Learning and planning

A couple days ago I published a post saying that I wanted to learn ASL. Later the same day, I started practising the alphabet and it was not hard at all! It didn’t take more than an hour for me to memorize it and I thought it would be very easy to learn all this Sign language completely. Today I realised how complicated it is. I found a document with all the positions and stuff I have to do with my hands and now I am scared. It is not as easy as I thought. Anyway, I will keep working on that.

Something weird happened yesterday. I was repeating the alphabet while watching an old video of my favourite Youtuber (yes, the one who went to Ghana, and yes, I’ll talk about him very often) and he was reading a letter from another vlogger (with V because she has a videoblog) who coincidentally does videos teaching LSE (Spanish Sign Language). Creepy.

I knew about this girl because recently she sent him another letter and he and his girlfriend (who is a youtuber too) said that they wanted to do something interesting together with her and they are planning some cool videos. I am looking forward to watch them!

I saw some of her videos and they are pretty good but I think I will focus only on ASL because I don’t want to get confused between those two languages.

Let’s talk about something else.

When I wrote the last post I was a little worried about the courses I have to take and then I remembered that there are other extra things I have to do besides that! There is something called “additional training credits” and my degree requires 10 of those. A friend told me that 28 hours of voluntary work are the same as one credit. That means I have to do 280 hours!

It is not as bad as it looks like anyway. I like helping people and recently I did something that opened a door and now I am one step closer to start doing my volunteering.

I have a friend called Daniela. She is a designer and photographer (among other cool stuff) and she did a photography workshop at a SOS Children’s Village near my home and she asked me to help her doing some takes to have a register in video of the whole activity. Those villages are a group of houses with families composed by many children who cannot live with their parents for many reasons and they live with a substitute mother. When I was recording, a man who works there asked me what I was studying and we started talking about the additional training credits because last year a girl used to go and teach mathematics there and they endorsed some of the hours she needed.  So… that’s a possibility.

It was interesting to watch how enthusiastic those children can be. They need so much but it wasn’t hard to make them have a good time. Children are so complex and simple at the same time. There was a boy and I needed him so smile for one of the takes but he was kind of nervous and I didn’t know what to do to make him smile. Then I tried smiling at him first and he smiled back right after me. He only needed me to show some sympathy or niceness to give me his ear-to-ear grin.

That day I learnt a lot about children. How messy and funny they can be. The only thing they need is a sign of kindness and it is not needed to use your mouth and talk to create a bond. Our body is the best tool.

That is all for today. I wish I can contact the man who works at the village soon to see if I can go and do some classes during the holidays because I have nothing else to do (besides reading).

*TO DO LIST*

• Finish reading Cell and start with The Long Walk.
• Learn some basic phrases in ASL.
• Contact the village’s man.
• Paint my bedroom (White was ok but old and dirty white is a little depressing) I’m going to paint it blue. Ironic isn’t it?