mmmmm... I just got home from a weekend away. Ok well, not just. I actually arrived at home at about 12:30am Monday morning and now it is Friday, but since I'd left last Thursday I had a lot of catching up to do and somehow homework seems to get higher priority than blogging (sorry to all you avid bloggers out there, that's just the way it is over here).
Anyway, back to the topic at hand... hands
My weekend away was spent at an ASL camp just outside of St. Louis. I went there last year for this same camp and had tons of fun. So I scrounged enough money together for this year and went again. And once again had tons of fun. I met up with a lot of peole that I'd met last year and met a bunch of new people. I spent so much time laughing that my cheeks are still a little sore.
And we did it all in ASL. We held workshops, played games, flirted, joked, discussed a few serious topics, told stories and made up skits all in ASL. Wow what a workout for my hands. And wow was it easy this year. I wasn't temped to talk once (I also never got caught voicing again this year - and this year it's because I really never voiced). We learned to put our whole bodies in motion to emphasise points. We played with idioms in both ASL and English (written). We made human machines.
In our off times we discussed the regional differences in signs - little things like how to say "baptist" - they sign it just slightly differently in Misouri. We got to know each other over card games (they taught me to play poker), board games (yea for scrabble) and other games (apples to apples anyone?). And I got the best compliment ever.
About 7 of us were sitting around chatting one evening (well more like night, it was almost 12:00). When the cute boy suddenly asked us how old we all were. So I told him (31) and his jaw hit the floor. When he got over the shock he told me he thought I was more like 21 - Wow I look a whole decade younger than I am, I must be doing something right.
At the end of the weekend, when we were allowed to use our voices again, we went to lunch with a couple of our new friends (I finally got to try Sonic - yummy wraps and they have a soda I can drink). We spent about 2 hours teasing each other about our regional accents and teaching each other new words. The drive home was as long as ever, but with good company in the car it was at least enjoyable.
Monday morning (11:00am) found me sitting in my linguistics class, discussing regional differences in pronunciation as we delved into phonetics. My what a cleverly folded world we live in.