Tate Dilema

Megan and I planned to meet Liz and Grace at the Tate Museum after our walk around Covent Garden. We had previously looked up the hours of the museum, as everything around here seems to close at 6 o’clock. Luckily for us it stays open until 10 on Fridays! We can’t seem to get out of the flat in a timely manner so this was great news. It was about a 15 minute walk to the museum from Covent Garden; A beautiful walk at that in the pitch darkness of 5:15. The Thames was lit up with large boats and trees along the side with blue and white lights.

We bought some candied nuts on the way, which were sweet, crunchy, and delicious. They were the perfect pick-me-up precursor to the museum. The Tate is not particularly nice from the outside, you would not look at it and think, “oh, that’s a beautiful museum!” I will get a picture when we go in the daylight. We entered the museum and texted the other girls because they had already arrived. They told us the name of the gallery they were in and said there were signs for it everywhere. Upon looking around, we saw very few signs, and none with the name of this particular gallery. So we promptly asked two different museum guides who gave us funny looks and said they had no idea where this particular room was. After half an hour of texting back and forth, going from floor 1 to 0 to 2 back to 0 to 1 ect. we were frustrated and thought our problem was with the fact that we couldn’t figure out which floor to meet on or which gift shop to meet in front of.

Megan finally thought to ask Liz which Tate Museum they were at. “Tate Brittan” Liz responded. We just looked at each other and couldn’t do anything but laugh, as we were sitting in the Tate Modern. Only in London could we have confused two museums with the same name. Though quite flustered at the time, we decided that we would eventually look back on this story and think it funny. Next time we will be using the full names of these two particular museums when referring to them.

Megan and I were not very impressed by much of the extremely modern art at the Tate Modern, but there were a few pieces we did appreciate. We also attended a lecture on a couple of exhibits in British Sign Language (BSL)! I thought there would be an interpreter, but there was not. Knowing American Sign Language I was able to interpret most of it for Megan, but unfortunately missed about a third of what was being communicated. Even so, it was very cool, I was able to pick up on some BSL, and Megan said she had never had any exposure like that to Deaf people so she found it an interesting experience. All and all a success :) 

Have a wonderfully marvelous day, cheers! ~Laura 

Course Work

I have now had 3 weeks of classes and I must say I could get used to the schooling system here. I only have class monday through Wednesday and I only have about 7 hours of class a week! I am taking 4 classes:

Psychology of Language and Cognition

Linguistics of Sign Language

Ancient World History in London Collections 

and my fourth course is helping with a research project called Famous Face Recognition in Deaf users of BSL. 

I am enjoying all of my classes and the reading for them. It is a fair amount of reading per week because of the small number of hours in class, but it's manageable and I find it interesting. 

Last week my history class was held in the British Museum. I had not been to the British Museum and found it impressive. There are so many large sculptures from Egypt. Including the Rosetta Stone which helped linguists a great deal in deciphering hieroglyphics. The artifacts that are in the British Museum are much different from the artifacts we saw the week before in the Petrie Museum. These artifacts are much smaller, but there are many more of them and tell us more about Egyptian life. In comparing these two museums we will be exploring what it is that museums tend to tell us. The comparisons will also help us see how a people and culture can be displayed and thought about. 

I also just started the research project I will be helping out with on Thursday. I had a meeting with a Deaf woman named Jo. She learned American Sign Language (ASL) quite a few years ago but remembered most of the language, which was helpful as I know virtually no British Sign Language (BSL) and the languages are vastly different. It was exciting to communicate with her in sign language, because I hadn't used the language in so long. She seemed to appreciate the fact that I signed and we didn't need an interpreter. I am pumped to do some research on the subject and analyze the results of her study. I will also be creating a new test tailored towards Deaf people which she will use in a clinic! Stay tuned for more information about the study as I will keep you updated on what I find to be the fascinating aspects. 

Have a wonderfully marvelous day, cheers! ~Laura