The Frost Village

I was born deaf in Murray, Utah. My parents didn't find out that I was deaf until I was in my toddler years. Shortly after them finding out that I was deaf, my dad's job moved to California, where I started school. I went through the mainstream program and would have been considered a successful oralist; however, I knew that I was missing things in the world about me. That all changed when I went into high school, Granada Hills High School. There I was taught American Sign Language (ASL) from a Deaf teacher. From that, I taught my entire family ASL. True, I am still very skilled in the oralist stand point (or so I am told by many hearing people). But I am, what would be called by the Deaf Community, a Deaf person. (For those of you who don't understand this, a deaf person is just a person who has some type of a hearing loss while a Deaf person is a person who, while having a hearing loss, accepts and knows and is apart of the Deaf Community.)

Now that that introduction is out of the way, I can tell about the things that I am doing so that you can understand it. I just graduated from Pierce Community College with an AA degree in the interpreting program. No, I did not plan on being an interpreter, but that is what I am doing. That's right. I am interpreting at the school that I graduated in. If you have known me before, or seen my ABOUT ME page before, then you know that I was never going to even consider it. So why did I? Well, it wasn't that I hated my job. (It wasn't the most fun, but I didn't HATE it.) It was because I wanted to be able to do something with my life. True, interpreting isn't really what I would consider doing something with my life, but it made it so that I could more so than my past job which was working me 40+ hours a week with low pay (for California anyways).

Now, I know that some of you are wondering what all this has to do with a SignWriting section on my webpage. Well, as I have said, I am Deaf, so I use ASL. I strongly believe that there should be a way to write what I sign, just like anyone can write what they speak. SignWriting does just that. My webpage is proof of that including proof that technology can support it to even be in printed on the web. Although the technology is still primitive, it will get better as better programming gets developed. I am taking an active part in this. That is the reason that you will see several improvements as time goes on.

So who cares about the English section of the Frost Village? What is its purpose? This is a playground to feature my other hobbies and ideas that may or may not be in ASL. Well, one very intelligent person described me as a bilingual, so I wouldn't be able to just do monolingual work all the time. It would bore me. And I wouldn't want to bore you. :-) Have fun and enjoy.