After the slowest tuk-tuk drive in history, we arrived at Save Our Sisters at 10:30 this morning for our first class. \u00a0I am still trying to process everything, which, those of you who know me, know can take awhile.<\/p>\n
The first thing I can say about our first class is that there were 17 participants: 14 girls and 3 staff members. \u00a0Of the 14 girls, six of them received training during the April trip, and these young ladies all remembered me, they all got hugs, and they all started showing me almost immediately all the techniques they had learned all these months ago. \u00a0As they performed air knee strikes, and air hammer fists, I was completely and unexpectedly overwhelmed with emotions: \u00a0joy at seeing these ladies again; joy at seeing how great they are doing under the care of Save Our Sisters; \u00a0happiness at their barely contained excitement for the class; happiness at their retention of the techniques; awed by their energy and enthusiasm. \u00a0The program manager Jyoti told me later that the girls had been ready since 8:30, a full hour before class was even to begin! \u00a0And then I felt doubly bad that we were late : (.<\/p>\n
Late as we were, we jumped right into things. \u00a0Sajji and I showed them how to make fists, visiting each girl and making sure she had her fingers curled and the thumb in the correct spot. \u00a0We took them through some slow punching, and then gradually increased the speed. \u00a0We then stepped in front of each girl and had them punch us in the stomach. \u00a0As before, many of them could not believe what we were asking them to do to us, but with some encouragement, they started to hit. \u00a0And hit they did. \u00a0One young lady was incredibly hesitant, looking at my stomach and moving her hand in that direction but then stopping short of hitting me. \u00a0She would then look around to her companions as if to say, “I can’t do this. \u00a0I’m going to hurt her if I do this.” \u00a0But I persisted, and finally, she cranked her arm back, winding up, and BAM! she hit me so hard it took her off her feet. \u00a0But I was still there. \u00a0So she wound up again and hit me again and again, her faced grimaced in concentration, her whole body releasing into every punch. \u00a0This girl\u00a0needed<\/em>\u00a0to hit something. \u00a0Sajji and I both have sore stomachs decorated with an array of tiny knuckle bruises, but the girls have a sense of power and release that is without price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the slowest tuk-tuk drive in history, we arrived at Save Our Sisters at 10:30 this morning for our first class. \u00a0I am still trying to process everything, which, those of you who know me, know can take awhile. The first thing I can say about our first class is that there were 17 participants: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1168,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions\/1168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}