The ASL Chronicles

A few friends have asked... how goes it, using ASL in the UK? How's the signing? How are the interpreters? Have you learned any BSL?

More on interpreters and BSL in another post very soon, but yesterday I had my third weekly signing gathering with other Rhodies (and accumulated Oxford friends), so my inclination is to answer the former with: terrific! I've been fortunate enough to meet many people here who are very intellectually curious about languages, who are open to learning, and who are exceptionally good at remembering what I teach them. I doubt whether I've ever felt so comfortable being myself with a group of hearing peers, or at least gotten to such a place so quickly, and it suddenly struck me yesterday: this sort of feeling makes me feel so settled and so happy. That doesn't mean there aren't still challenges -- for instance, twice this past week I went to large group dinners in which seven or eight people were chatting around a table and I felt totally lost. And I'm also still struggling with some of the international students I meet (and still gravitating toward American friends, since they are usually a thousand times easier to understand!). I'm currently undergoing some mixed feelings about both of those things, which I am trying to work through -- but I do know what my strengths are and am trying to utilize those while stretching my boundaries as much as is reasonably possible. It is an ongoing process indeed... Some international friends I've made are careful to speak clearly when chatting with me, though, and I'm admittedly loving the other aspects of social life here: the frequent tea and coffee dates, the nights sitting in a cozy pub swapping stories or just talking about ideas with a range of different people. These social affairs are all the more enjoyable when sign language is involved. Which it has been, more and more often as of late.

Much of that is due to the ASL gatherings each week at Rhodes House, due to the good signing conversations that follow with friends after these gatherings, and also due to that principle of openness and honesty I raised earlier. I've been shaking the rust off my usually-pretty-dormant signing skills, taking that plunge, and seeing people start to reciprocate in kind. We're all doing the best we can, I think, combining the visual and the verbal and the auditory and the what have you, in pursuit of some sort of connection and human understanding. But I'll say, isn't it lovely that I should find myself signing so much here!