First Day of School

From left: Diana, Laura, Me, and Melody.We are posing outside of the SCCC cafeteria on January 3rd (our first day of class which is for an hour every morning). Missing in action but present in class: Alison (our meetup organizer) and Lindsey (the Bellevue Community College ASL club 'Silent Voices' president).
Photo provided by Diana Rodgers. Photographer - some student from class

Here are 4 of us out of the 6 in our ASL meetup group. We are pictured at Seattle Central Community College and are taking ASL 202 which is level 5. We all went to Bellevue Community College at some point and then transfered to SCCC because it is the only public college in the Seattle area which offers ASL 4, 5, and 6.

I met Melody in the spring of 2004 when I took a refresher course of ASL level 1 at the HSDC (Hearing Speech and Deafness Center) with Harley, KC & Dianne (now married), Lisa (one of my captioners from the UW), and Nicole (a former classmate and cohort of the master in teaching program at the UW). Our teacher at the HSDC was my friend Karen Chreist (now Stueland compliments of "Sam the man").

I knew Lindsey from attending some BCC Silent Voices ASL events (primarily the 3rd friday of the month coffee social in Bellevue). Back in February (yes nearly a year ago already!), I ran into Melody again and was surprised to learn that she lived very close to us. At that time I met Laura who was a friend of hers and was also at the coffee night. I told them about the cool meetup group I had found on the computer. I think they knew about it and happened to go before I went. LOL

And that brings us to how I met Alsion and Diana. I first met Alison over the computer when looking for ASL events in my area. ASL is just one of the many languages Alsion knows. Diana (now our assistant organizer), I met when I actually started going to the meetups (thanks to Melody and Laura who gave me rides when I could not drive much due to vision problems associated with the tumors causing my optic nerves to swell).

So that is our story and here we are. LOL Thanks to these wonderful friends I have people to communicate with and help me learn ASL. Among us there are three carpools to and from school so I don't have to drive to downtown Seattle. THANK YOU EVERYONE! :o)

Class keeps us busy, it is challening, and there is lots of homework. However, we truly enjoy our instructor Stephan Kennedy and we are having fun being in class together and seeing each other everyday.

Oh yeah, we all live on the east side (Melody and Laura in Redmond, Diana in Woodinville, Alison and Lindsey in north Bellevue near Microsoft). I am so fortunate!!!! The majority of the Deaf community lives in Seattle which is far from my home. It is nice having a group to sign with on the east side and to go to events with together. They are all hearing but we do have a couple deaf friends who sometimes join us at gatherings (George, Frank, and Paul).