(no subject)
I just had one of those great moments that bring complete clarity of mind-that really prove that I'm doing something right in my life.
I had just attended a deaf culture event a good 15 minutes away from my dorm, and was waiting on the bus back. When it arrived and I stepped on, I saw my Sign Language teacher sitting there in one of the front seats, and she of course saw me. I was absolutely terrified. She is completely deaf, so her teaching style is a combination of signs, fingerspelling of words, and writing on a whiteboard to clarify her signs and fingerspellings. On the bus, there was no whiteboard for us to communicate with if I couldn't understand her signs or didn't know the signs I wanted. And I knew that she would want to chat with me.
But it worked, ridiculously well. It was fantastic. I took the seat opposite her so that we were facing each other, and we signed back and forth for the entire 15 minute ride back to my dorm. We talked about our respective summer plans, where we lived now and where I would be living next year and with whom, what classes I will be taking this fall (and a little about what to expect in the next semester of sign language), and what I want to do with my life. When I didn't know a word, we would fingerspell or mime successfully, and I ended up pulling some new vocabulary away from the conversation.
What made this exceptionally cool was that nobody else on the bus understood a word of what we were signing. It became this obscure, secret code that I felt totally bad ass for knowing.
This is so fucking cool.
I had just attended a deaf culture event a good 15 minutes away from my dorm, and was waiting on the bus back. When it arrived and I stepped on, I saw my Sign Language teacher sitting there in one of the front seats, and she of course saw me. I was absolutely terrified. She is completely deaf, so her teaching style is a combination of signs, fingerspelling of words, and writing on a whiteboard to clarify her signs and fingerspellings. On the bus, there was no whiteboard for us to communicate with if I couldn't understand her signs or didn't know the signs I wanted. And I knew that she would want to chat with me.
But it worked, ridiculously well. It was fantastic. I took the seat opposite her so that we were facing each other, and we signed back and forth for the entire 15 minute ride back to my dorm. We talked about our respective summer plans, where we lived now and where I would be living next year and with whom, what classes I will be taking this fall (and a little about what to expect in the next semester of sign language), and what I want to do with my life. When I didn't know a word, we would fingerspell or mime successfully, and I ended up pulling some new vocabulary away from the conversation.
What made this exceptionally cool was that nobody else on the bus understood a word of what we were signing. It became this obscure, secret code that I felt totally bad ass for knowing.
This is so fucking cool.