in Texas with The Heat!

So, on to Much More Exciting Things! I went to Sweden again! Yes, I went to Sweden for The Second Time and This Time, was so Beyond Awesome! It was Another Part “PTLS Business Trip/Speaking Tour” and Part Fun Adventure. This Time was a Little Different as well because We took My Brother with Us. Now, This Trip did not start in The Way I Planned like a Lot of Things in My Life This Year, but I digress. It was a Hard Lesson in Terms of Choosing not only How to get there but, What Airline to Fly. We took IcelandAir. Now, Don’t get me Wrong, It was not a Terrible Experience. There was a Baby crying the Whole Way, Several Seats Back. Thank God for Headphones! But, The Thing is, I wanted to go to Iceland! even if I just landed there, Spent a Few Hours, and Flew on to Stockholm. I did not realize Two Things, One is that is VERY Expensive in Iceland and Two, Codeshare Agreements (or Airline Alliances) really matter. The Blue Lagoon, The Most Famous Place in Iceland is 6,000 Local Currency (Icelandic Kronour), that is 60 US Dollars for Basic Entry. The Codeshare Agreement thing, that basically means that If You have Miles or Loyalty toward American Airlines, Delta, or United Airlines, You can use them on Airlines within Their Codeshare. like with American, You get points on Iberia, British Airways, and Many Others; Delta with KLM, Air France, and Alitalia; and, United with Lufthansa. Now, IcelandAir is an Independent Airline (Non-Codeshared). Now, That is Fine, You do not always need Codeshares until You consider something like Frills. Codeshares, I feel, police The Frills where as Independents can do what They will with Frills or No Frills. In This Case, IcelandAir was a No Frills. Easy with No Frills going 3 Hours, but 8 Hours, Nope! Anyway, Moving On. So, The First Day, My Mom, Michael, and I were in Stockholm, We spent getting The Lay of The Land. We were staying closer to The City Center so that Michael could be within Close Distance of Places to See. He was Scheduled to hang out and See the Sites with 

a Friend of Ours. We took Michael to One of The Local Grocery Stores and afterwords, We could not get out because They had Security and You could not get out unless you had a Receipt. The Next Day, Thursday. It was rather Warm by Sweden Standards! It was 85 Degrees Warm. That is Fine, but Remember that Up North, It rarely gets that Hot and Therefore, Not needing Air Conditioning. I Mean, there were a Few Places like Our Hotels and Restaurants that had It. But, Regardless of The Heat, I wanted to Show My Brother, The Places that I have seen before and My Favourite Parts of Stockholm including Gamla Stan (The Old Town). Having PTLS causes us to have a Problem with Our Body Temperatures and I do not tolerate The Heat very well.

I will Tell You, We pretty much walked a Large Portion of Gamla Stan. We did not make it to The Changing of The Guard but, We did get to see Something Cooler, We got to see The Swedish Royal Band do a Parade through the Old Town. My Brother really enjoyed it there. After Walking around Gamla Stan, We stopped for Ice Cream. Funny Story, I was wearing a The Christianville Spirit Shirt, but The Owner of The Ice Cream Place read it as “Christian Spirit”. Her Arms went up in The Air saying “Hallelujah!” and was telling The Rest of The People working there that We were going to have “Praise Jesus” Time! So, Praise Jesus, We did, She put on Christian Music while We ate Our Ice Cream. After That, I wanted to Take Michael to The City Hall where We went Last Time (Refer to The First Stockholm Newsletter) But, It was Hot with No A/C so We decided not to. We did get to See The Courtyard and a Prettier Scene this time around because It was a Beautiful Day. The Next Day, Friday, Lovely PTLS Family Member, Josefine of Sweden was Nice Enough to drive us to and from Sundsvall, about 4 Hour North of Stockholm because that is Where We were having Our PTLS Mini-Conference. Now, What was Really Cool about this Drive was that We got to see a Whole lot more of Sweden outside of Stockholm. It was Seriously Stunning Nature and We have not even seen The Basics before that! Josefine showed us a Place where She likes to Stop for a Break between Stockholm and Sundsvall. Now, To Most People, They would not get This Excited about a Travel Center along The Road, but This One was Really Cool. It is called Rasta Tönnebro (I had to research The Name!). If You drive from Stockholm to Sundsvall or Vice Versa, I would recommend stopping here. I just call it a Travel Center with a Lake. Yes, Really a Lake. In The Summer, People actually stop there to go Swimming. Heck, In Sweden, If It is Fika Time, People literally stop on The Side of The Road to have Fika! Oh Swedish Life, I tell ya! While We were There, We sat on a Patio-Gazebo on The Lake and Overlooking it and We had Swedish Meatballs. This is as Swedish as It gets, I thought at The Time. Oh No, Christian and My Readers, It gets MORE Swedish later! After that, We continued on Our Way to Sundsvall. Once We arrived in Sundsvall, We got a Little Tour of The City while trying to Find Our Hotel. Little did I know that Our Hotel for The Weekend and My Birthday was on a Mountain! Yes, A Mountain overlooking The City of Sundsvall, Two Islands in The Distance, and Even The Baltic Sea in The Distance. In Sundsvall, I would think that You are either Team North City Mountain (N. Stad Berget) or South City Mountain (S. Stad Berget). The Mountain that We were on was South Stad Berget. Team South City Mountain all the way! Our Hotel on This Mountain was called Hotell Södra Berget. It is Ski Resort in The Winter and a Biking-down-The-Mountain Resort in The Summer. The Coolest Part and Most Addicting Part for Me at This Hotel was The View. I took Every Chance I could to sit facing toward The View. On Saturday, My Birthday (which in all Honesty did not feel like It was My Birthday, probably because of The Disbelief of Having My Birthday in Another Country) was The Day of Our PTLS Mini-Conference/Speaking Tour. It was The Business Side of This Trip. After That, The Swedish Speaker spoke, It was My Turn to Speak. Yes, I spoke at a PTLS Event for The 3rd Time so Far. I spoke Very Well. Funny Thing, I even spoke before My Mom did! Whereas I spoke after The First Fika (Yes, Remember that Swedes have Two Fikas a Day!) My Mom spoke after Lunch and The Second Fika. After The Mini-Conference was Over, Everyone sung Happy Birthday to Me and Josefine even got me a Shirt from Sundsvall! Sweet Josefine! That Evening, The Sun was still up, but It was Evening (For Reference, The Sun rose at 4:30 AM and Set at like 9:30 PM). After That, We got to The Hotel just in Time for The Sunset over The Mountains. What a Great Ending to My Birthday! On Sunday, We drove back to Stockholm, Got to See My Brother again, and Hang Out with Him and Our Friend who toured him around. The Next Day, Monday, We will call The Full Swedish Day! Josefine, Sweet Josefine drove us out to The Stockholm Archipelago and Showed us The Most Swedishly Nature Island called Ljusterö (pronounced Loose-TRah). Josefine’s Parents had us at Their House for a Home-Cooked Swedish Meal. It was Really Good! After that, We went out for Ice Cream, Josefine’s Parents were Such Amazing People! They got me a Shirt from Ljusterö for My Birthday! Then, It was Time to finish the Trip and Head back Home to Texas. All in all, It was Brilliant Trip, We learned about PTLS in Different Countries, Heard how They treat them, and My Mom had Great Meetings to help provide better understanding of PTLS All Week.

Thanks for Reading The Christianville Spirit. Travel around The World to Embrace Differences!