"Hello, my name is Jennifer Chin and I am from Holland."
"Holland?! No! For real? But ... you are Asian ... ?! From South Korea, China? ”
“Yes, I am Asian. I am indeed from China, but I was born and raised in the Netherlands. ”
"Ooh ... so you were born in Holland, and your parents emigrated from China to the Netherlands?"
“Um… no. My father was born in Suriname, a country just above Brazil and my mother was born in Indonesia.
So they emigrated from China to those countries first and eventually to the Netherlands. ”
"For real?! Wow… now I understand… ”
That's how it was about every introduction here at Gally. They are used to that if someone comes from that country, you really come from there. For me it was a bit strange, because in the Netherlands this is quite normal due to the multicultural society. People are usually amazed, but in the end it doesn't matter much. Here I see a lot of people from different countries, so I also learn more about their culture and customs.
In my previous story I told that I regularly sit down at the tables in the cafeteria and that I also had nice outings. A friend who saw me in my first few weeks in the US said my ASL has improved significantly in less than a month. After a week of learning ASL I was already able to follow nice conversations and even have conversations in ASL. So it has worked to regularly meet people and learn ASL from them. I will continue to do that in the near future, because of ASL and of course also for fun!
ASL is very different from NGT (Dutch Sign Language), but the hand alphabet and a few gestures are almost identical. This allowed me to learn it quickly, but there are also gestures that have different meanings. For example 'enjoy' in ASL, but in NGT that means 'hunger'… And I said “no” when a friend asked me if I liked it. Or the gesture 'tired' in ASL which means 'hunger' in NGT. And the letter F (ASL) in NGT means the letter T, so someone once told about 'farm', but I read 'tarm'. I still thought “What does that mean? … Oh farm… ”.
Recently I have noticed that I am getting better at distinguishing the gestures in ASL or NGT. And I also have less trouble reading and writing English, where rather it takes me longer to understand it or put it on paper. But ... I also notice that lately I have to think more often how that went in NGT or even the Dutch language ...
Ok, the Fall Semester 2012 has started… I am taking IVSP (International Visiting Student Program) here and with this program I can choose courses I want to follow. Those are:
- Biology: Research Methods in Biology (we cover the papers and other literature and we also have to give a presentation)
- Biology: Research Experiences (here I will work for about 10 hours in the lab and it is a kind of internship)
- English: Writing for the Business and Professional World (this says enough)
- Communication: Intergroup Dialogue (discussing various topics within the deaf world, I will only follow this in October for 2 months)
- Speechreading and Communication Strategy (here I learn English lip reading ^ _ ^ and other communication skills)
- Scuba diving (yes, I am going to learn to dive and Gally has his own swimming pool)
What I think of it so far… it is nice and doable here. And luckily I do have nice classmates, so it's okay. In the end, I can only say something about it at the end of the semester.
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