First Day Volunteering

Yesterday was an amazing day! I worked at the Table Tennis Information Desk. However, because Table Tennis is in Taipei Arena and the arena is a central location for the games, we had MANY people coming to our table for general information... VIPs requesting a car, media people wanting to know how to get to their press conference, officials asking for their team ID number, Deaf needing to find an audiologist, and numerous spectators wanting event schedules and locations.

I was glad to be working with Stephanie again. We make a great team! I translate from Sign Language to English and then she translates into Mandarin to get an answer from our Taiwanese co-workers. It works really well. I was able to understand most of the Deaf who came to our table minus the man from Turkey. He moved on and looked for someone else to help him. However, when I was successful the Deaf were so grateful for the help.

Part way through the day we had International Sign Interpreters assigned to our station since there were so many Deaf coming to us. I wasn't needed as much after that, but I got to have some great conversations with the interpreters. They were a real encouragement to me.

At one point I was called away to the Medic station to interpret for a man from Rome. He was very outgoing and friendly. To prove to the doctor that his ankle was feeling much better he stood up, threw his arms around me and proceeded to dance! Stephanie and I had a good laugh over that one.

The highlight of the day came when I got to interpret the Gospel. We're not allowed to share our beliefs while working, but it happened that a group of Deaf from the States wanted to share the message with a Taiwanese English-speaking man who was working at our station. And so I interpreted the whole thing. The Taiwanese man was really interested.

Altogether I had many valuable experiences. And I look forward to Friday when I volunteer again. Meanwhile, Valerie and I are going to watch some games.

-Jen