Asperger's and Autism: Achieving Independence After High School

We arrived back in Newark Airport and rode quietly in the van all the way back to Hill Top.  There were a few random comments but the effects of jet lag were already evident and the sheer exhaustion from not only the heavy travel schedule for 10 days but the release of the adrenaline put forth for that entire time all contributed to a very quiet ride back to the school campus. Unloading the luggage at the front door of the mansion around 11:30 pm, the enthusiastic welcome back reception from excited parents and family members, and the interest on the part of the families to get home and hear about the trip made the closure on the trip rather efficient. I would like to provide folks with links to what the students completed as their final projects at BSD on their last day.  These travel apps for Hong Kong were completed designed by the students themselves, from scratch.  While they clearly ran out of time to complete all of their plans, one can see the basic structure of...

Our last full day in Hong Kong together was one of much work. We were all really productive and spent much of the day mostly in the BSD office. We finished up our wearable art projects and I got pictures of some of them before they got put away.   This took place through the morning. Then we had a wonderful Thai lunch just a walk from the office and got back to BSD for our final classes on creating a travel app regarding Hong Kong. This was mostly a coding class. Links to the apps should be available when the work is finished tomorrow morning before we head out to the airport. Splitting up into small groups everyone agreed to meet in our central location and then we headed to the top floor of the mall (14th floor) for a Japanese hot pot dinner. It was an all you could eat in 90 minutes dinner plan. Taking turns with the Hill Top person across from you, items from your bowls were placed in the broth for cooking. Also, you got unlimited amounts of thin...

Today we are off to see the Giant Buddha.  We had breakfast in our little cafe across from the hotel.  The lady who runs the place has kind of adopted us and seems pleased to see us return. The coach came to pick us up and we were off to Lantau Island. It is the same island that houses the new Hong Kong airport.  But this part of the island is a special ecological preserve.  To reach it we took the cable car for 30 minutes over the several waterways and then the tree tops and hiking trails.  We also could see several family burial sites that have been there for many years. But in several places, the area was so full of fog that in many times on the trip we could see nothing.  Folks were quoting the movie Jurassic Park as if we were expecting dinosaurs to come through the fog and mist. We disembarked from the cable car and walked to a small tea house that was the start to our morning tour. We were escorted to the second floor for a demonstration of ...

Today is not completely formed in our minds but we are confident that BSD folks know exactly what we are doing. We meet in the lobby at 9am.  I should comment here that a 9am meeting time sounds rather leisurely.....at least it does for someone who is usually up and about the house at 5pm each morning.  However, that said, when you are still working with the effects of jet lag, you are walking everywhere throughout the entire day and a "sit down" other than lunch time is a rare occurrence you feel the impact of the day long activities when it is time to go to bed....and when it is time to get out of bed.  Each day we are confronted with this unknown language, customs that are interesting to us and yet not always easy to understand.  There are new foods, smells, and hoards of people at every turn.  BSD is organizing this trip down to the minute and we love them for that.  That said, it keeps us constantly moving. All this as a way of saying that our studen...

Our students spent much of their day in BSD Academy working on their wearable technology projects.      Coding has been completed and they are assembling the lighting by soldering wires for each of their projects.   We held a video conference from the BSD Hong Kong office and spoke with our favorite teachers in the BSD Bryn Mawr office.  We also watched workmen on the side of a building near ours who were doing work on the outside and 23 stories off the ground from a structure made entirely of bamboo. Lunch took place at a vegetarian restaurant in the neighborhood of BSD.  Our students met Ms. Peggy, the owner/chef and they learned from her about how she started her business, designed the menu, sourced the food and materials for the meals, and marketed the business to her customers.  She described how she made  connections with many famous chefs in the area and invited them to come and cook in her restaurant to build excitement for h...

With a great deal of work and patience from the staff at BSD Academy (who also showed great creativity in digital production of documents) and their connections with the folks in the embassy we would not have been able to get the permission to travel to Shenzhen today.  AND, none of their work would have been of value without the quick thinking and timely responses to a flurry of emails to our travelers' parents at the beginning of this week who needed to produce copies of documents in a very short turnaround time that we didn't even know were needed.  These parents asked no questions but just sent off the documents we needed to meet what seemed like an ever growing list of requirements from the custom officials if we were ever going to be given permission to take minors across the border into China.  There were even several of us who needed to rush around and get new photos taken for the visa applications because of things like glasses causing difficulties or ears not sh...