OK. I’m going to back up and talk about things I skipped over when I was compelled to write about my terrible week. It wasn’t all terrible. There were some wonderful moments, like that dinner I mentioned in the last entry, the one I drove to a day early. Well I drove to it again the next night and I met Heather Schmerman, SB Morgaine, and Jared Cohen, Heather’s husband, who is a chef at a restaurant in Philadelphia called Wine Thief.
Heather and I have been e-mailing for more than a year. We’ve shared our ideas about travel, the election, and most recently Let’s Get Global. After we’d exchanged many e-mails, she wrote me one day that she wanted to talk on the phone….but we had to make an appointment because she needed to get a sign-language interpreter to join us on a webcam. Turns out, Heather is deaf.
We had a long conversation about LGG, the interpreter speaking as Heather’s voice. It was a new experience for me. The interpreter started by introducing herself; and then, she became Heather, speaking in the first person. I spoke directly to Heather. Heather wanted to talk about how she could help LGG. She said she had traveled a lot and agreed that getting kids to travel after they graduate from high school was a great idea. She said she didn’t need language to communicate. She frequently bargained in the markets…using gestures, facial expressions, pen , paper, fingers.
Now I often get letters from people who want to know how I can go to countries where I don’t speak the language. Heather has the answer. We talked about doing a tour, she, I, and an ASL interpreter. We could talk to mixed audiences of the hearing and the deaf in cities where there were schools for the deaf. I loved the idea. It would be a great news story too; and publicity is one of the goals of LGG…getting the word out about the value of overseas travel. Telling kids and parents that the world that it isn’t hard or scary. Heather was definitely up for a tour.
Then, a couple of days later I got a letter from SB Morgaine. She’d read the nomad book, checked my website, and wanted to know how she could help with LGG. She is a professional sign-language interpreter. Heather is in Philadelphia; SB is in Maryland. They are practically neighbors! I told them to write to each other. They did; but we’d never met until that dinner last week!
We met in Maryland. SB and Heather and Jared could talk without me, in silence. This was a new experience for me….and I loved that I was a part of it. SB had planned to bring a friend to be the interpreter so she could participate in the conversation, but at the last minute, the friend couldn’t come. So SB and Jared took turns interpreting. We talked about ourselves, our families, and the tour we are going to take on the road in the spring. We had a great visit and a great meal, and I now have three new very special friends. Stay tuned. Maybe our tour will come to your town.
