The Amazing Race

I am huge fan of the Amazing Race on CBS. I came into viewing mid-way through the first season, and I have been hooked since that day. For those who have not heard of the show, it is a scavenger hunt type of race around the world; with eliminations for those that come in last every week, and the final episode giving away $1 Million to the winners. Competitors race as a team of two, competing in games, tricks, and athletics after they've found the clue in each country they are jumping through to their final destination. It is easy to follow, so jump on board, you will love it!

This season, I am rooting for the mother-son team of Margie and Luke. Aside from the fact that Luke is deaf, he seems like a genuinely neat person and very self-motivated; his mom seems to have these two traits also. In addition, I feel a small ( granted, very small) connection because the team communicates using American Sign Language (ASL) which I took in college to fulfill my foreign language requirement. It was one of my favorite classes!

My professor was born hearing, but had an illness at a very young age which created his deafness. He married a woman who was deaf too, but they had three offspring all born with hearing. Think about their household dynamics!! My professor sounded very much like Luke when he talks. He was a vibrant speaker full of stories; some sad and some funny, he always had a smile, and was overly patient in repeating his ASL to the hearing class until each of us would nod back in understanding.

The first semester we would communicate back via paper, as our first words started simple such as names of people (mom, dad, uncle, aunt, etc), numbers, and colors ... not much there to complete a sentence. But by the second semester we were onto verbs, adjectives, nouns, so he made us use ASL exclusively to communicate. It was a fabulous education!

While I have forgotten many of the words to initiate a sentence on my own, I can find myself reading ASL on a basic level and it brings me back to my class .... which brings me back to my fingers crossed for Margie and Luke!

*Side note: I think the perfect hair color in the world is on Cara and Jaime! I would love that color; but red is hard to maintain the vibrancy for a long period of time. I've tried, it fades. Sigh.