Ha ha - a late post. I wrote this back before Christmas.
I think we're almost ready for Christmas! All the presents are done (knock on wood...) and we're ready to go. I was just finishing up a few loose ends and getting ready to settle into candy making when our friend from church, Michai came by. (Michai, I hope you don't mind me writing about our day!) She wasn't having a really great day and needed a place to get some space for a bit, so we decided to go over to the school and eat lunch with Sam. Every time I eat lunch with Sam, I sign instead of talking, so Sam wasn't bothered by the additional visitor. Side note: why do we sign? Due to the dreaded lunch room noise monitor, aka Yakker Tracker.
The Yakker Tracker starts on a green light, then changes to yellow (or even red!) if the noise level increases. I remember one in my school cafeteria. But this school cafeteria has concrete walls and floors, and 100 kids talking with quiet voices sounds about like a jet engine, so the tracker always seems to be sounding the alarm. Once it gets to red, everyone has to have Silent Lunch for 5 minutes. But this is ok, we aren't bothered by these things at all.
You know how when you ask a kid about their day, sometimes they take off at 100 miles an hour and you're left with wide eyes saying, "I didn't understand a word you just said"? Sam did that today. He was literally waving his hands around without making any sense at all. Michai told him to slow down and actually spell his words instead of just wiggling his fingers around and expecting us to guess what he meant, and that helped a LOT! :)
The cutest part of the day was when Sam invited Michai to come to his school Christmas concert tonight. Then we came home and Michai practiced the piano. She has an app on her phone that teaches you how to play, and we conveniently have a piano she can use. I'm happy to report that she is learning fast - she played Ode to Joy by the end of the afternoon, which isn't too bad for 1 day of practicing! She's actually a really fabulous musician. The hardest part was feeling the rhythm, which this app enforces militantly. Finally we plugged her phone into some headphones so she could crank the sound and hear the beat, then she didn't have any more problems. I did, though - she asked me to explain a half note. It turns out I have no idea how to explain that in ASL. It took about 5 confusing tries before it made any sense.
The school concert was fun. It was fun to introduce Michai to my friends, all of whom were there. (I mean, really, all 3 of them.) I still stink at facilitating conversations among English and ASL users. I want so badly for all my friends to be friends with each other, and I hurt a little bit that I can't make that possible. If a genie appeared and granted me a wish, I would wish for everyone to learn some sign language.
A funny story - Michai went to the bathroom one time, and Martha decided 2 minutes later that she needed to go to the bathroom, too. And she wanted to use THAT bathroom, because the other bathroom was "too dark". So she stood outside and knocked on the door. I said, "Martha, Michai can't hear you." Martha got really annoyed at that. She still doesn't understand that some people actually can't hear. Oh well. I guess it's outside the imagination of a 3 year old.
No comments:
Post a Comment