NYC & ASL

Just got back from NYC today, had a pretty awesome trip where we got to do some shopping, see two plays, go to 2 museums, see 2 old friends and my cousin and see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We went to see Avenue Q which Cam didn't really understand too much as it had a lot of cultural things in it and a lot of English that one would have to understand. It was a very liberal play with a lot of very cute jokes in it done about 3 "real people" and 5 or 6 puppets (people dressed in black walking around holding and talking for the puppets) who lived on a street in NYC. There were no scene changes so it was a fairly boring action play, you really just had to follow what they were singing about to enjoy. The second play we went to was much more enjoyable for Cam. I also enjoyed it a lot, it's called Blue Man's Group and it was very involved with very little English (in fact the couple of times that there was English to be understood it was almost completely unintelligible - which was the funny part). Cam and I were only a little bummed about the museums cause unfortunately we left the Met till the last day (Monday) and it's closed on Mondays. We went to the Guggenheim instead but aside from it's pretty awesome architecture there was not too much art to be seen inside (that was of any good anyways).

Today was my first day of ASL (American Sign Language). It was pretty cool, we learned the alphabet (which I already knew) and how to say "my name is" and little nuances like the fact that in ASL there is no articles or verb "to be". It reminds me a lot of Chinese, they said some of the "words" are very easy to see what they mean and others aren't, plus there's no future or past tense, and no articles or verb "to be" (all the same as Chinese). Plus we learned some differences in politeness, like how one shouldn't point at people in the "hearing world" but how it's not only okay but to be expected in the ASL world as it means "you". She also taught us how they sometimes do things like stomp on the floor (depending on the room it can sometimes make vibrations in the floor that the students notice) or flicker the lights to get student's attention. Which are again things that one wouldn't usually do in the hearing world. I found it really interesting and am looking forward to going to the next class!