Oh my gosh..talking about learning ASL, it looks like every ASL students decided to hang out at the same place. From about 30-50 people seating at the food court area of the shopping mall, maybe 5 were really Deaf and another 5 maybe HOH, I know most people would say they are the same and belong to the same community, yes, I got this part, but the HOH people hanging at the mall all could talk, so there were no real reason to force us (learners) to use sign, so I will consider 5 Deaf to 40 people just o round the numbers her.
It was so many people, so many different conversations and so many different levels of ASL knowledge that was incredibly difficult to follow any of them. Again, I could give credit to practice perception of the signs and get use to see the signs being done fast as regular Deaf people would use.
Other than visual "training" that event is not made for the beginner, lost on ASL and no friend to talk to, but I need to give a HUGE credit to the Deaf people there who were the most amazing people and SOOOOO willing to help the students, teaching them and so patients to understand the ones who didn't sign much, like me. I was actually surprised that it is called Deaf Coffee when there are bearelly no Deaf people there in comparison with the amount of hearing people. I was always thinking it would be a bunch of Deaf people hanging out chatting and a few hearing ones, friendly talking and having "coffee", but instead I saw the opposite, which is why I came out with that great impression about the ones that were there. They weren't there to hang out with their Deaf friends ans socialize with other Deaf, they were there knowing that they would be meeting a lot of hearing students and teaching them, freely teaching them.
Funny thing, even though I am from another community and speak another language, I never heard of any kind of social event or hang out place where people would go to practice talking another language. Most people who are learning another language they just go to another country to practice. ASL, they don't have another country to go practice, but there are many schools where people can take a course and be immerse into the language, but instead, they just find places to gather some people who "talk" the language to practice with them. That is something incredible, it seems that the Deaf community is much more organized, willing and able to provide training and practice to those willing to learn ASL than any other community or language. KUDOS, for the organizers and the Deaf people who goes there and help, teach, practice and donate their time.
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