Wheelchairing Through Campus

I was late today to breakfast sadly. Again, I guess I had taken too long in the shower. However, after that, we had class, and today's class was very unique. We got into pairs, according to size, and had a mini scavenger hunt....but on wheelchairs. One person would ride on the wheelchair, while the other would help out. I rode on the wheelchair today, and I will help my partner, Emily, out on Wednesday. 

It was the most tiring thing ever. It was fun for the first 15 minutes, but after that it was a pain. It

Us in wheelchairs, tired and sweaty

really opened my eyes to how hard it must be for wheelchair users. Each small incline would cause pains in the shoulder, and each small decline would release a sign of relief. Vanderbilt's roads use gravel, which is very bumpy for wheelchairs. In fact, the carpet in some buildings also made it a lot harder to push through. Then, there was stairs. Some stairways didn't have any ramps nearby them. It was so hard to navigate for 2 hours for me that I can't imagine how difficult it must be for permanent students at Vanderbilt. 

Our final frog

After that was lunch, and that exercising had really made me hungry. We continued modifying our toy and car after that. Shelby, Arman, Amanda, and I realized that the circuit board from our RC car was completely hopeless. We had burned out the wires on the sensors, and there was no way to fix that. We decided to move to a different toy: a singing and dancing frog. We moved the button from the foot of the frog to a large red button outside. All we had to do was connect the wires from the battery to a jack, where the button could be connected to. (Exactly like the audio jacks you have in your car). This was so much quicker and easier, and Shelby and I finished the task in less than half an hour. I then moved on to working on Will's car with the rest of my group members. Again, we took out the original button, in the steering wheel, and wired it to a bigger red button. This would allow us to carry out the plan in which Will would have to grab onto a PVC pipe on the button, and press on it so that he could move the car and steer. 

Soldering main part of button with steering's wires

After that was our arete class. This week, I have self defense. Our teacher was talking about nasty, brute ways of surviving attacks. It was very violent, and the images forming in my head were not nice. I just tried to remove them by daydreaming of better stuff, like rainbow and fairies.  

We then had our usual dinner, and soft night. This time, Jackie, Jae-An, and I decided to stay in and make galaxy paintings or T-shirts. I made a T-shirt while the other two chose to draw on a canvas. The three of us then made a hand painting. Isn't it adorable?

Our cute hand painting

My painted galaxy T-shirt