Personal Narrative: It's Deaf Community

When I attended the IT's Deaf community meet up, I got just a small fraction of what it is like to be cut of from your way of communicating with other people. when I arrived in the room it was silent as everyone was signing to each other. Still learning ASL and not knowing what was being said around me was difficult to get used to. After settling down at a table with my meal, I just watched people talking to each other by signing, I would try to understand with my new limited knowledge of the language.
After eating I was putting my dishes away and a girl sitting at the table opposite of me signed that she liked my shirt. I was immediately happy that I understood what she said to me. I went up to her and said thank you. She started

signing more question at me and I had to tell her that I was level one in ASL. She slowed downing her signing for me and would talk while she signed. Her sign name was hair of many colors, if I remember correctly. She told me that she is in the ASL interpreting program. While we were talking, people that she knew came and joined the table we were sitting at. They too were part of the interpreting program. They told me about it and answered question that I had and also question that they had for each other. It was fun to talk with them and pick their brains on ASL and how they got into it. I enjoyed watching them talk to each other in sign. Sometimes the head interpreter had to tell them to speak while they signed to each other for my sake.
I had a great time talking to the interpreters and hearing their stories and learning from them.