End of Year One

I have officially finished my first year teaching internationally. What an incredible year it has been. I have done and experienced so much this last year that I can only imagine what the next year will bring. But the end of the year does not bring all good things. As this year wrapped up, I discovered something unique about teaching in an international school - the mobility of so many staff and students.

This is probably pretty obvious to anyone who has given it an ounce of thought. I mean, I know that I'm only going to be here for another year and then I'll be moving on as well. But what I saw on the last days of classes, was not a celebration of the coming of summer and 6 weeks of no studies, no tests and no homework. Rather it was a mourning of the loss of best friends, boyfriends and girlfriends as their families move to another part of the world.

I had three guys defy the dress code by dying their uniforms black in tribute to their friend who was moving to Rio. I had the dream couple that everyone knows and loves see their relationship go from a few miles between them, to having the entire Pacific Ocean part them. I consistently saw tears flowing in the hallways and on the last day of school, one of my most vocal, confident and outgoing male students had to leave the awards ceremony because he was having an emotional breakdown from seeing all his friends for the last time.

I also felt this a bit. While the majority of my very close friends are the ones that I started with at the beginning of the year (thus will see them again next year), one of my good friends left the country for her new job in Africa at 6:00 AM the day after the last day of school.

What this made me realize is that in an international setting like this, bonds are formed very quickly. I think everyone involved knows that we are in a mobile setting, so there is always a sort of feeling of isolation as they move from continent to continent, country to country. But having these bonds form quickly helps ease that blow a bit, even with the knowledge that the time together is limited.

I believe that everyone has a "home" that they will always identify with. Mine of course is and always will be Chicago. But I also believe that home is wherever you make it. Right now, my home is Trinidad. And as much as I love it here, I realized today that I don't think I would love it as much if my mobile "family" were not here with me.

Krav Magouda

Amongst the many, many new things that I have been trying since moving to Trinidad (hiking, yoga, ultimate frisbee, hashing, scuba diving...), I have also recently taken up Krav Maga.

Krav Maga is a self-defense technique that was started in the ghettos of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1930's by a man to help protect the local Jewish community against the Nazi militia.  It has since been adapted by the Israeli military and police as the preferred method of hand-to-hand combat.  Because of the effectiveness with the military and the police, it has now spread world wide and is being taken back to it's roots to help civilians protect themselves against the unsavory elements that are found in most cities.

I have always wanted to learn a martial art for self defense, especially as I started working in schools.  I wanted to be able to know that while I have never been in a fight, if something went down at my school between some students (or by a student against me) that I would be able to protect those involved until more help could come along and get the situation settled.  I don't know if Krav Maga actually counts as a martial art, but it will definitely help in a bad situation.  The main point of Krav Maga is react to a threat, control the situation, counterattack (if necessary), and disengage from the situation - all within 3-5 seconds if possible.

I realize as I start to travel more in less developed countries, that I am a bit of a target.  While I am learning how to fight (for the sole purposes of getting away from an attacker) it has made me so much more aware of my surroundings and has started to prepare me for a possible attack.  I see the possibility for situations turning bad much easier and I'm much more aware of not putting myself in bad situations.

The great thing about Krav Maga, at least with the group that I'm learning with, is that when we learn new techniques, we are then put into fairly real situations to see how these techniques work.  I've been accidentally hit in the jaw by people in class, kicked in the junk, and I almost always come home with new cuts and scrapes.  But tonight was probably the most "real" it has ever been in class.

After we learned some techniques for breaking a choke hold that someone might put you in, we were put in a real situation, repeatedly, so we knew how it would really feel if it actually happened to us.  The situation was that someone knocked us to the ground and as we were lying on the ground, they were trying to get a choke on us while we were on our back.  We were to fight it and they were to do their best to get the choke hold on us.  Now they weren't really choking us, but they were holding our necks fairly tight, so we had to really fight to get out of the situation.

No one really got hurt, but I actually felt like what it would be like to be attacked by someone, because no one was holding back.  I have never been in a fight and I hope to keep it that way, but I'm starting to gain the confidence that I would know what to do if something did go awry and that I would get away and not become another statistic.