One of my favorite experiences so far (there have been many, but too little time for internet) was my participating in a karate class at KGBV.\u00a0 Two days ago, the girls’ regular karate teacher, Rupa Kumari, returned from her break.\u00a0 She speaks no English, and I speak very little Hindi at this point, but through sign language and single words we communicated that she would teach the next karate class.\u00a0 So, alongside the girls I had been teaching for the last 10 days, I punched, blocked, kicked, stretched, jumped, and push-upped.\u00a0 Some moves I sat out for; they use a Hapkido-style of knifehand block and backstance in their drills and kata, for example, that I just couldn’t get the hang of so worked\u00a0on my own off to the side so as not to distract class.\u00a0\u00a0 They also did some axe kicks that I passed on.\u00a0\u00a0But other\u00a0than that,\u00a0I was reminded to retract my mawashi-gaeri, just like at the dojo, so that kind of made me feel right at home.\u00a0 At the end of class, Rupa requested that I do a kata.\u00a0 Oy.\u00a0 I haven’t done a kata since Heian Godan almost two weeks ago in the village!\u00a0 I decided to go with Kanku Dai, and, again, I did it competition style.\u00a0 And so concluded class.\u00a0 But it was only then that I realized the learning that had gone on.<\/p>\n
The girls (embarassingly) mobbed me,\u00a0each one wanting to tell me immediately\u00a0what they\u00a0thought about my karate.\u00a0 They mimicked some of my moves and imitated\u00a0the distinctive Shotokan breathing.\u00a0 They were also able to communicate that they envied my focus during the kata and in class.\u00a0 It was a great feeling to know that I was a good example for these girls; kind of like how I was inspired when I first started karate and looked to Alisa Ao, Cheryl Murphy, Shannon Ishi, and Eimi\u00a0Kurite.\u00a0 So, very cool, a great experience for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my favorite experiences so far (there have been many, but too little time for internet) was my participating in a karate class at KGBV.\u00a0 Two days ago, the girls’ regular karate teacher, Rupa Kumari, returned from her break.\u00a0 She speaks no English, and I speak very little Hindi at this point, but through […]<\/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-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","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=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}