Call me crazy if you would like, but I did that, left at 7am from Newark,NJ airport to go to Rocherter NY on September 21, 2013 to attend the Deaf Nation Expo in RIT/NID. One of the best and worst place I went to. Well, it was great to see such an organized event and so full of cool entertainment, but worst for the part that, for a beginner, the dimension of the event and sudden knowledge of how huge the world is and the Deaf world is made me really scared and I felt like giving up.
Remembering that I started to learn and getting involved with ASL and Deaf culture on August 2013, so 1 month after being alone in an event of that dimension it was really overwhelming for me. One of the few Deaf personality I knew about was Joel Barrish, one of the founders of DeafNation, and leaving my fears away and the embarrassment of not knowing ASL, I was able to express myself to him and even took a picture. There, my trip was satisfying for that. I was understood by a Deaf person. That opened my shyness a little bit when on my way out I was also able to communicate with one of the vendors and bought 2 DVDs of movies made in ASL only. Yes, I saw both with subtitles, no way I could understand the dialogues with out it at that time.
So after the whole day walking around the expo and seeing only sign language, on my way back to NJ I met one of the sales associate from Purple ( a company that provide services such as VRS among other things). Now I felt more comfortable, it was one on one communication and we both had to wait for the plane anyway, so..there I was trying to talk to the guy and practice my ASL once again. I now feel bad for him, poor guy had a huge patience with me, I was really bad on ASL..come on, 1 month beginner. Turn out that the same person was going to NJ as well for the Deaf Fest event happening on the following day.
Well, on Sunday September 22, I was really tired from the 1 day in NY trip, but there I was in the NJ Deaf Fest. In comparison with the DeafNation Expo I was just in a day before, this event was very small, but huge for the NJ area. The entertainment was great and the technology for the non-ASL knowledgeable people was amazing with interpreter and a screen with the transcript of what was being said on stage, something that DeafNation Expo does not have. The amazing Douglas Ridloff was on stage when I got there, and it was a real treat to see him performing and understanding everything from the screen transcript. There were, however, fewer vendors and the food was only carts as street food, meaning, no option of purchasing with credit cards even though it was so expensive. But into the reason why I'm writing this, seen and meeting a few Deaf people around was really interesting again, but the very best was to pass by the NY Deaf Theatre booth that was there promoting their next production. One poor guy alone was giving out some flyers made of black and white copies and the note pad where we could sign up to receive emails updates. My life was done there. I got to find out that my past passion just met my new passion (theatre meets ASL) and even though I was mostly lost on the whole signing my hope was restored and my eager to keep learning moved me to the next stage.
No comments:
Post a Comment