Thursday, September 29, 2005

First Day of College

Well, I had my first college class last night. This semester I am just taking one class (three credits), American Sign Language 103. When I had my proficiency test, I almost got put in ASL 201, but I am so glad I didn’t! I didn’t understand the teacher nearly as well as I would want. I was able to follow, but sometimes just barely. The teacher is really nice and seems very accessible. He is hearing (I know that because he kept complaining about the noise from the little kids playing right outside the classroom--it seems that the day care area must be right next to us!) but he asks for no voice at all inside the classroom.

A friend told me a funny story yesterday. She said the first day of her French class there was a sudden burst of laughter from the class on the other side of the partition. Then deadly silence. A while later there was another burst of laughter. Then deadly silence. Turns out it was a sign language class next to them!

I am carpooling to school with a friend I met in a local community sign language class. It sure is a good thing we allowed lots and lots of time to drive to class, ’cause we took a wrong exit. Three times!! LOL We got to the campus with about twenty minutes to spare, but none of the parking permit centers were open. Then we realized that both of us had forgotten to bring the paper that told what classroom we were in. So we went rushing all around campus, trying to figure out which classroom we should be in. We found the room about three minutes before class, but we still needed a parking permit!! But then, thankfully, someone told us that we didn’t need one until the next week. *sigh of relief*

I asked one of my classmates what had first gotten him interested in sign language. I was prepared to witness a little, since I figured he would ask me the same thing and my answer is, “Well, I don’t remember anything in particular that got me interested. I think it is just something God put in my heart.” So I asked the question and he responded, “Well, I think it is just something God put in my heart.” LOL So I already met another Christian student in my class. And get this--he is a writer!

Once when I asked the teacher a question, he didn’t understand for a minute. Then he realized what I was trying to say, and corrected one of my signs. Turns out that I have been saying “dorm” instead of “Deaf” all this time! What I want to know is, why in the world didn’t someone correct me a long time ago??? LOL

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL That's awesome Amy! Dorm... teehee. Hope college goes awesomely for you - and hey, you should bring that Christian classmate over to FaithWriters! The more the merrier!

purple_kangaroo said...

Sounds great, Amy! I'm glad you are in a class at the right level and are making friends already.

Shelley L. MacKenzie said...

I have always wanted to learn sign language. I was talking with this girl from school the other day and her daughter only speaks with sign language. She can hear in one ear, though I don't know how much and is deaf in the other ear. She also can't talk because of her CP. This girl from school was saying they use Sign English which is more equivelant to a word for word sort of signing rather than the way the ASL is done...she said it's easier in that you could sign a book to a child in the order it goes without any problem. She said if you were to use ASL in reading, you'd have to basically read the paragraph first and then sign it because the words aren't in the same order or something like that...this was the first time I've heard of Sign English. Have you heard of it?

Anonymous said...

I had always signed "dorm" for "deaf"! When I went to BRR, Trina corrected me! I was so emarrassed! she thought it was very funny though!