Day 2 - Part 2: Sign-Literate Friend Time

Today I had lunch with my friend Britney, who has a relatively decent working knowledge of ASL after having taken ASL 1 at Penn. She and I had lunch and chatted for 30 minutes, and for me that was definitely too short a time! I can now truly appreciate the magnitude of relief anyone in a language barrier situation experiences when they find someone else with whom they are able to (more) easily communicate. While Britney has only a basic understanding and a somewhat limited vocabulary in ASL, it was the first time since I've started this experience where communication with another person face to face was actually easy. I'm certainly now able to empathize with people in any language barrier situation much more readily than when I first started this project, as well as able to understand why it is so elating that meeting people who speak the language you.