Kon’nichiwa

I’m in love….. 

This very special 100th anniversary of Deaflympics has been an experience I’ll be forever grateful for! So so proud of Team GB! Our girls smashed through 11 medals in the swimming! Five golds, three silvers and three bronze! Pure excellence! Our mixed medley broke a GB record too. Our football ladies are bringing home bronze and although this time round the competition was too strong for the lads they were gracious and so grateful for our support finishing in 6th place. 

Our cyclist just missed out on a medal finishing 4th out of 58 which was brilliant. Our tennis players also finished 4th with our golfers, athletes and shooter doing respectful jobs too! 

We finished 12th out of 80 which is nothing short of outstanding!! 

I was lucky enough to see Terence Parkin too! The greatest Deaf Olympian in history! A South African swimmer with 33 Deaflympics medals (29 of them GOLD!) 

In between great sport we got chance to explore this stunning city which is spotless, respectful and a pure joy! A restaurant staffed with robots was a different experience….

As you know Team GB get NO government or lotto funding for the Deaflympics which is why Kirsty and I volunteered our Lipspeaking services to the team. We have connected with other language professionals from all over the world.  It’s remarkable with over 300 different sign languages that we’ve managed to communicate with everyone! There is such a thing as international kind patient communication albeit loads of giggles trying to interpret at times! These beautiful Japanese people bow as a greeting and the Deaf Japanese bow their index fingers (as if you’re gesturing to take a photo) so we thought everyone wanted our picture until day 4 we realised they were simply bowing hello to us! We’re in a lot of pictures!! Too funny.

Anthems are played without the lyrics with some teams signing theirs, so beautiful to watch. 

Nancy Weatherson