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40. Stateside Travel
- Gallaudet University Press
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255 40 Stateside Travel Rebecca and Amy Later this summer we took a vacation to Yellowstone and nearby sites.When driving someplace, John and I easily discuss what we want to eat, when to stop, and what we notice outside. It’s difficult but not impossible to include Amy in our conversation. If she sits in the back seat, John can turn and speak/sign to her while I am driving, but she tires of riding in the back. When she’s in the front seat, I can’t sign and drive, and Amy gripes about having to turn her head around to see what John is signing. It’s no better when John is driving. I can’t win. Maybe it is just being fourteen. Weeks before our departure, I spread maps and brochures on the table and told John and Amy, “Read about these places and select three you want to see, and then we’ll vote. If we all agree, we’ll go there. But, if we don’t, each person has one ‘ultimate choice’ vote. When you cast that vote we will have to go to the place you select.” We agreed on all our scenic destinations except one: Devil’s Tower. Neither John nor I had any desire to see a big rock, plus it’s sixty miles off my planned route. But, Amy loved Close Encounters of the Third Kind and was determined to see the “alien rock.” She invoked her right of “ultimate choice.” ) Amy Signs Main Pgs 1-320.indd 255 6/27/2012 10:37:48 AM 256 Amy Signs I started to travel at very young age. Mother always took me and John to museums before we even started school. Later we drove to many states and flew to different countries. Today I enjoy traveling, not just because I grew up travelling (maybe that is part of it), but I enjoy seeing different cultures, how people live, historical things, and the architecture of buildings. Now I sometimes travel with my mother and her husband, Walt, with John, or with my Deaf friends. When I was eight years old, I went to Hawaii and crossed the ocean for the first time by an airplane. I went with Mother, John and Grandma Schmierer. We stayed at a hotel on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii. I saw firsthand what happened at Pearl Harbor and toured the Honolulu Zoo. One evening, we went to another town to visit the Polynesian Cultural Center where the different cultures of the South Pacific did a beautiful dance performance. The Hawaiians danced and drummed while we dined on a Hawaiian luau. I remember I ate from a real pineapple with the skin on. They cut off the top and ground up the pineapple inside and added ice cream to it. Yum, so good. ) When I was fourteen we went on a road trip to Yellowstone Park and several other states around it. We drove and stopped and drove and stopped. When we stopped to sightsee, most of the time, we picked a self-guided tour instead of joining with a group and tour guides. Why? There are two main reasons. First Mother knew I will be bored with a tour guide, since I cannot understand what the tour guide is saying. Also, my mother and brother do not like to stand and wait for other people to arrive, and neither do I. This limits our time to explore new things, so we explore on our own, which give us more free time to choose what to see and how long to do it. At Yellowstone Park, we walked around looked at amazing views, some with an awful smell from the sulfur in the geysers. The smell was like a rotten egg. During this trip we also went to Montana and saw Custer’s last stand, and on to South Dakota to see the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore.There were many signs that I could read. My brother and mother signed to me what they heard from the public speakers or Amy Signs Main Pgs 1-320.indd 256 6/27/2012 10:37:48 AM [34.200.219.10] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:59 GMT) Stateside Travel 257 tour guides. Some places I already knew about from studying it at school. Mother usually gave me information or books to read about our trip a month or so before we went.That way I was...