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The Braille adventure

I continue to try to learn Braille. My friend brought me some more books to read, as I'd mentioned a few days ago. Now I've polished off "Thomas and the Naughty Deisel" and I'm onto "Curious George Goes to the Hospital." Gee, wonder why she picked that book for me?

I was laughing pretty good last night as I got to the part of the book where poor George, who has swallowed a puzzle peice, has to drink barium. They tell him it's a "sweet tasting drink." I got news for you monkey - they're lying to you! Sweet tasting liquid. Pepsi is a sweet tasting liquid. Barium tastes like chalk!

I'm also reading "Julian and the Secret Agent" - but to be honest, it's the book in grade II Braille and I'm not getting enough of it to figure out the story. But, every day is better as I learn more contractions. Sometimes I even understand a whole couple of sentences in a row!

So, my method is to start with Julian until I can't take feeling stupid anymore, and then I go over to the grade I kiddie books that I can get through pretty easily.

For those that don't know much about Braille, grade 1 braille is essentially the alphabet, numbers, and punctuation. Grade II Braille is a series of contractions, like shorthand, that make it possible to read Braille (when you're good at it) as fast as print. For example, "alw" means "afterward" and "afn" means "afternoon."

Yes, I know fellow military brats - we always thought AFN meant Armed Forces Network.
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