Thus, as recommended by Karl and Susan, I made my way (with my Father kindly driving me there) to McNeils in Brattleboro at 8pm the Friday evening.

You would think it’d be relatively easy to spot some deaf people chatting away in a bar wouldn’t you? Just look for people signing avidly to each other. However most notable when we walked in was an absense of any such signing from anyone.
Hmmm, maybe they were at another bar? So we had a quick mosey around to the other local bars but either the deaf groups were not talking to each other or there was no-one out tonight.
As my father and I walked back to McNeils, I must admit to feeling a little deflated.
However, lo and behold as we walked back up the street, there, stood outside McNeils were some people signing!

I stowed away any butterflies I might have been carrying and promptly walked up to them waving a greeting. For the very first moment the group were the tiniest bit confused but quickly started to understand that I wanted to say ‘Hi!’ with my basic knowledge of signing.
The problem here was that what little sign language I knew was alien to them because as I said before, BSL (British Sign Language) is different to ASL (American Sign..), oh dear..
Not to worry, we deaf people are pretty hardy and clever when it comes to recognising what people are saying via lipreading and contextual recognition. Before long I had managed to introduce myself, tell them my name and learn all of theirs. Pretty good going!

To aid myself, I had the foresight to print off a little chart with ASL fingerspelling diagrams for each letter of the alphabet. I had given them a quick once-over on the drive there and was fairly sure I’d at least be able to spell my name out right.
Any concerns over not being able to communicate were ultimately unfounded as thanks to their patience and my keenness, we were able to start talking fairly comfortably at a relaxed pace. My brain started to go into overdrive trying to consume and use every bit of ASL they were showing me.
My father had already gone inside to enjoy the tasty home-brewed beer that McNeils provide and I must admit it is a pretty good beer! So me and my new found friends went on inside as well to get our own drinks and sit down.

At first the group consisted of 3 gals and 1 gent, but some more people turned up in the end making for quite a big group of us. They all worked locally and some were also teachers at Austines School for the Deaf, a popular job it seemed for these deaf locals.

I was intrigued to find out more about how people coped from day to day life as a deaf person in Vermont but as my ability to communicate at more complex levels was still hindered, I focused on learning the basics of ASL. We mostly talked about our work but ultimately they had loads of questions for me, they kept commenting on how interesting it was to hear about the differences for the deaf person in England and America.

A couple hours went by very quickly and I was told that I was picking up ASL really quickly, indeed as soon as someone showed me a new sign symbol I would make an attempt to use it in conversation with another person, so by the end of the night I was feeling quite confident that I could now introduce myself and talk a little bit about where I was from and what I wanted to do, all in freshly learnt ASL. I had also almost mastered fingerspelling in a single evening as I had to use it so much to spell out words I didn’t yet know the sign for.

Around 11:30pm, not wanting to keep my father waiting for too long, I told the group that I was sorry to be leaving but I hoped to come again many times. They invited me to another regular social activity, bowling on Sundays at 3pm, to which I will certainly go along to also.

So just to quickly round off this blog before I get ready for bed, thank you to Karl, Susan, Kelly, Claire, Merci, Richard, Daniel and Chrissy for being the first to introduce me to American Deaf Culture in Vermont! There were a couple others I spoke to also whom I shall get the names of next time!

Well then, good night to all.