Oooarrgh, well brain information overload this weekend and unable to contain all it for later consumption blog-wise however I shall try and recollect some of the best bits for ya all, but quickly to catch up:

“Side-notes”; The workshop went rather well if a little needlessly hectic on my behalf, made one or two tiny errors when instruction the kids what the do in the exercises (e.g. tearing up all the paper into ‘frames’ when folding them and tucking into each other book style would have been much better) but everyone was remarkably patient with me and for that I am grateful. To my surprise, I was handed a money order check for $200 as gratitude from Austine School for my efforts. I was all set up to do it voluntarily but being rewarded money for my time and ‘skills’ *cough*.. was an extra bonus 😉

That’s not all, the day afterwards, apparently a little review and evaluation was performed by the students to say how they enjoyed the Camp and I was informed that they enjoyed doing my workshop the most out of the other 4 activities they did also! So I must have done something right.. 🙂

Highlights of the day would be the kids understanding a lot more about the concept of animation and video art than I expected, seeing some excellent flipbooks, chipmunks, and being asked what the ‘name of my car was’ by a small and intriguing girl with a face and demeanour of someone much, much older.

For your information, the car search still continues..

So the Leadership Camp drew to an end and Karl, Susan and me went home to pack and prepare for Boston.

We took about just over 3 hours to get to Boston, much of the journey I dozed off in the back of the car wishing I had my new camera as I watched the sun set through the rear window. The cloudscapes were sheer bliss providing a softly evolving illuminated backdrop for the wispy green mountains. Such is the rural landscape of Vermont and Massachusetts, green trees turning orange as they coat the hills and occasionally you can spot mist rise from the valleys.

Driving through the Streets of Boston was a wake-up call to the fact that I was suddenly back in a City environment, an extreme contrast to the idyllic towns and villages that dot Vermont, that said, the places we drove through seemed quiet, I was expecting more hustle and bustle to match the skyscraper-ed street blocks but the general pace of things seemed very laid back to me especially compared with ‘neighbour’ NYC.

Quickly we found the campus for the “School for the Museum of Fine Arts” which is where the friend of Karl was studying and who we were to stay with for the weekend.

David was a quirky fellow, I was surprised by the age gap between him and Karl but I found out that they had met when David were at a Summer Camp.  At 18 David was a well travelled fellow having already visited 15 countries,  details are a little sketchy as I tried my best to keep up with the conversation but when deaf people get together they tend to sign away at the speed of light and change topics at the turn of a .. er, whats the word.. hmm, meh… oki, at the turn of a turtle. Thus poor old me with 2 weeks ASL learning under my belt was a little overwhelmed.

In fact much of the weekend I experienced almost exactly the same situations of being left out when in group conversations, this has happened all my life among hearing peers because I find it difficult to hear what people say and as soon as the topic starts bouncing around I am lost without my contextual recognition. So it was a little depressing to experience the same thing among deaf peers but I kept reassuring myself that this was only temporary and it was just a matter of time before I could fully participate when I have learnt a lot more sign.

At least this time everyone could understand my troubles a little better this time and so made more of an effort to pause and tell me what the topic was and ask me some questions in super slow-motion signing. Thanks guys 🙂

We went out that Friday night to mooch around, found our way to what I was told to me the famous ‘Newbury Street’ known for upper class toffery. Again I got the feeling that the streets were quiet, not much going on, this would be about 10:30pm mind. Many of the shops were closed save for a the bars and restaurants. We did finally find an open Candy Store and proceeded to gorge our eyes on the sugary possibilities. I spied a table in the middle containing exclusive and rare ‘imported chocolates and sweets’ essentially containing my typical diet back in England from the age of 6-10, Cadbury’s Flakes and Kinder Eggs anyhow, awesome stuff.

The sweetie attendant kept offering us some freebie samples whilst at the same time nagging not to ‘mix the walls’ referring to the fact that the different sweets on different walls were priced differently. I proceeded to joke with her about the fact that ‘all local kids must be insominacs seeing as the Candy Store was the only place open within sight at this late hour.’, well it got a giggle.

After candy we visited a park where I was slow-mo sign informed ‘Good Will Hunting’ was filmed, having not seen the film yet I couldn’t comment much on this trivia, prompting the others back into their discernible conversations, and thus I descended into quiet gloom as I am prone to in a moonlit park such as this. It was silly of me as I battled against not being able participate fully in signed conversation versus the knowledge that I would be able to in the near future if I stick with it. I tried to stay positive but lagged behind the others as they continued on.

We got back to campus about 1am, since David is a fresher and living in the halls of residence we had to keep handing in a form of ID to the guard in reception until we wanted to go out. I was a little worried about leaving my Drivers Licence like that overnight but I can report that I got it back each time without fuss.

I slept on the couch in a communal apartment whilst Karl and Susan got a blow up mattress in Davids room. Zzzzz…

The next day David gently woke me at 10:45am and we all went out walking, it was cool and breezy but the Sun did its best to warm us, David showed us to the studios where he does his work. He is studying Fine Art and doing a lot of painted work, the smell in the studios was instantly recognisable for me, the turp and oils, I had grown up with the stuff since my mother is an artist and painter. Davids work lacked the artistic flair and finesee at this early stage however his images were already provocative and provided interest for the viewer in his expressions of deafness and religion. I hope he works hard and matches his ideas with a proficiency with the paint medium to enhance the overall effect.

After having a look around the Schools art rooms we got on a tram and went downtown. The Boston streets were clean and lined with trees in most places, in the areas we walked the atmosphere was amiable, a lot of young people and students out to enjoy the last of the warmer weather, an interesting variety of shops lined the streets, it seemed like Nirvana for the shopoholic really.

Stopped for brunch at a fairly posh pizza place, everything is expensive in this part of town and so we shared a smallish 11 inch pizza that cost $11, I watched the little birds gather around the breadcrumbs that the waiters would through out too them when clearing up. A calm moment.

What else did we do? Well the tram was extremely cheap so we decided to get a dayticket and get out further to Harvard Square. I ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ as we also passed MIT I didn’t realise that these prestigious schools were both here in Boston so that was something new learnt for the day. Got off in Cambridge and had a look around the Harvard campus, a certain air of pride for the University was certainly evident.

I followed the others as they stopped for coffee and then found an old fashioned cigar shop. For some reason the weekend had turned into a smoke-a-thon as David had recently started smoking, Susan already was a smoker and even Karl had joined in. I don’t enjoy the smoke at all and so hung back for a lot of the afternoon, thus alienating myself again, oops..

The others made a point then of telling me that I should tell them what I wanted to do or say if I saw something I wanted to check out, this was nice but as the day went by I couldn’t actually see much that interested me, I was on the look out for anything creative in the area but there wasn’t anything. The best thing I got to enjoy were some of the street performers and buskers dotting the tram stations, one chap was playing an electric guitar through various stomp boxes and loopers, a nice echoey soundscape that filled the station unfortunately the tram was already at the station and so I was forced to rush on board, a pity because I wanted to ask the guitarist what equipment he was using as he sounded a lot like the style I sometimes do on the guitar with all the effects. All I was able to spot was the fact that he had two Marshall amps set up, presumably for the stereo delay and echo but I was baffled as to how he was powering them down here. Oh well… 😉

Getting a bit rambly now which indicates I’ve been typing too long. I shall have to conclude rest of the Boston weekend tomorrow. Hope everyone, everywhere and reading this, is doing ok.