A Tough Week

Hello people reading my blog!

I have felt somewhat stuck with my ASL this past week. I have been improving at such a fast rate up until now, and this week I saw just how much I still do not understand. There have been a couple times during classes this week (or the end of last week) when I could not get across my thoughts. I know all the signs of what I wanted to say, but for some reason I was not able to place them into a coherent sentence. Another thing I have become increasingly frustrated with, is my fingerspelling. Fingerspelling is an integral part of American Sign Language, using ASL handshapes to spell words borrowed from the English Language. Deaf people are, of course, very skilled at both reading and producing fingerspelling and it is often hard to understand them. For hearing people it is often difficult to produce smooth fingerspelling, and lately i feel like this has been more of a problem for me than usual. I don't quite know what the reason is for my frustration with my signing, I would like to think that it is because i have improved so much since my arrival here that I am now able to pick apart specific things about my skills, but I am not sure that is the case. All I can do is keep practicing, using my ASL as much as possible and soak up all of the good signing habits and deaf culture I can. And I will make sure to do that during my limited time left here in DC.

Nothing extremely exciting has happened this past week, my friends and I did get to go to a free chocolate sampling in Dupont Circle. We felt pretty fancy (or at least I did) and free is always good for college students!

I did get a new sign name this week. Although I do still like my original sign name, this one was given to me by one of my friends and has a much more personal meaning. I made a video in ASL to describe what it is and how it was given!

English Translation:

Hello everyone, thank you for watching my vlog! Hopefully you remember my last video when I introduced my sign name. My old sign name was (name sign). This week, my friend Damien(name sign), Damien (fingerspelled), gave me a new sign name. Damien is always teasing me, and I always tell him "oh stop it". This motion means "stop it" or "finish". Damien noticed that I always use that motion when he is teasing me and decided to give me the new sign name, (handshape K in the exaggerated finish motion with one hand). So my new sign name is (name sign)! Thank you!

I hope you all enjoyed my video and blog this week!

Kaleena

new sign of the week: cover

most used phrase of the week: when is it due?