On Saturday, we finished our twelve-week course in self-defense! I was pretty proud of us all: we finished, we did well. We learned what we were capable of and got quite a bit stronger. We also made plans for being safer and smarter as individuals and as a group.
That’s a lot of wins!
So we wanted to celebrate. I told them we’d be going out to lunch afterward, but I took them to a bit of a “special” place. It’s a new place in town that Stephen and I have come to love: they have some delicious spicy salads, grilled meats, and smoothies made with all real fruit (and you get to choose your level of sweetness, which is very, very helpful here). Anyway, I asked them if they were up to try it on us, and they agreed.
When we got there, one of the ladies said, “Oh, this place is expensive.” I told her I’d picked it and I’d be paying for it. I said a friend had told me about it, and right away I wanted to bring the women. I knew they’d love it, and I just wanted them to enjoy it.
{I also feel like I’m saying this all the time recently: the person who chooses it, deals with it. If I choose the restaurant, I pay for it without any hullabaloo. The same goes for your casino bill: you choose to play, you figure out how to pay it. The list goes on, but somehow I’m still saying it.}
Anyway, we had a lovely meal. They loved the smoothies. They loved the crab & papaya salad. They loved the grilled chicken and chicken salad. It was lovely and fun.
And for the record, it was $44 for ten women to “go crazy” with smoothies and salad!
And then we hopped in the car.
“That was expensive, wasn’t it? How much was it?”
“I’m not telling.”
“I saw that this salad cost 40 baht, and this kind of smoothie was 50 baht…”
“Stop counting. Stop doing the math. I chose the restaurant, I paid for it. It’s what I wanted to do!”
{in whispers} “Some of the smoothies were 70 baht…”
“STOP COUNTING.”
Later that evening, some of the ladies were together at our nails night. One of the ladies said the lunch was so delicious and she loved going there. Another agreed that it was some of the best food she’d had. I told them I knew they’d love it: I had known it right when I went!
It was a good day.
And it was a good class.
I love that over twelve weeks I got to really know these women, discussing fears and challenges in their lives. We talked about their marriages and their families and their concerns in the community. We talked about their worth and how we can stick together.
I love that we hit each other with pads and sometimes accidentally hit each other for real. I love that we learned groundwork with each other: sitting on each other and tackling each other. I love that we broke down barriers, so that by the last week they weren’t apologizing every time they hit me or had to sit on me. (They still apologized some. But we made progress!)
Thankful for the organizations that made this possible and invested in our friends, told them they matter, and loved them well!