Now THAT was an interesting day...

To set the stage, on Wednesdays we have three two-hour classes. This morning we arrived and were told that the teacher of the second two classes was sick.

The first class of the day went great. Then as the teacher of that class walked out the classroom door, she tripped on a student’s backpack and hit her head on the doorframe. She went home with a minor concussion.

Then when it was time for me to leave for the day to go volunteer at a Deaf School, I somehow missed the 3:00 shuttle (not sure if I was a tad late or if they left early). I was supposed to be at the school by 3:30 and didn’t even get to my car until after 3:20.

So I quickly hopped on the freeway. And stayed on the freeway. For about two hours. Uh huh. The trip from the college to the school is normally about 25 minutes. I made it today in, oh, about an hour and a quarter. There was an accident on the freeway and it blocked it up for MILES. So much for volunteering.

Hopefully that’s the extent of unusual things that will happen today.

Bittersweet Term End

Today is the last day of my Winter term. I’m happy, because it was an incredibly challenging term and now we get a week of break. I’m happy because I can feel I’m improving and my grades show that. I’m happy because it was a good term, with the good memories standing out from the bad.

I’m sad because this was the last class with my favorite teacher. Patrick is a lot of fun and gives great feedback and encouragement. I’m sad because several students, “family” members, will not be back.

I survived finals--six final tests, and several papers all in two weeks or less. One of those papers ended up ten pages long and the other was twelve pages. I’m all done with classes and have one more paper due tonight that I’ve hardly had time to even start on yet. Off I got to whip that up and then I’m free!!!!!


That is, free until Monday when I start work so I can have gas money to get to school next term. ha.

I knew it! (winning concert tickets)

My local Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) radio station has a game called “Sink or Swim” each night, where they play two songs and have people call in to vote on which they like the best. During the voting, they typically give something away to a random caller. Today they were giving away tickets to a concert.

I was listening to them as I drove home from an “Interpreting English Idioms” workshop and as I called in to vote I just knew I was going to be that random caller who won the tickets. You see, I’m not keen on really loud music (which is what most CCM concerts are, I think), and I only like some of the popular CCM music.

So naturally I would be the one they’d pick instead of some teen who was dying to go. LOL! Whadda ya know, I was right! At first I thought I’d ask them to pick someone else who would be more thrilled, but then I thought, “hey, it would be fun to do something different.” Turns out it’s the Saturday after all my finals wrap up, so it’ll be a nice beginning to Spring Break.

I don’t even remember who it was a concert for, lol, but I think they may have said Jaci Velasquez (sp?) was a guest singer, and I like her music. I’m thinking about who to take with me to the concert. Yes, Wren, you are on my list of maybes. ;-) But I’m thinking I may invite a non-Christian classmate (though I decided I better avoid the Lesbian ones lest they get the wrong idea, heh) or someone like that…

Anyway, I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never been to a CCM concert before.

Here comes Amy the Sparrow as LarryBoy the Cucumber!!

I pulled an all-nighter last night, working on a college paper. Well, I laid down for about an hour and half, but since I didn’t sleep a wink that doesn’t really count. Amazing thing is, I actually made it through the day and had a good one to boot!

During our second class of the day, we took a field trip to another classroom to see The Illumination Project--A social justice theater project. A group of students write and perform short skits that deal with experiences they have had regarding the current topic. This term’s topic is racial prejudice. The group acts out the skit of the day about a simple act of prejudice that could easily happen on campus, but with no resolution to it.

Then they perform the skit a second time. This time an audience member can call “stop!” and go take the place of on of the actors in an effort to help the situation. We audience members were not allowed to take the place of the main person being prejudice, but could step into any of the other roles. The point of the Illumination Project is both to help people become more aware of prejudice around them, but even more so, to give them practice taking affirmative action in a safe environment where they can experiment to see what works and what doesn’t, making us all more likely to step up next time we see something, instead of just fuming from the background.

And yes, I yelled stop and joined the action. I mean, hello, improv acting and defending someone wrongfully accused? If that doesn’t have Sparrow written all over it, I’m sure I don’t know what does!

OK, so on to LarryBoy. In ASL class at the moment our topic is animation (mainly to give us experience describing and interpreting any odd and unusual thing that might come along). So today we had to pick a famous animated character to describe. Tomorrow we’ll each take turns describing the physical characteristics of a character and then add a little action. Then our classmates guess who our character is!

I considered Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Sully or Mike Wazowski… But then I thought of LarryBoy!! It was someone unusual that was unlikely anyone else in class would pick, and does he have a great outfit or what! So yes, I’m highly pleased with who I picked. And shhh, don’t tell any of my classmates.

By the time I got to the end of the school day and was working on LarryBoy, it had been about 27 hours since I’d slept and I was flying high on adrenaline and decidedly giddy. Rather a fun state to be in when dealing with impersonating a cartoon character, but I knew I had a long drive home and would be crashing hard soon, so I left immediately after class instead of practicing and working on homework like usual.

Sure thing, I’m about beat. So I’m headed off to find a LarryBoy VeggieTale to refresh my memory with and then it’s off to an early bed for me! Singing out, from Sparrow the LarryBoy Impersonator!

Deaf Vietnamese Dance Troupe

That was so awesome!! Great way to end mid-terms blues! I just got back from seeing a Deaf Vietnamese Dance Team. This is their first trip to the US. At any given time there were up to four languages going on: spoken English, American Sign Language, spoken Vietnamese, and signed Vietnamese. I think I saw just about every form of translating there is. There was ASL to English, Vietnamese to English to ASL, ASL to English, Vietnamese Signs to ASL to English, copy signing, whisper translating…I could go on for a while.

One of the dance routines they did was to use their bodies and dance moves to spell their name. It was pretty tricky to guess what the letters were, but some of the Deaf kids got pretty skilled at it as each performer did their name. The six-troupe dancers brought up volunteers from the audience and showed them some learning techniques such as following: One person would be the leader, and another person closed his eyes and put his hand on the leader’s shoulder, then tried to copy all of his movements.

Some words seem to be the same in Vietnamese Sign Language and ASL, but most is different. I could understand, however, why Deaf people throughout the world are typically able to learn to understand each other very quickly.

I learned how to count up to ten in Vietnamese Sign Language. I’ll try to describe it using ASL terms, to the best of my understanding. Of course, I was seeing the numbers on the other side of a dimly-lit auditorium, so no guarantees on minute details. ;-)

1 and 2 are the same as ours.
3 is the ASL six, English three
4 and 5 are the same
6 is ASL “Y”
7 is an upside-down ASL “L”
8 is ASL three
9 is ASL “X”
10 is similar to ASL twenty, but with only the very tips of the thumb and finger touching, similar to the ASL sign for DOT (as in .com)


*Note: there are several different kinds of Vietnamese sign systems and I have no idea what the one I saw is called, so I am referring to it as Vietnamese Sign Language.

I'm in the Newspaper!

I'm in the newspaper!

The article about me and Peculiar People is out in my local paper today! It's just a few paragraphs of a column, but still way cool. I showed the article off to all my classmates and teachers at school today. I'd hand them the paper and it was fun to watch their faces as they glanced at it with a puzzled look and then lit up when they saw my name. My ASL teacher especially got excited.

If you’d like to read the article, go to www.thecolumbian.com and in the right-hand column click on the “Bits and Pieces” Feb. 14th article under Arts and Living, “Lost star helps jewler find profits”. Then scroll down the page (to right under the advertisement picture) to find the sentence: A collective effort. The article starts there. For some reason it won’t let me link directly to the article.

I had a good day at class today. I had a sign language presentation to do that was a bit difficult and had lots of finger spelling, but I actually did my finger spelling fairly smoothly and got a compliment from a class mate saying how much I had improved on my signing skills.

This afternoon I'm going to start my weekly volunteering at a school. I'm excited, but also nervous about my language skills.

Published and Paid!

I got a special book in the mail today. It was devotional compilation by Lorna Owens, Everyday Grace, Everyday Miracles. I think I was more excited about the check inside it than about my name inside it! LOL! I've been published in anthologies before, but this is the first time I've been paid for my writing.

Mom and Dad say I should frame the check, haha! I think I'll deposit it first, though. ;-)

Watch Out World, Here We Come!!

Whoo hoo!!! I’m so pumped!

OK, OK, I’ll start at the beginning. Our local newspaper’s “Life” section periodically will mention a theme and ask readers to respond. A few weeks ago I responded to one with a story about Peculiar People’s novel, Struggle Creek. It wasn’t mentioned in the article, so I figured that was that.

While I was at school today, I got a phone call from an editor of the paper! It wasn’t even the same editor I had submitted the story to originally, which proves what I’ve been saying all along--Peculiar People is unique enough that just the concept will originate interest. We chatted for about twenty minutes and I think I actually talked coherently at least half the time. ;-) My cell phone (I was still at school) dropped him TWICE, though. How embarrassing is that? He was very nice about it, though, said he's used to it (oh the joys of the 21st century).

So PeP’s first bit of publicity will be in a few days, in a newspaper column. Hopefully the first of many. Watch out world, here comes Peculiar People!

Ending with Style

Well, you can’t say I don’t know how to end a bad week with style. Let’s see, last post and last Thursday left me with the flu. Now, eight, count ‘em, eight days later finds me still sick. I missed two days of school, including a test. Today I finally felt well enough to go back in, or got frustrated with missing school, or something along those lines…

To jump to the end of the day, and the finale, I locked my keys in the car. Now you have to understand, my school is an hour from home when traffic is good and by this point it was the start of rush hour. So it’s not like a family member can just pop right over with another set of keys. Be that as it may, Dad was generously going to drive the way anyway. (Besides, he locks his keys in the truck often enough that he doesn’t have much room to tease. ;-) ) However, imagine my delight when I discovered that campus security can break into cars, er, unlock cars. Fifteen minute wait, two second jimmy, and viola! unlocked car.

To fill in the rest of the day, I went on a field trip today. Three of us from my interpreting class went to a soil analysis class to scope it out to see what issues an interpreter would need to figure out if there were a Deaf consumer. It was rather fun.

Then after the field trip the three of us got to talking about religion. We had a rather interesting mix--a Wiccan Priestess, a Seventh-Day Adventist, and me, a Evangelical Christian. I love that we were able to have a fun conversation without anyone getting mad or defensive.

Of course, the day was wrapped up with our Thursday night family movie. It was a lame old, old musical, but it was fun laughing at it together, hehe.

One of those days

It was one of those days. You know, the kind that starts by staying up with homework until 1:15 and getting up at 5:00 and going downhill from there? (Hey, at least I didn’t oversleep.) Actually, the issues started the day before. First and foremost is the fact that I’ve gotten about 12 hours of sleep total over the last three days. That’s not something my unhealthy body can handle well.

Anyway, every week have to video-tape two interpretations, using school equipment. Nineteen of us have to use it and it is available limited hours. I did my recorded interpretation yesterday afternoon. I actually felt that I was improving and did a half-way decent job. Figures. Then I got my tape mixed up with a blank tape of a classmate’s. At first I thought all was fine and we just had two of us on one tape. But late that night I went to do my self-evaluation and discovered that mine was taped over completely. Great.

So I got to school at 7:30 AM (it’s an hour commute) to redo it. The receptionist we have to get the camera from wasn’t there. Double great. So in-between two classes I ran back and did a stressed and rushed interpretation and was 20 minutes late to my next class. So, a badly done tape, but not self-assessment. This isn’t the first time I’ve messed up my homework this week (unusual for me), so I thought my teacher would be upset with me.

Thankfully she isn’t. She actually called it “extenuating circumstances” and is letting me not only redo it when I’m not stressed, but turn it and the self-assessment in next class (normally she doesn’t take any late homework).

All through the day, even after figuring everything out, I was feeling stressed and shaky. By the end of the day I decided I have the flu (confirmed by a low-grade fever). Headed home without redoing the interpretation like I wanted, and discovered that I had forgotten to put my parking permit on my mirror. That’s right, I had it in my car and just forgot to put it up--resulting in a ticket, of course.

On the way home I stopped to get a movie for tonight and retuned some Hollywood videos to Blockbuster Video.

Yeah. One of those days. But, I’m gonna forget about the loads of homework for now, like I always do on Thursdays (no classes on Fri), and go curl up with a movie and then go to bed early!

The Music of 2006

Music is important to me. It’s a big part of my relationship with God, a big part of…well, of my life as a whole. As I’ve been looking back over 2006, I’ve realized that I have a lot of memories attached to music, so I thought it would be fun to use that for my first blog post of the new year.


Aleluia, aleluia, aleluia, aleluia!
Aleluia, aleluia, aleluia, aleluia!

Last spring we had a family reunion in Mexico. One of the Sundays we were there we attended a church that was pastured by my dad’s best friend. Though most of us in the reunion group could not speak much Spanish, there was one thing that crossed the language barrier and drew us all into one family as we worshiped--music, especially the Hallelujah Chorus. I can close my eyes and still feel the goosebumps, hearing the mixed accents of voices raised to God…


God will make a way,
Where there seems to be no way
He works in ways we cannot see
He will make a way for me
He will be my guide
Hold me closely to His side
With love and strength for each new day
He will make a way, He will make a way.

The last few years I’ve been searching for what God wanted me to do now. As much as I like being able to work for Dad, I knew I didn’t want to do bookwork for the rest of my unmarried life. I applied for a few jobs, but was still a bit at a loss, not sure what to head toward, besides my writing, which wasn’t ready to support me.

Well, over the span of a couple of years, God began letting me know that He wanted me to become a sign language interpreter. There is an intensive program at a community collage about an hours drive from our house. However, it’s the top second or third in the nation, and difficult to get into. I knew that if I was accepted, it was only because that was where God wanted me.

I was accepted! Here I am, one semester into it, and loving it even if it is ever bit as hard as I was told it would be.


Ring around the rosy,
Pockets full of posy,
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down!

I have three nieces now, and what fun we have! One of the last times I was over there the four of us played Ring Around the Rosy and my youngest niece (1 ½ yo) learned to fall down in the right place for the first time. Each time I visit I teach the youngest a new sign language word and she remembers and uses them!


Let my lifesong sing to You
Let my lifesong sing to You
I want to sign your name
to the end of this day
Knowing that my heart was true
Let my lifesong sing to You

I’ve had the honor of singing and signing on the worship team of our church. This is one of the songs we often do, and one line in particular has a double meaning for me. “I want to sign Your name to the end of each day”


Would you go with me if we were lost in fields of clover
Would we walk even closer until the trip was over
And would it be okay if I didn't know the way

I catch a ride to school a couple days a week with one of my classmates. She likes western music and I’ve found a couple favorites. This one brings back memories of hours of gnarled traffic and difficult homework fading away as the two of us belt, “Would you accompany me to the edge of the sea, Let me know if you're really a dream!”


Sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly fly the days.
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears.

My mom’s favorite movie is “Fiddler on the Roof”. We watch the movie a few times a year and listen to the soundtrack as often as possible. Some people have comfort foods. All I have to do to get that warm comfortable feeling is to hear any of the music and it imminently conjures up memories of all the ladies in my house singing and laughing together.


I know the plans that I have for you
Plans for good things and not for evil
If you put your trust in Me

I can only imagine what 2007 will bring. I know that Peculiar People’s first book will be published, perhaps even the second and third! I know I’ll work harder than ever at school. But what else? What other delights, trials, and joys will this year bring?

I don’t know. But I can’t wait to find out!




“God Will Make a Way” by Don Moen
“Lifesong” by Casting Crowns
“Would you Go With Me” by Josh Turner
“I Will Go Where You Go” by Elaine Califf

Watching Movies with a Face Blind Writer

Watching movies with me is interesting. For one thing, I like to talk. I talk to the characters, about the characters, about the story, and about food. A common conversation in our house is:
Amy: What did he just say?
Others: I don’t know. Someone was talking at the same time and we couldn’t hear!

Now that I’m interesting in the writing and production of movies, things get even more interesting. Like during the most emotional scene of the movie, when everyone is bawling, I’m liable to blurt, “I wonder how many times it took the actors to shoot that scene without laughing?” Or during the chase scene, I’m known to make casual remarks like, “That had to have been done with a green screen. The background was dubbed in.”

As a writer, I can often quote the next phrase correctly, before it’s been said, even if I’ve never seen the movie. After all, any writer know that’s what that character has to say.

The other thing about watching movies is that I can't tell all the extra characters apart. All my life I’ve had trouble recognizing characters in movies, recognizing people I don’t know well, and getting completely mixed up people I do know well, but haven’t see for a while, like old teachers. Of course I know that the young teacher with brown curly hair and glasses is not the older teacher with white hair. But the older teacher with white hair I had last year and the older teacher with white hair I had five years ago…well, that’s another story.

Just recently I discovered that it isn’t that I don’t pay enough attention. It isn’t that I don’t care. In fact, it’s that I have a Medical Condition. Whew! I didn’t even know there was such a thing as face blindness, or prosopagnosia. Things make a whole lot more sense, now.

Both my sisters and my dad also have slight face blindness, which means Mom bears the burden of helping us figure out movies. She endures constant questions like,
“Is that what’s-his-name?”
Sigh. “No, that’s Jon’s father.”
“Oh. Well is the lady that one person?”
“Yes. She’s the one from the last scene, remember?”

Movies like Jane Austen’s, with so many characters, are almost impossible for me to follow without help. Mystery/Suspense movies are interesting. Picture this: It’s the climax of the movie. In one quick flash, they finally show the face of the man who’s the murder. Everyone in the room gasps.

Then, from Amy’s corner, you hear a faint voice. “Um, am I supposed to know who that guy is?”

Made it!

PAH! I made it not only through the first semester of SLIP (Sign Language Interpretation Program), but more to the point, through the eight finals of the last week and a half. I got most of my grades back today and did fine on everything, even my bane, fingerspelling. PTL! Thank you all for your support.

Over my three week break I have quite a bit planned. One of my goals is to get some of my old stories that are laying around submitted to some paying magazines. Confession time. I'm scared of writing cover letters! Hehe. Well, I've been brave and actually have sent out two stories already. It'll be a few months before I hear back.

I'll also be doing quite a bit of Peculiar People stuff. This week I'll be giving the final touches to Struggle Creek, then it will be ready to send off for the final edit and formatting for publishing. Last weekend I got to see the oil painting a friend is doing for the cover of the book and I was very pleased with it. It's exciting to see everything coming together! The next PeP project, the Heirloom Chronicles, is not only in the works, but I actually have all the authors lined up and we are beginning work on writing. I'm working with seven other very skilled authors and am thrilled with how things are coming together.

Of course this break also means that I'll be doing office work again, as well as some deep house cleaning. I'll be doing practice groups with some of my classmates, also, so we don't get setback at all by the winter school break.

Hope this finds you all well. My blog is feeling a little lonely here, between me not posting much and ya'll not commenting much. ;-)

Thankful

I didn't get a Thanksgiving post done yesterday because I was too busy being thankful. ;-) We had a lovely afternoon and evening at my grandparents' farm, enjoying good food and even better company. Unfortunately, my brother-in-law and two of my nieces had colds, but my oldest sister and her middle daughter were able to join us. Young MM was the life of the party, beaming and chattering about how happy she was and how much fun she was having.

My middle sister flew from their school in South Carolina to New York to spend the weekend with my Aunt and Uncle and some cousins. It was nice for her to be able to spend the holiday with family, but not have to spend some nine hours coming all the way to Washington State. She was worried about the plane trip because of her severe dizziness and sight problems, but a friend flew with her, and she's been doing much better this week, so things went quite well.

The loveliness of the day ended around 7:00 PM when Mom was suddenly struck quite ill. By 9:30 or so, when it was time for her to take her anti-rejection medications (she's a transplant patient) and she was still throwing up every few minutes, we ended up having to take her in to the hospital. By that time she was so weak she could hardly walk. We spent about four hours there. They gave her liquids and anti-nausea meds through an IV and she was finally able to take her meds. She's still rather sick, but doing much better. Please continue to pray for her recovery (and that it's not something contagious that the rest of us will get).

Another thing I am thankful for is that Mom and I finally got the Peculiar People website up and running! Check it out for an opportunity to win a free copy of Struggle Creek!

Interpreting

We're done talking about how to interpret and are actually starting to do it now. It's exciting and scary all at the same time. This semester we're working on interpreting in it's literal sense--taking a frozen text like a video tape of signing or cassette tape of voice and analyzing it and then pausing it in spots to do the interpretation.

Our final for the Interpreting Process class (in just a few weeks, yikes!) will have a written section, a sign to voice section, and a voice to sign section.

I got a bunch of tests back this week and found that for all but one of my classes I am doing better than I thought. :-) Fingerspelling is going to be the major issue, though, that could get me thrown from the program. Even in English, if I rattled off a whole set of numbers, most people wouldn't be able to remember them all and write them down, so switching that into another language is difficult, even without my added learning problems. But I'm going to start spending even more time at school so I can work more with the tutor and other students. With prayer and hard work I'm trusting I'll pass the class (though I can't promise I won't stress out about it! ;-)

Right now I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving break. Our whole class is in desperate need of a break however short it will be, tee hee!

Presentations and papers and quizes, oh my!

As you may have guessed from my poem in the last post, I'm getting a bit overwhelmed with the constant tests one after another and my own struggling grades. Last night I stayed up until 1:00 AM studying and such. Then I forgot to change my alarm time from the day before when I only had afternoon school. That's right, I overslept. OF COURSE the one time in my life I miss class from oversleeping was a day we had a test first thing in the morning.

I woke up around 7:10 and my class starts at 8:00. That doesn't sound too bad, until you realize that it takes an hour to get to school if you leave between 6 and 6:40, and closer to an hour and a half or even two hours if you get to the freeway after 7:00 AM, due to traffic. Also, that teacher does not allow us to enter the classroom if we are late, especially if a test is in session.

I thank God my teacher is letting me take the test on Monday! It probably would have knocked me out of the interp. program if I had gotten a 0 on this test. So, I pray I do all right on the test on Monday.

Monday I also am seeing a counselor at the learning disabilities center at school. I have some minor learning disabilities (stemming from eye problems) that, among other things, make taking tests and spelling difficult for me. I should have seen the counselor at the beginning of the year, but last year in my prerequisite classes I did just fine, so I figured I'd be fine this year.

Not so much.

I'm praying that the counselor will have wisdom to know what will help me, and that I will know what to ask for. It's also good to know that I'm not alone, for much of the class is struggling. So we are doing a lot of study groups and spending as much time as possible with the program's private tutor. It's also great to know that ya'll are supporting and praying for me.

Though I am struggling and get discouraged some, I'm still so glad to be in the program. I was never planning to go to college because of my learning styles. It was totally God that stuck me in this exclusive program, and I know He has plans for it.

This afternoon after we had been working on fingerspelling for a while with the tutor, we got off on a rabbit trail and he was telling stories on himself. Funny stories are ten times more funny in ASL because the whole scene is acted out with all the facial and body expressions of yourself and those around you. He had the group of us nearly rolling on the floor laughing. Hopefully we weren't too loud since we were, after all, in the library. ;-)

Of Tests

I see a mountain looming near
Its very shadow causes fear
Foreboding, oh how close its base
How quickly I must mount its face!

I strive all night with panicked cry
To reach the top with weary sigh
I meet my challenge right on straight
Then wait aside to meet my fate

When I have conquered that tall peak
It's now for restful peace I seek
Yet all I find is vale so deep
And there beyond it one more heap

Update

5 year old niece: Let’s tell funny jokes!
Me: OK! You start.
Niece: *giggles* How many mice does it take to rake?
Me: Um…eight?
Niece: No. Twenty-four!! *hysterical laughter*
Me: *chuckle* Did you make that joke up yourself?
Niece: *proudly* Yes, I did.

How’d I guess?

Let’s see, what have I been up to besides listening to a five-year-old telling jokes? A lot! Ha! Hence the reason I haven’t posted in ages. In the writing world, I got my first paid short story published!! Yay! I’ve also been placing regularly in the FaithWriters’ weekly challenge, so I’ve been getting a short story published that way almost every week, plus a random one now and then in internet magazines.

I think I mentioned a few posts ago that I’m one of the coordinators of the 1st Annual FaithWriters writing conference next summer in Detroit. It’s a lot of fun and a lot of work! Things are coming together really nicely. I’ve also recently been named one of the “key influential members of FaithWriters.”

OK, now I feel like I’m boasting, though that isn‘t my intention, heh. On to school. Uhhh, school. Sooo much work, but I’m learning great things and getting along well with my classmates (which is good since I’m stuck with them for two years ;-) ).

Homework is crazy, especially when you add the fact that I’ve had a conference every single weekend for three in a row (one interpreter’s conference, one Christian writing conference, and another interp. conference). One weekend I had some 17 chapters of text books to read and had to memorize a speech, short presentation, and poem.

Let’s see, on the home front… My middle sister at college in South Carolina has been struggling with almost constant migraines and some other health problems. Mom flew there last week to drive her to Atlanta for a cat scan. Thankfully the scan came back normal. However, they still need to figure out what the problem is, so prayers would be much appreciated.

The Rocket's Red Hands

Today I was sitting in my sign language class during a break, trying to absorb everything and wondering how to explain it to you all. The class of 21 of us (two were missing today) were sitting in desks along the wall in a semi-circle. Each person was focused on practicing for a presentation. A man passed by the open door of the classroom, and I pictured the scene as he would--twenty-one people staring vacantly, hands waving wildly in random patterns. To me, things made a little more sense. All around me “rockets” soared and exploded in the air with the noise of fists striking each other and air escaping puffed cheeks.

Our assignment was to translate The Star Spangled Banner into ASL grammar. We spent hours last week in groups, discussing the meaning of the song, what parts were important to the point, and what proper grammar would be.

Yesterday we performed our version of the song. It was neat to see all the different translations--every single one distinctly unique. Our teacher told us we did well, but asked us to try something different. He told us to forget about it being a song, and instead to think about the story behind the poem.

So today we tried again. This time we had the story and emotions in our hearts, and let them flow out our hands. This time, instead of performing a song, we told a story. We felt emotion.

It was awesome. But I think the best part was the pride shining from our teacher’s face.

A Whole 'Nother Animal

I’ve just finished my first week of SLIP (Sign Language Interpreting Program) classes. The first day (Tuesday) was, of course, pretty much just orientation and telling about what we’ll be studying. There are 22 people in the class. I know about 75% of them from last year’s classes. We’ve each had the equivalent of at least two years of college sign language training, and each have passed a careful selection process. There is an age range of about 19 through 50s, and we have four guys (big number, actually). Each of us come from completely different background, from the two CODAs who grew up in a Deaf home, to those of us who have only been taking classes for a few years. This is my new family. I’ll be spending much of the next two years with them.

Wednesday we will normally only have one two and a half hour afternoon class, but yesterday we had a full day. The second-year students threw a party for us, to give us a chance to ask them any questions we might have. This group of students is making a special point to take us first-year students in under their wing. Besides just the traditional party, they are setting up a Yahoo group so we can contact them to ask for help with anything, and they’re going to set up get-togethers throughout the year.

Another tradition is for the 2nd-year group to give us a box. This is a box filled with useful little things like pain meds, hair bands, cough drops, lint remover, etc. Each year the 2nd-years give the box a “personality” and saying. Last year’s box was a hatbox with a pair of disposable underwear decorating it, and the word “DEPENDS”. The saying of that class is “it depends” (how you interpret something depends on context, ect, ect.).

This is a pic of our adorable box. Our saying comes from something one of our teachers likes to say: “Interpreting is a whole ‘nother animal!”

We have four classes this semester, and three teachers--two Deaf and one hearing. Deaf Studies explores traditions, language, and basically everything that makes up culture. (For this class we actually have two interpreters--the first day of class we students were rather surprised to discover that, since we all obviously have a pretty good grasp of the language. But the teacher explained that it’s easier to discuss things like that in our native language, and the class is about culture, not about the language, so she wants to make sure we get it all.

Our next class is Interpreting Process. This semester we are learning translation, which means that we will be doing things like changing written English into sign, or a video of sign into written English. In other words, we will be able to take time with the translation and keep going over it until we are satisfied, rather than real-time interpreting. We would use translation in our interpreting jobs for things like explaining a contract to a Deaf client.

Then we have Fingerspelling. Each week or so we have a presentation to give that must include at least ten fingerspelled words (or number sequences). We’ll be tested on our receptive skills, too. Our last class of the day (and the one we have on Wednesdays) is ASL I. We’re learning vocabulary for things like politics, science, and math. My college is unique in that their interpreting program continues to teach vocab throughout.

Today the effects of changing my sleeping schedule and the busy days caught up with my health problems. I didn’t sleep well and woke feeling very sick (not necessarily unusual). I was feeling a little better by the time school started, but that added to the smell of perfume and cigarette smoke caught up to me again by lunch time, and I got a headache. By the last 45minutes of class I was pretty much out of it. I’m gonna have to talk to the teacher about that last little bit, since I was doing good just to hold my head up, much less understand a foreign language.

Despite the knowledge that my health will be a continuing struggle during the program, I am really excited about this next two years. I’ll be working incredibly hard, and am already feeling like I’m a bit in over my head in knowledge, but this is going to be awesome. I love the language and the people, and I’m looking forward to learning about and loving interpreting.