World Down Syndrome Conference

The World Down Syndrome Conference is held every three years in a different country. This year it was in Dublin - very lucky for me! This was an incredible experience. I rode to Dublin with our friends Patricia and Kevin. I roomed with Diane (SLT from Co, Cork) in the dorms at Dublin City University, where the conference was held. The whole event was wonderful and astounding - I'll just note some highlights. (I am going to publish this post, but I will add more pictures later, when Diane sends me hers).

On Wednesday evening I attended a reception (I got to use Gerard's invitation because he was unfortunately sick and unable to come) at the Royal Hospital Kilmanheim. This is now an art museum. The main thing about this reception was the great presence of the ambassadors - 30 or 40 young adults with DS who had been working on their skills in meeting and greeting - and they did a wonderful job. They had spent that day in a Synod - only themselves and a very few facilitators discussing issues related to DS. They were so much fun - I really enjoyed getting to know them, and was especially proud of Janet, our ambassador from Co. Kerry.

Each day of the conference consisted of 6-8 keynote speeches in the main auditorium; breakout sessions with those same speakers; and then 1 1/2 hours of shorter simultaneous presentations on a multitude of subjects. Most of these were excellent and I learned a lot. I also enjoyed eating lunches and dinners with either the Kerry parents in attendance or with Diane and Anne (our SLT friend from New Zealand).

Diane and I presented 2 poster sessions and one oral presentation. These seemed to be very well thought of and we had great conversations with other attendees related to our subjects.The 2 highlights of the conference for me were
1. the opporunity to meet and talk to people from so many different countries (to name a few: Honk Kong, Kosovo, So. Africa, Holland, Sweden, Singapore, Turkey....). What an incredible opportunity this was for me - talk about being in the right place at the right time.
2. the amazing presence and numbers of the people with Down Syndrome - young and younger! The young adults introduced the speakers in the large auditorium. Other young adults performed amazing dance presentations. ( I'm putting 3 video below - I know the quality is poor, but at least you'll get an idea).

The first one is the opening ceremony, where they dance around the auditorium. I happened to sit right in front of the Kerry group - Ellen, Denise, an instructor, Carmel, Philip, and Timmy.
The second one is the main dance of the Kerry group,performed that night. The last one is the joint dance of the 6 county groups that had done individual dances. They practiced in their own counties all summer, then had one rehearsal with the whole group together.











These are pictures from Diane. These first 2 are the live presentation in mini-seminar  format - topic was "Accomodations and Modifications in the Mainstream Classroom".

We also had 2 poster sessions (acutally Diane had a third one with another colleague).

And, here is a small group of the many Kerry parents who attended. Riestard, Mary, Patricia, Kevin, Denis, MFE, Jill.This is in the main auditorium where the morning sessions were held each day, and where the dancing took place.

Early August, 2009

August was a very fun and busy month for us. We started off with a gathering of the 3 US Speech-Language Therapists - Tracy (Co. Kildare), Diane (Co. Cork), and me (pictured above in that order, in our front garden). We gathered at our house on a Friday evening - along with Diane's son Matt and Tracy's husband Scott and son Chandler. (T and C above, didn't get a picture of Scott!). Dana cooked us a feast and we had a great time talking and laughing - a very compatible group. The next day Diane and Matt went back to Cork and the rest of us toured the Dingle peninsula. We had a pretty nice day and enjoyed the familiar places and a new beach/cliff stop.

The following week, I took a 1 day trip to Dublin for the organizational meeting of the new IASLT Special Interest Group for Down Syndrome. While I was gone, Hal and Nancy's friends, Carol and Grimsley Graham arrived - they had dinner with Dana that night and I met them at breakfast on Saturday. We quickly discovered that Carol's sister Gillis is a friend of mine from my Early Childhood years - truly a small world. We enjoyed getting to know them, and had fun touring Dingle again, even more thoroughly - we even stayed in Dingle for dinner! Some of these pictures are from their camera or mine; Dana took the 3 Sisters Peaks, the Grahams and I, and the falls. Dana and I are by the Ryan's Daughter memorial rock above. The other pictures are at the falls and lake just before Conor Pass.


On Sunday we did the west side of the Ring of Kerry and Valentia Island - unfortunately a very rainy day, but still pretty. These pictures are by Dana with my little camera-if you click on them to enlarge, you will see the Grahams in the castle and at the top of the ring fort.



On Monday they toured Killarney on their own and on Tuesday Dana went with them to Killarney and went to Ladies View and Torc Falls. They then took the tour of the living history farm at Muckross House (no pictures). I met them for lunch after speech therapy, and then they left for Dublin, Wales and Scotland.

The next Sunday, we went to the Fenit Regatta. It was cold and blustery, but we enjoyed it and Dana got some nice shots of the boats, swimmers, and the wind surfers. Note the people in coats on the sidelines - it was chilly!