It has been so busy the past week that I didn't find the time to write something on my blog, so today is D-day :)
November 9th till 11th
I finished my stay in Michigan by having my first snow experience for this year. I was absolutely excited! We got back home after the course and thirty minutes later when we were on our way to have dinner with the group, it started snowing and it stayed until the next day! I took a picture as proof since i was thinking it would probably not snow in Belgium, but today the contrary is true :)
On Tuesday i left Grand Rapids, heading to Phoenix. I felt really sad leaving Bob and Sue, I had such a great time there and I hope I will see them back some day! Since the next course would start on Wednesday, I only had one day to make it to Arizona. And because I was flying standby, I was not sure whether I would make it or not :) Thirty minutes after my arrival at the airport in Grand Rapids, they let us know that there was a technical problem with the flaps of the wings. In other words, the plane was broken... At least I was glad they figured that out before we got on :) Four hours later we finally took off. Of course I missed my connection flight in Chicago. While spending some hours in the airport there, I discovered they offered instant flu shots for 35 dollars right next to Mc Donalds and Starbucks :) I also found out they had something called a 'shoe hospital' where they fix your shoes. Kind of funny that they call this one a hospital and the flu shot place not :)November 12th till 16th
I’m staying with the family Bacon as my second host family, with Howard & Laura and their two children Angela and Jacob. I remembered Arizona from my trip cross country, so I knew it would be a desert landscape. Still, it was pretty impressive to see all the big cactuses about 3 metres high!
The third course was really practically-oriented and we had a chance to experience many of the therapy activities ourselves! This group was absolutely fun, we even made our own course t-shirts with this picture on it! 
Almost everybody from the course was coming from all over America, so most of them stayed in a hotel. Since some of them had two beds in a room, they asked me to spend the evenings with them and have a ‘sleepover’. At night we went out for dinner, shopped and had a party till 01.00 AM although we had to wake up at 06.30AM the next morning. From the moment we stood on the dance floor with our group, suddenly everybody would join us and we had just so much fun! And I can tell you, the local boys were really dancing like they do on the R&B music clips on tv, I don’t know where they learned all their moves, but it was pretty cool to watch :)
November 17th till 23rd
The time between the last course and the next course at the beginning of December, I’m spending in the optometry office observing the vision therapists and the doctors. Normally the three therapists with each their child/patient and their parents would be in one big room. So the first day I was really distracted because I wanted to see everything that was happening, but that was far from possible :) It’s amazing what the impact of vision therapy is on for example the reading process, comprehension, body balance, communication skills, posture, concentration... I could never have thought that this was all caused by teaching their visual system how to do things more efficiently. And since the brains are plastic, it is possible. It’s not just about eye exercises, but about vision that is so much more than only the eye. It’s the whole process between the eyes and the visual cortex and I’m so happy that I will be able to help patients when I’m back in Belgium! It’s amazing how much things you actually DON’T know when you finish school… and I still find it sometimes a little difficult to really explain what optometry and vision therapy is all about so people would understand, but I’m sure that when I come back to Belgium, I will know :)
I’m sorry if this message is getting too long, but there is one more thing I would like to add :) Yesterday Laura, Howard and I went to a restaurant that is well known for their home made beers and guess what: they even had a Belgian beer list that said ‘every Belgian beer is wonderful and should be treated and enjoyed like a piece of art.’ :) And even better was that you could taste different samples before you ordered your final beer!
The next message on my blog will probably be about Thanksgiving next week! See you soon!
Kiss x
