Day 2: I begin to talk

On Monday, I had class in the morning so I had to hurry to squeeze myself into my outfit before lunch.  I walked up to my building and entered through the side door, as employees are supposed to do, and proceeded upstairs.  Since I haven't been able to invest in a basket yet, I'm still caring my lunch in my school bag.  It's fine right now, since I just throw my cloak over it (that thing is huge.  It covers all sins) but if I want to walk down Duke of Gloucester Street, I can't carry anything that isn't authentically colonial.  I still haven't had the courage to step outside my shop in costume, I'm scared someone will ask me something or talk to me.

I spend the time without visitors studying colonial medical history.  I have so far read the book written by my two supervisors, part of the precursor to their book written in the 1970s and a synopsis of colonial medical terms between two medical dictionaries.  The hardest part of that is taking the words from the page and making them into things that would make sense coming out of my mouth.  It's all well and fine to read colonial medical dictionaries, but I don't want to sound like a text book and I am physically unable to memorize the whole darn textbook like an autobot.   My supervisor and I finally clicked in a learning pattern and instead of her just telling me everything, she started quizzing me.  Super challenging, but now I won't forget!

I am now fully capable of speaking.  Well, not fully.  I can tell people about toothbrushes, that gross stuff they used for toothpaste, ye olde tums and where the stuff is in the shop.  I can answer the most common questions asked by our adoring public, which are: how to cure a cold? how to cure a headache? and what is the most common medicine used back then?  I'm still too nervous to talk to people spontaneously though.  I continue to rely on whomever is interpreting next to me, whether it be my boss, one of the floating interpreters or the kind volunteer who has been working there for almost 15 years.  Take that learning curve. Next mission: be able to point at a drawer/jar/box and tell you what it is and how to use it.

Here is Monday's outfit! (I know the photo quality is awful, I took it myself...)

Your humble servant,
E