Spaghetti Dinner at the Deaf Club

Spaghetti Dinner at the Deaf Club

The first deaf culture event that I attended this year was the spaghetti dinner at the Pittsburgh Deaf Club. It was a very nice event. I went with my two friends one of them is currently taking ASL 1 and the other had no signing skills. We ate a great spaghetti dinner as well as dessert. We were able to meet a few deaf people and talk with them a little bit. There was a family where the parents were both deaf but their daughter was not. They were very pleasant and happy to meet us. The one woman said how cute it was that all of the college students had come to the event. I thought that was good to hear considering sometimes it feels like an intrusion for us to go into their club when we are not nearly as part of the Deaf community as they are. While we were there we also talked to another woman about why we were there and I was able to tell her about my classes at Pitt and so on. We also saw MJ there as well as other Pitt ASL students.

It was good to go to the event because it helped me realize how much I have learned since I started taking ASL 1. When I went to the deaf club last fall after taking half a semester of sign language it was hard for me to communicate everything that I wanted to but this time I was able to use my signing skills to do everything necessary. I was able to buy our tickets without hassle and also find out the prices of different desserts. Watching other people sign also made me realize how much I have learned. I was able to understand much more and I hardly had to ask people to repeat what they were saying whereas the time before I felt like I had to continually ask signers to repeat what they were saying.

Overall going to this deaf event was good because it helped me to gain more experience interacting with the Deaf community in Pittsburgh and also to help me realize how much I have learned so far in my classes in ASL.