Deaf People, Broken Cars and Grades...OH MY!!

I am excited, nervous, stressed, relieved and drained...all at once! The first two adjectives there are referring to my new involvement in some deaf events. For my sign language class, I had to attend a deaf event so that I could experience the culture first hand. I have done this sort of thing before but the environments have been a lot stricter so casual-- fun conversation wasn't as easy. This time around, I managed to get in contact with an ASL interpreter that lives near by and she invited me to attend a deaf coffee night that she established quite a while ago. I was excited that I could finally go meet a group of deaf people in a laid back setting. When I got there, I met Chris (in person for the first time) and she introduced me to some of her deaf/ hard of hearing friends. I got to know several people there : Alan, Juan, Andrew and Joey were a few of the people I spoke with the most. It was a wonderful, hilarious time because they were all just a big group of jokers-- teasing each other and acting like kids. I got there at 7pm and before I knew it, it was almost midnight and we were all still chatting away! When I finally did start to say my goodbyes, Alan invited me to another deaf coffee night for the following week! I was so excited that they not only enjoyed talking (or trying to talk) with me, but they wanted me to join them for another get together! So the next week, I went and met a whole slew of new people and this time around-- it was a far bigger group. I must admit, I was rather intimidated by how fast everyone was signing. I ended up forgetting words that I have known for years, signing things wrong or just sitting there "silent" with nothing to say. Even Alan said that I was a lot more chatty the last time, and I tried to explain how nervous I was and he said he understood. I was invited to a Pizza night tomorrow, but I don't think I can make that gathering. I am just nervous because I know that they are all so nice and patient with me but I don't want to bore them all with my weakly signed small talk-- yet I know that the only way I will get better is by trying. Ugh! I just want to be fluent already!

  Okay, so why am I relieved then? Well, I am done with the spring quarter! Yay! The classes this term weren't really hard, they were just time and energy consuming. I had a lot of reading, a lot of essays and a lot of running around I had to do for each class. Plus with all the car issues and trips that I had in the past few months, finding time and ways to do all the stuff necessary for my classes was very hard. Yet, here I am! I made it! I did have one class, 19th century literature that was actually a class intended for graduate students so it was a bit harder than I was expecting (I didn't know it was for grad when I signed up for it). For a while, I thought I was really failing in the class because so much of the material covered referenced other works that I haven't read yet since I am an undergrad. I couldn't follow the examples and I just thought "man, I am going to fail and English class! ENGLISH?!" Thankfully however, as time went on and after I saw that I didn't fail the midterm, I actually did very well on it-- I relaxed and calmed down. Even at the end of the class, one of the grad students turned around and was like "You are an undergrad?" and i said yes, then she said "You are doing amazingly well in this class!" I was a little shocked because she was one of the top grad students in the course so getting a compliment like that from her was very reassuring. I can't wait to see my grades in a few days! Hopefully I will get on the Honor's List again!

I skipped "stressed"-- I will keep this one short. I am stressed because the car I am driving now, my mom's / Patrick's car, is having yet MORE issues! I am spending all my savings fixing this stupid car and eventually I won't have enough money to buy anything better! I am hoping I can get through this issue under $150 and hopefully get something semi-decent by the end of June. I guess I will have to lower my car standards even further and see what I can manage.

So needless to say-- all that is why I am drained! Too much has been going on, so I can't keep up physically and mentally. I hope that the summer classes I signed up for (mostly online ones) won't be too stressful. In the mean time, I will enjoy my week off from school. I have this weekend off from work, I am house sitting for a family friend so hopefully that means some serious relaxation is in store! Hope you all are doing better than me haha!