So, I went to a krav class yesterday. The second krav class I've ever attended in my life.

Well, no, that's not exactly accurate. I didn't really participate in the class yesterday. I have indeed been in the room during the class, and I even got to run a bit back and forth and grab the shirt of a five-and-three-quarters years old enthusiastic happy girl and be shoved off by her. It was her class, you see.

No, wait. I'm summing up instead of explaining. Let me explain:

A few months ago, during the - oh, goodness, I have no idea how to call this in English - um, it's not 'summer camp', because the kids get home every day and it's actually where their usual kindergarden takes place during the non-summer-vacation schoolyear. So, day-to-day summer camp? I think you get the idea - activities for kids for the days during the summer vacation when I'm still at work and still unble to have some vacation time with them, but they come home at the usual time every day.

Um, how much further can I digress?

So, a few months ago Pi+Girl attended a demonstration of a krav class with all the other kids in her day-to-day-summer-camp, and she loved it. She came home and showed us the basic stand and how to hold her hands and she was all over it. And then the summer continued and they had a huge soap bubbles activity (both the bubbles and the activity were huge! Large enough for each of the kids to stand in one of the bubbles), and I thought that she didn't even remember the krav thing.

And then, when the new schoolyear began, she asked for not one, but two - oh, there's this English standing in the way of my complete sentences again. Um, I'd call it a "class", had it not been for 5-year-olds and not in school (and the 5-year-old kids not being yet in school), but I can't think of any word that could be better for it in this context. There's a group of kids who want to attend (um, or their parents want them to attend and just take them there), after their kindergarden (or school) ends. I'll go with "class" and return to the actual sentence.

So, when the schoolyear began, Pi+Girl asked for two classes.

The first one was the same class as last year. She went all of last year to a ballet class, and it was pretty much her favorite hour of the entire week. She used to wake up in the morning of that class all happy that it's the day of the class. She loved every single aspect of it: the pink - oh, I'm not going to do that thing with whining about the English again, I'm just going to choose a word and go with it - outfit that had the little frilly skirt that moved around when she moved, the music, the moving, the moving with the frilly little skirt and the music. Everything.

She declared that she's going to continue taking ballet classes until she's going to learn to stand on her toes. I'm still not sure how she even heard about the concept of a dancer standing on her toes (and it took me quite some time and effort to convince her that the standing-on-toes part requires apecial shoes, and she mustn't even try doing it with any other kind of shoes), but she's made up her mind.

And the funny thing is, I totally believe her. She has such a fierce will power. It's like, whenever the world seems to collide with what she thinks the world should be, she is not only convinced that it's reality that should change according to her will, but sometimes she even manages to re-arrange the facts and events so that they actually do line up to what she thinks they ought to be. It was this way even from before she was born (to the puzzlement of my doctor at the time), and if anything, it grows stronger and more stable as time goes by and she matures from a baby to a toddler to a child.

So when she said that she wanted another class this year, we already knew that she can commit herself to something and go along with it, and that she understands what she's taking upon herself.

And she asked to go to a krav class.

(continued...)

( continues...) And she loves it. In a completely different way than loving the ballet class, but still. She practices at home. She shows stuff they've learned to us parents, and to PiBoy, asking him to attack her just-like-the-way-they-did-in-class, and she is annoyed when he finds ways to not be won by what she does.

She was floating on metaphorical clouds when the teacher (instructor? See how I didn't even stop with my broken English here and just went with a word, but then had to still show that I wasn't sure it's the right one?) announced there's an "open lesson" in which parents could attend. She wanted to share it with us.

She's still far from the "boys are icky" age (PiBoy is pretty near that age by now. I, thankfully, only know that from how some of his friends refuse to play with girls, but still), but she's totally aware of there-are-differences-between-boys-and-girls. The class of her age-group is mostly boys, and she notices it. The other kids she knows from her group are boys, but there are a couple of girls beside her in the group.

Because they're such little kids and the group is quite large, there are two teachers, and not just one. Pi+Girl is thrilled that one of them is a young woman. The other one, as the DH noticed, constantly smiles. I said that he has to, because he totally looks like he could kill any single one of us parents with his pinky, and he has to do something in order to make us trust him with our kids each week.

So I attended the class. I ran around with her, and the kids showed us some excercises and movements, and even practiced a bit with us parents as the attackers. And Pi+Girl held her hands the way I never managed to learn properly in the krav class I took in LA, and had that pure joy, that deep glee of moving and doing it right and being proud of your body and of what it can do.

And when I tucked her in her bed last night, I sat beside her, and told her what a great time I had in her class today, and how wonderful she was. And I told her about my friend, who was a krav teacher herself, and was very good at it and loved it very much. And I told her I got to be in a krav class before, when I visited my friend in the USA.

But I couldn't tell my krav-teacher-from-LA friend about the not-yet-six-years-old girl who likes her pink ballet outfit and her black-and-white krav outfit, with the little stickers they put on the belt to show that she's learned a few moves. I couldn't tell her about the joy a little girl is discovering she finds in setting a goal and working to achieve it, about the delight in moving and doing it right. About the "How on earth did that happen?" realization of a little girl becoming more of a person of her own, with her own preferences and determinations and making efforts towards fulfilling these wishes.

I couldn't tell my krav-teacher friend. I think she'd like hearng about these things. But I can't tell her. So I'm telling the friends who'll understand. I'm telling you.

sniff

Allergies are acting up

Lovely.

Oh Nilly. Oh Pi-Girl. Oh Allergies.

Nilly. Thanks for telling us.

Thank you so much, Nilly. There is such joy under these tears.

Love this. Thanks, Nilly.

Also, if it helps: day camp, class, instructor or teacher is fine! Your English is perfect.

Very sweet to read this. Thanks for sharing. It's good to know that somewhere in Buffista land, there is someone to carry on the torch of loving Krav..

Sniffle.