my first sign language teacher

So last week was fun. NY was not as "yuck" as I had expected it to be (see last blog... I even enjoyed it... ESPECIALLY the awesome restaurant that Jeff brought me to that last night and the great company of him and my folks that evening) and then got back to spend a spectacular bday at home with Clifford and Brad doing what I love including spending quality time inside and outside my fabulous mountain home. The hiking was incredible that day and I was so caught up in it that I was late to meet Shinta who had made me a fabulous bday cake. I continued to do a lot of hiking and enjoying not being in the office for the rest of the week. Fri night had a great bday dinner at Brad's folks and then Sunday had a great time skiing and later went to the deaf camp to give a lecture to the deaf women's snowshoe retreat group. There I met up with my first sign language teacher Dorothy Wilkin who I hadn't seen since around 1981 when I took her AWESOME sign language class. I had taken the course to get an easy A and instead she opened my life to amazing adventures and fun. To pass her class we had to wear "maskers" to make ourselves deaf for a whole weekend and write about it (amazing eye opener), go to a party of hers with all of her deaf friends and leave our voices downstairs, and go to dinner with her and only sign the whole dinner. It was a fantastic course and I learned a ton. After that course I immersed myself in the deaf community in Rochester and went on to do an interpreter training course and get my masters in deaf education. I had expected to teach the Deaf before the course but only in an "oral" environment. The education she gave of teaching me language and culture opened my eyes to a whole new world and made me a better person. I told her how much she changed my life and she mentioned that another student from that first class I took with her had gone on to get a PhD in Linguistics and is now working for her in ASL (American Sign Language) research. Pretty cool having 2 "doctors" still involved in the Deaf community coming out of 1 class! A tribute to how good she was.