A Weekend With My Roommate

I substituted a weekend with my roommate for the mask activity.

Sounds like an average weekend, but it definitely wasn't.

My roommate is deaf, and so we were barely able to communicate all weekend. I have been trying to learn sign language for my HWD project, but I definitely no not have enough of a vocabulary to communicate.

The weekend was very interesting, to say the least. We went to Idaho Falls on Saturday to go to Ulta and Target. Then, we got dinner together and watched a movie. The whole time we could kind of communicate, with me signing and spelling a little bit, but in large part we talked through written notes on our phones.

I think the weirdest thing about my experience was going to church on Sunday. There was some confusion about who was going to interpret for her. She thought that her interpreter was coming to our sacrament meeting and he thought that she was going to go to his sacrament meeting, so we ended up sitting in our sacrament meeting, with me not being able to tell her what was going on. I could kind of tell her the gist of what was happening and of what people were talking about, but for the most part, I couldn't really tell her anything. While we were singing the hymns, I would just point to the words, and she would sign along, which was really cool.

One of the funniest things, I thought, was when I got to talk to people, I kept trying to sign to them! When I got the sacrament passed to me, I signed "thank you" by accident.

The weekend really opened up my eyes to what it is like to not be able to communicate with people. It is SO hard! And even though I respected my roommate before, I have a lot more respect now for her and for what she does everyday. She is so patient!