Taught my first class today; was very impromptu.\u00a0 On spur of the moment, I was invited to go to a remote village (it took about one and\u00a0half hours to drive\u00a015 miles because the roads here are so terrible)\u00a0where there were 13 school girls between the ages of 8 and 13 from underprivileged families.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘Underprivileged’ here means the family\u00a0makes less than 50 cents a day.\u00a0 This puts the girls in an ‘at risk’ status.\u00a0 So we get there, and a computer demonstration was cut short as internet reception was not happening.\u00a0 So I asked the girls to raise their hands if they liked karate.\u00a0 All of them raised their hands.\u00a0 I then asked them what they liked about karate.\u00a0 “Because we can protect ourselves,” was their answer.\u00a0 So I then asked if any of the girls, who have been taking karate for just 10 days, if they would like to show me anything.\u00a0 three of the older girls got up, in their school uniforms,\u00a0and demonstrated a hopping-type warm a little more vigorous than what\u00a0I\u00a0do\u00a0back home, followed by a punching demonstration.\u00a0 I then asked if they would like\u00a0me to show them, and they all said yes.\u00a0 So, I performed tournament-style\u00a0Heian Godan, with bowing and announcing.\u00a0 At the\u00a0kata name,\u00a0there was a collective suck-in of breath.\u00a0 At the first kiai,\u00a0I made a child\u00a0cry.\u00a0 They\u00a0certainly hadn’t seen anything like it, and there were giggles and laughter.\u00a0 But it was\u00a0great.\u00a0 I then asked the three girls to line up in front of me and punch me in the stomach.\u00a0\u00a0They looked at me like I had five heads and fire coming out of my mouth LOL.\u00a0 But they\u00a0did, and I showed them how to punch keeping their elbows in, and how to reach their target.\u00a0 And I have to tell you:\u00a0 these girls were\u00a0STRONG.\u00a0 \u00a0And they were like sponges, absorbing everything in spite of the language gap.<\/p>\n
So I will start teaching formally on Monday.\u00a0 Am going to a girls’ hostel and living there for a week or two, depending on how the classes are being received.<\/p>\n
I am borrowing someone’s computer because have been uanble to get internet connection earlier, so must go.\u00a0 But more later.\u00a0 And I’ve lots of pics – stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taught my first class today; was very impromptu.\u00a0 On spur of the moment, I was invited to go to a remote village (it took about one and\u00a0half hours to drive\u00a015 miles because the roads here are so terrible)\u00a0where there were 13 school girls between the ages of 8 and 13 from underprivileged families.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘Underprivileged’ here […]<\/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-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","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=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}