I Had the Strangest Moment the Other Day...

...for an American deaf person, that is. A friend of a friend (who is currently a British student at Oxford) recently got in touch via email and said she was interested in learning British Sign Language. Well, I don't know BSL, I said, but sure, let's meet up. So when we got coffee this past week, I talked a bit about sign language and deaf education and deaf culture, as well as the basic differences between ASL and BSL. And then, hardly knowing what I was doing, I said, "Would you like to learn the BSL alphabet?"

She said yes. Okay, I better remember this. I launched into it, this strange two-handed alphabet that makes me feel clumsy and foreign whenever I use it, not like my usual facility with ASL. She watched intently and we worked through it, despite my own doubts about my lack of credibility in BSL. What an international moment: me, living abroad in a country not my own, with a sign language not my own, trying to cross the gap between cultures and individuals and the deaf/hearing worlds. We had a nice conversation, and I walked away feeling, once again, that I should learn more BSL. Especially now that I will be here for three more years! I need to work on finding a deaf person around Oxford to teach me. That way maybe next time when I'm asked about BSL by a British person, I'll feel a little more well-versed in the local sign language, even though it'll always be from an American perspective.

In related news, friends here continue to learn ASL and to get increasingly better at it. Teaching them has been great fun, and I keep hoping that more and more will join in and reach some level of semi-conversational fluency. It's an ongoing process and learning experience. Every chance I have to increase deaf awareness with the people here, I try to take. I'm becoming better at it, and I can only hope that this knowledge about signing and lipreading and clear communication will have some sort of ripple effect through the hearing world. So, here's to learning and communicating a little better, on my own part as well!