A Brief yet Detailed Autobiography

Hello to all Readers!

As promised, my goal is to allow you to connect with me at a profound level. This can sometimes be hard to achieve. Right now, to many of you, I am a stranger, a person who you don't yet know. Well, I'll tweak that. A person who you do know, but in not much detail.
I was born visually impaired, due to an eye condition known as ROP (retinopathy of Prematurity). The condition stems from too much oxygen being given at birth to an incubated patient. Since I was 3 months premature, it was required that I be incubated. And so yes, I was given too much of the oxygen, which caused the blood pressure in my eyes to rise and consequently blow my retinas off.

Hungary was, and to a degree still is, a nation which does not accept the visually impaired well. My mom spent a lot of her life trying to learn more about my disability and thus provide me the oppertunities for education through homeschooling. She learned braille and I was taught braille in a different way than most would think: Since monthly sallarys in Hungary were low compared to other nations, we could not afford the more fancy materials, such as a professional braille writer. I learned braille using a small square which had 6 wholes on it. You could move the individual pegs around these wholes to form each of the 64 dot combinations found in the braille code.
It must be noted here that the Hungarian ways of teaching recommended the learning of the Abacus -- an interesting way of performing mathamatical calculations. I remember quite well fighting with my mom over the use of the abacus. It was not an easy task.
So I was home schooled first and second grade. In third, my uncle recommended that I come to the United states for a half year in order to see the education here as well as oppertunities for an eye surgery. I was a shy person. Since I grew up on computers (which I've been using since age 5), I generally could not handle the public well, let alone interact with students normally. I was afraid. I came here with no English and it almost felt like coming to an entire new and strange world, where me and my family were the only ones to speak a proper language.
I returned to Hungary in 4th grade, while my mom came back to the United States after a short visit to Hungary in order to continue work. Me and my twin sighted sister stayed with my father, who then continued my homeschool education. Since he didn't know braille, often times my textbooks would be recorded in audio form on casettes which I would listen to. At the end of that year, I took a large exam on everything my father taught me in all areas - Science, Grammar, math... Even singing, which I generally don't enjoy. -_-

In 5th grade, it was decided that I should go to the boarding school for the blind, located in Budapest. This was a residential school, where everyone else was blind or at least visually impaired.
Since it was in Budapest, I had to take a four hour trainride from the school to my dad's home. This meant that a guide was assigned to pick me up from the platform at the school and bring me safely into the building -- as well as on Fridays, take me to the station and put me on the train where my dad would pick me up. We alays brought tickets for me behind the conductor's car, in the first compartment. So my father knew that I would be there.
The trainrides were boring, and nobody ever talked to me. In fact, nobody was ever in my compartment -- although I didn't notice this at the time. At school, I was often times severely beaten and abused. My room mates felt jealous for the fact that I actually visited the United States for half a year, while they had to live in that wretched boarding school for years and years, sometimes even at kindergarden(called ovoda back there) age.
Oh and wretched that school was. If you said one swear word and was caught by the councelors, you would be made to stand against a radiator for hours on end. Many of the councelors were female, and actually watched you take showers.
And I was beaten and my lungs were boxed at every night almost, because I was the weak kid as well.
Perhaps if it wern't for those beatings though, I wouldn't be as strong as I am today. They helped me wake up to the "cruel side" of this world, that not everyone is nice-and-innocent as I'd think.

In 6th grade, with the help of my mom, I came back to the United States and began studying. This was nice, as I lived peacefully in my home and at school, nobody would dare bother me since I was blind. In fact, I was always treated differently. Nobody set with me at the lunch table. Well besides my only best friend Steve. As I entered my high school years, this became worse, and I frequently wrote depressing poetry, about things such as "what's wrong with the blind?"
I was never accepted. But then again, did I take the initiatives? Not really. I tried setting a goalball team up in 9th grade at school, which is a sport for the blind, without much success. At the end of 10th, I finally took off the "reserved for Tomi" sign above a lunch table, which surved for letting others know that my table was there. Again, I wasn't confident at all in choosing a table to sit at, so the school's goal was to provide me a way to sit at the same table without having to ask students "can I sit here?"

School so far has gone through like a breeze. I finally mastered contracted (grade 2) braille at the end of 6th grade. In America, they like to make things complex. Braille is just one of these "things", as each letter in the English Braille alphabet stands for a world. A, But, Can, Do... Parts of words are also contracted, such as ea, ch, sh, st, en... With various symbols and dot patterns. This is called Grade 2 braille.

My motives for raising awareness on the capabilities of the blind began this year mainly, after attending the teen empowerment academy through the
National Federation of the Blind"> , an organization for the visually impaired.
The 8 week long summer program simply empowered me and gave me oppertunities to further boost my confidence and understand who I am. My family generally views my "disability" with much pecimism and worry. This is understandable, as my mom grew up in Rumania, where oppression was everywhere. She naturally worries for me, as I'm still a child -- but being 17 I think it is now time for me to transition away from my home. So the Teen Empowerment Academy gave me just that oppertunity.

Throughout my Junior year, my goal has been to raise awareness. I've done a tv interview, made many speeches, and talked to over 100 middle school students. I've submitted a Community Solving Project, which has been entered into a competition, on this issue of the sighted world not realizing that the blind are the same as they are in so many aspects.

I would recommend anyone reading to visit my leading the way page, where you can also watch the promo video -- and learn more about who I am. It can be found at
http://www.eurpod.com/leadtheway.html
. And don't forget my main life motto:
Live life the way you want it lived!

:)

With all due respect:
Tomi