'Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh'

I feel that I’m really behind with everything! Emailing family and friends, blogging and sorting out photos! I’ve been so overwhelmed the last week that I haven’t really acknowledged my blog and for that, I apologise profusely! I shall try to summarise the last week or so the best I can and the quickest I can, my to-do list is growing by the minute! Now, where did I leave off last time?!

Ah yes, Monday. Nothing really major happened but Joe Murray did arrive on Monday night, ready for two days with us. Tuesday and Wednesday- I have to say that he was by far one of the best presenters we’ve had here at Frontrunners. On the first day, he explained who he was, what he’s done and what he does now. He started his presentation with an explanation of Alexander Graham Bell and then went into Deaf-Deaf Marriages, mentioning eugenics (sterilisation). It was fascinating to learn about history in such an interesting way. Before Frontrunners, I had..NO idea about deaf history whatsoever, actually any history! I knew bits and pieces about Ancient Egypt but nothing that could help me in future. A lot of the ideas proposed in the 19th century are still used these days; Deaf children are still frowned upon. Prior to his arrival, we were assigned ‘homework’ for him. We had to divide up in groups and summarise an article assigned. (Different articles for different groups), luckily my group didn’t have to do it that day... The two groups presented their view. They didn’t know it before but one of them was written in response to the other so they had a lot to debate about.

The next day, I will copy and paste a bit of my draft report for Joe’s lecture. I’m still waiting for an email back to see if it’s okay to put on the website. He began his presentation with “What does it mean to be Deaf” and asked who determined the answer? Society or the individuals themselves? He went back into history and gave us a variety of definitions of ‘Deaf’ in the past 200 years... “Mute” wasn’t actually used until late 19th century and it was a ‘hearing’ idea!

A debate that has gone on for years is there really a Deaf world and a hearing world or are they just merged into one? Joe presented a good theory, that dividing them into worlds is just a natural way to try to understand the differences between Deaf and hearing people.

Deaf people constantly redefine themselves according to their current circumstances. They could be one definition in one place at one time but be a totally different person in a different place at a different time.

Very interesting…On Thursday and Friday morning, we had Tomato Lichy from the UK come talk to us about activism. It was certainly an interesting couple of days.

We left Castberggård around 12pm on Friday to travel to Copenhagen for our ‘Frontrunners Party’. We organised a workshop and a party for young people- not only Danish but from countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Norway. I even had ONE Australian stop by on his travels!!!! The workshop went really well, you can see pictures here…

And the party pictures can be found here…(There were only FOUR non-europeans at that party, three from the Asia-Pacific..Ammy, Eddie from Australia and MEEEE!)

Sunday and Monday were very lazy days. Vivien was sick so she didn’t come in and Ole didn’t come either so we were advised to use our days constructively but I was so tired from Berlin, Prague, the busy week we had and the weekend, that I basically walked around like a Zombie!!!

Today, we had Paal Richard Peterson from Norway come to talk to us about S, M, L and XL deaf people. His presentation mainly focused on his thesis in 2001. I found it really hard to focus today for some reason but his presentation was mainly about politics. He also asked us about our goals and what form of politics would we use to achieve those goals. That really made me think…

According to him, there are four forms of politics..

Organisation
Election
Media
Protest actions

I’ve been exposed to many different things here, politics, history, culture, identity…and everything else! I have to think..what’s coming next?! :-)

I’ll try to update as soon as I can,

Seeya

Kisses and hugs

-Katrina xox