Boston

After trampling all over Boston, we were getting quite hungry and so made our way to ‘Government Center’ which is where the City Hall was. Getting off the tram, we were treated to a troupe of breakdancers performing in the sqaure and so watched them for a while. I thought they were pretty good and liked some of the coorindated dances they had going with up to 6 of them grooving to the gettoblaster at the same time. Skill wise I have seen a lot more impressive breakdancing in videos and from researching the passing interest in the dance form online, but still it was great to see it for real in the flesh. Bet ya didn’t know I took some breakdancing lessons at University? I don’t know if I can still do some of the spins and I seem to get dizzy more quickly these days if I bounce my head around, possibly a sign of my worsening hearing condition, related to the pressure imbalance in my head? Meh

For food we entered this long thin building which contained about 35 different food stalls up and down the whole length, take away foods from all over could be had from Greek cousine, Thai to brick oven pizzas and fish and chips. Mmmm, mouth watering stuff. Right in the middle of this ‘food market’ there was a large circular eating area with two floors so you could sit down and munch away. This is precisely what we did, I went for Thai..

An amusing incident was when I had to pay for the Thai meal with a $20 Travellers Cheque. This part was fine but I had to sign and date it as usual, didn’t know the day and so asked the lady behind the counter what the date was. 9 30 she said,

It wasn’t so bad with the being an ‘outsider amongst deaf peers’ really but when we all got back to Davids apartment Karl told me that Susan and David had decided I was mad at Karl for some reason, I quickly dispelled the rumour and said it was just a little difficult for me to participate in conversations thus I was being quiet a lot of the time. Certainly no-ones fault and definitely a temporary issue. Karl was happy to hear that I wasn’t angry or any such thing and agreed that I would be fully participating soon once I had learnt more ASL. He gave me a hug and went off to prepare for going out to the clubs tonight.

So go out we did, all dressed up and ready to party, however it wasn’t to be. We knew it would be difficult to find a club to get into with David not quite 19, but unfortunately everywhere we went to said, 19+ or 21+ only, so poor David couldn’t get into anywhere! I’m nut sure if it’s related to the fact that we were trying to get into gay bars as there were two bisexuals among us (not me, I’m pretty straight I reckon), however it’s more likely to do with the 21 being the drinking age in the States.

Well it was a bummer not getting to go into a club, we instead decided to go grab something to eat at a 24 hour supermarket, Karl and Susan had Sushi, David and Meg (oops forgot to introduce her too, she came out clubbing with us and was a 2nd year video art student friend of David, she was hearing but learning signing too.) had Ben and Jerrys. I had a chocolate sundae pudding. Weird what you can get at these hours in the supermarket..

It wasn’t such a bad night out but we had a long trek back as surprisingly the Tram services stopped from around midnight or so. With aching feet we got back to campus and went to bed.

Running out of time writing this entry here at Bellow Falls Community Radio Station… what am I doing here? That’ll have to wait till another blog post I’m afraid

So the following morning (this would be the Sunday Oct 1st), we packed our things back up and Karl drove us back to Vermont. Not before stopping off at the Cheesecake Factory mind you! Yum yum, supreme cakes that I got to munch on the roads back home.

Crashed out at Karl and Susans place as we were all pretty knackered. Got to talk to Karl some more about his life and past relationships which really helped give me food for thought about what I am looking for at the moment. For your information I haven’t been one looking for ‘fun’ with girls and have been on the hunt for more serious relationships but so far no luck there, usually the nice ladies I ask out are taken. I won’t bore people with the failed attempts to court ladies in the past but might talk a little more in the future about some things I’ve observed or learnt so far and my own thoughts on that huge word; ‘love’.

Karl took me home after his days work on Monday to Putney.

Gotta dash now though, plenty more to say, not enough time in the day wot wot.

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… Read the rest of this entry »