March 13, 2009: Silent (Signing) Dinner at Cracker Barrel

That Friday early evening, I went to a Silent (Signing) Dinner at Cracker Barrel on a popular tourist strip, International Speedway Blvd.  Cracker Barrel is a country restaurant.  This is not my type of food but I kind of like it.  I decided to go there cuz I don't like staying home too much on weekends and staying home makes me boring.  Thank God, I got out of my family's mansion.  I wanted to have fun there and meeting some people that I don't know but my hearing interperter, Nova, knew.  My hearing interpreter, Nova, was a host there but still do being it.  Silent Dinner is where u can't allow to talk with anyone.  Hearing and deaf people must learn how to sign each other at the table.  Some hearing people are ASL students and teachers.  Other deafies taught them correctly if hearing people are trying to remember ASL.  As my bus arrived there on time, I recongized few of my friends from the deaf club were about entering into that restaurant but I didn't see Nova in a person yet.  I guess someone is calling the group when the table is ready.  I recongized some people I know from the deaf club when I found them at the table.  Oh, boy, the restaurant was so full of hungry customers cuz it's Friday.  Can't u believe it?  Wow!  Waiters and waitresses were sooooo busy and kept running around it back and forth.  I saw Nova at the end of table with her boyfriend, Tom.  I was glad to see Nova again.  She was chatting with other friends there.  And then I ordered a dinner:  A cheeseburger with bacon and fried steaks and a drink of raspberry lemonade.  Shoot, I forgot about the drink of apple cider.  OOPS, next time I will order a different one.  The apple cider is one of my favorite drinks and a very delicious.  A cheeseburger with bacon looks so huge but very delicious.  Yummmmmy!  Anyways, I met unknown people at the table.  I learned that a hearing woman is an ASL teacher at an elementary school in Palm Coast, north of Ormond Beach.  She's also a mother of 3 kids but 2 of them were with her.  I had fun chatted with people.  They were nice.  After dinner, I ordered a hot fudge ice cream mug.  Yummy!  I took 2 boxes to home.  A halfway of cheeseburger and the other box is many fried steaks but I did eat some of them at the table, not much, and plastic bag of biscuits.  After my friends and I left the table, I can't push the wheelchair myself cuz I carried an ice cream mug but I got a help from a young, female ASL student.  I carried it while I looked at merchandises around the shop as an ASL student pushed my wheelchair.  I decided to buy a bottle of water.  I did.  And then we went outside.  I had a plenty of time to enjoy the outside that night cuz my Dad could come to get me in 30 minutes.  I was not worrying if I would keep Dad waiting too long, u know.  However, I played a game called checkers at the table with the other young woman while waiting for Dad to pick me up.  I won it.  Ha, Ha.  I almost figured out how to play checkers as if I am trying to remember that kind of game.  I haven't playing it in a long time.  I did it few times when I was a young girl.  Then suddenly, all of people I was with at the table had to go right away.  Here is I was alone again after they left.  I think my hearing interperter don't understand what I said in a sign language when Nova came back to get her binder that she forgot.  I figured she's confusing and districting due to her brain surgery when Nova was 14.  I tried to tell her that I don't want to be alone until my father arrives.  Finally, my father arrived at the restaurant and picked me up from there.  Then I went home.  I had a wonderful evening that night.  I enjoyed the dinner and chatting with other people.