[nagdu] guidedog and mobility skills

[The Pawpower Pack]

Hi Mária,
That's awesome you are thinking of going different places. Traveling can be a lot of fun.  
I travel quite a bit, and all of the tools you mentioned above I use, with the exception of the O&M instructor. Have you thought about calling the station and asking if there would be someone who could show you to your platform, or could give you a basic layout of the station? I know you said the teacher for the blind in your town is busy, but might she be interested in working with you on a tactile map of the area? That way other people who might wish, could also use it.  Also, do you have any blind friends in the area who might show you? I find that blind people give the best directions, lol. 
Also, when you find the area you want, you can use I think blind square, but I know oMoby, to make a recording at that spot, so in future, you can find again by listening for the recording.  
I think it's great you are brainstorming ways to do this. I have moved before to a totally unfamiliar place before with no assistance, so understand kind of how overwhelming it can be sometimes! 
Good luck!  

 Rox and the kitchen Bitches: 
Mill'E, Laveau, Soleil
Pawpower4me at gmail.com
Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 2, 2014, at 6:09 AM, Mária Orovčíková via nagdu <nagdu at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello Debbie and all,
> this is going to be a bit long mail, so I apologize in advance.
> Thank you very much for offering help.
> Well, I would like to go places I've never been before on my own.
> Let's say I want to go somewhere out of my town and I need to take a few buses.
> I can get fine from my apartment to the bus stop and take a local bus
> which takes me either to the town centre, bus/train station or wherever
> I need to go within my town.
> Let's say I need to go to the bus/train station. Once I get off the bus I must go to a platform or another bus stop from which buses take me out of the town. Although I live in a small town, and main bus stop or train station are not large areas, there are a few platforms/buses from which buses/trains go to different places around the country, so certainly I must know which part of the country I need to go to. It is not a big deal because when I check train/bus schedules and once I find a bus, there is platform number. What I find difficult is to navigate around main bus stop/train station to find a platform I need. I know there are some options, but I cannot find the one that would work for me. So let's see:
> 1. I could take a taxi which would get me from my apartment straight to the platform. The problem is I cannot rely on the taxis in this country as we do not have such a law which says that the owner and his guide dog cannot be refused being in a taxi and here taxi drivers are not happy to take people with dogs, no matter whether it is a pet dog or a guide dog. It all depends on individual driver whether they take a person with a dog or not; so I'd rather rely on local buses.
> 2. I can ask mobility instructor to teach me how to navigate the platforms. As I live in a small town we have only one mobility instructor and she has more than 80 blind people to work with. She teaches people not only mobility skills, but also computer skills and daily-living skills, so she cannot work with me as much as I would like.
> 3. I could ask my parents, relatives or friends to show me or describe the routes. As for my parents, they both work and they don't have time to show me the routes. They are not good at describing routes as well. Another thing is that they always go places by car and never use local buses.
> As for friends, I do have some but they are not in my area. The reason is I have been away from my hometown since I was 5. I went to elementary and high school for the blind and then to university in different towns, so I did not have any chance to make new friends where I live.
> When I traveled to university and back home, my mom always took me to the bus stop by car and picked me up, so I could not learn the route taking local buses.
> Yes, it's true, I have a guide dog, but at times I got her, we were trained in the city where I attended university. I had someone there who was great at describing routes in details, so it was great.
> 4. Another option is to check the area with GPS app such as blindsquare or google maps, but, unfortunately, the platforms are not marked and shown in the maps.
> So does anyone have any other suggestions how to figure out this situation? I really can't and I certainly do not want to be always dependent on my mom or someone else to pick me up and take me to the train/bus station.
> Any ideas would be very highly appreciated.
> Thank you for reading this e-mail to the end and for all your help. I hope my mail makes sense.
> Have a wonderful day.
> With kind regards
> Maria
>> On 1. 11. 2014 16:59, debby phillips via nagdu wrote:
>> Hi Maria, I'm not sure about any such list.  But perhaps we could help?     Blessings,    Debby and Neena
>> 
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