In this past week, I am starting to get to know two new girls my age. They are part of my schools field hockey program. With my APD it is hard for me to get to know people, but especially teenagers around my age, and especially the new girls. It has been a great experience getting to know them though, and it’s also been a little bit of a struggle because they have difficulty understanding as well.
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Let’s start with Jordan. (Jordan, if you can see this I’m glad you’re reading my blogs! –Hope you don’t mind me using this as one of my stories!) I knew Jordan was coming to join my school (not to mention field hockey team as well! Very exciting!!). She is from the Netherlands, and is an exchange student this year! She made the varsity field hockey team and I love getting to know her, but for both of us it’s hard to understand each other I feel. Jordan is coming from a different country, and I’m coming from a “world” not a lot of people understand. She speaks English very fluently, but with that said she hasn’t lived in the teenage ”world” here long enough so won’t understand things we might not understand if we were around teens in her country. (Did I say that right? I hope that made sense…) For example, the slang teenagers use. “Omg!” “Neuby” “LOL” –That kind of stuff. But anyways…Here I am at the table at our team dinner trying to engage in conversation, and trying to understand a slightly different way of speaking coming from my soon-to-be new friend Jordan. I say slightly because to me it’s a DRASTIC change! I’m used to trying to comprehend and understand the a thousand “likes” in one sentence. “Yeah, I like, really like it when they do that. It’s like really friendly of them”. –Kind of LIKE that ;-). Now I have to re-train my brain almost and focus a little more on other ways of speaking. I have taught myself to understand the American teenage speaking patterns. With Jordan, I’ll have to recognize the new pattern and switch gears. It’ll take a little time to recognize those patterns and terms she speaks with, but to me this is a good experience. Seems like a brain exercise… Recognizing different kinds of talking patterns.
Liza. This girl has spirit. She has dedication, too. She is also blind, but that doesn’t stop her from being a part of the field hockey team. Liza is our manager this year for our two field hockey teams. She will be taking stats for us and announcing at all the games. Since Liza cannot see, describing things clearly for her is very important. She likes to feel objects she can touch, too. Since field hockey isn’t very popular, she was very interested in our field hockey sticks. Liza even told us what note some of our sticks were in! She’s very blessed musically. Since I am the junior captain of the Varsity team, my coach wanted me to explain some field hockey rules to her. I almost CRIED when he said this. I had no idea how to explain any rules to her without using visual aids. I am a visual learner… Liza is an auditory learner 100%. Explaining things like this is almost impossible for me. I know exactly in my head what each rule is, and can explain it by using visual aids, but without visual aids I was lost. Here is my first explanation:
Me- There is a rule called “Third-Party”. This means you can’t…you can’t um try to take the ball away from
the player with the ball when there’s um…another player on them”
Liza- What do you mean? What does “another player on them” mean?
Me- Um. What? Hold on let me try again…Okay so Third party is like when um..A player has the ball and they are dribbling—
Liza- What is dribbling?
Me- (I don’t know how to explain the word dribbling! OH I got it…) It’s when the player progresses the ball on the field by taping the ball forward. So the girl is tapping the ball down the field and the player from the other team tries to come and steal it. If another player comes in to take it—
Liza- What team is the other player on?
Me- What player?
Liza- The last player you are talking about.
Me- Oh that girl is trying to take the ball from the girl with the ball too. So right now there are two players trying to steal the ball from the girl with the ball. You can’t have 2 players trying to steal the ball at once. Only 1.
Liza- I think I get it…
Me- (Oh my goodness..That was hard. Phew. I don’t like explaining this. It’s too hard)
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So talking to Liza is going to be another gear changer for me. But this time, it’s learning how to SPEAK to her. While with Jordan it’s learning to LISTEN and understand her. – It’s going to be hard to connect with the new teammates, but in the end this will help me. I will have more practice explaining things and more practice understanding different speaking patterns. For now, it's going to be a mountain to climb!
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