Now that I'm back at uni, BSL classes have started up again. It's great signing again - though I've realised I've grown very lazy over the summer. The class was coming to an end, I was tired and just wanted to go home to sleep. The teacher asked me something, to which I replied. Except, because I was lazy, I only half-heartedly signed. Wrong move. The teacher looked at me, and then I realised my mistake. In being lazy, I had made the wrong sign. Instead of signing 'friend', I had signed a very rude word. The two are quite similar, especially when you're tired.
Luckily she saw the funny side. Serves me right though! I'll make sure not to get complacent, and give signing my full attention.
Despite that slight mishap, it's great to be signing again. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it. I love it. And the great news? My Mum has started to learn BSL as well. I'm absolutely thrilled about that.
For the past few days I've had a friend (Frenchie) stay over. It's been lovely seeing her. Have definitely missed her presence here at university. Hadn't seen her since the start of summer - so we definitely had a lot to catch up on. Which of course, meant staying up till the early hours of the morning, chatting.
She was lying in her bed, I was lying in mine, and we were having a good catch up and gossip. Was lovely. I do have a problem with late-night chats though - when do I take my hearing aids out? Often, the conversation will start up again when the lights are out and we're both just lying there. I normally take my hearing aids out before the lights go out. This time it was a guessing game - I didn't want to appear rude and not respond when I actually hadn't heard...
Frenchie is also an early bird. Or rather - I am not a morning person, and compared to me, everyone is an early bird. I like my lie-ins. Frenchie likes getting up in time for breakfast (unless I have an early lecture, I tend to miss breakfast and only surface for lunch). However, this wasn't an issue. She could move about and get ready with no fear of waking me up. There's definitely benefits to being deaf!
By the end of her stay with me, Frenchie had lost her voice. She started out by sounding nice and husky, and ended up sounding like a heavy-breather breathing down the phone... Now, losing your voice is annoying at the best of time. But especially if you're Frenchie - that girl likes to talk! Which I find great, because I like to talk just as much. She was struggling by the end though, with absolutely no voice.
Luckily - I can lip-read. It was great - Frenchie would mouth the words to me, giving me a chance to practice my lip-reading, and allowing us to continue to gossip. It also meant we were a bit quieter (my poor neighbour - he's probably been kept awake by random bursts of uncontrolled laughter in the early hours of the morning), as there was only one of us laughing.
Tell you what, lip-reading would have been a useful skill to have had when I was younger and having sleep-overs, and my pesky parents kept telling us that they could hear us talking and to go to sleep...
V
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