Recapp

Thursday's class was a rehash of everything we have learned up to this point. I was very happy to see all of the familiar faces at the Schola Meeting (Charles, Jarkko, Matty, and Spencer) but we had some new people too. I'd like to think that the two new guys were there because of the blog, but with eight followers so far it's pretty hard to tell.

However they got there, Sean and Jeramie were the two newest additions to SSG Boston, and a welcome one at that. When you first enter the training grounds of the school, it can be pretty daunting. Charles is an excellent Instruttore, but he tends to move rather fast in his teachings; throwing all kinds of medieval Italian at you, dagger moves, poste, Elephant Plays, the works. If you can sit tight for the first few hours then you can learn the sword.



For myself, I liked the addition of the new guys because it gave me the opportunity to dive into the training with them one-on-one. At one point, Charles said to me and Matt that we should go over the basic stances and movements with them. This was my fourth week and I was getting to instruct two new Zugadore! The experience was excellent! If you can teach someone else, then you're an authority. You can practice, you can wrote memorize all you want, but unless you can teach, how do you really know you know? You know?

With Jarkko, a high-ranking Scholaro and knowledgeable teacher, leaving the country forever in a month, I can only imagine that, should I learn enough, I will be able to teach more and become an important element to practice. At least, I am hoping to fill that role.

At the end of the recapp, which was mostly dagger plays and some sword poste, we played a game. One person would try, at a walk, to get a prize at the other end of the room. The only problem with getting to this prize, were the three other people with (wooden) daggers waiting to "kill you." Oh, and did I mention these people were slow moving, bloodthirsty zombies? Getting to the prize meant disarming, through means of one of the Dagga Plays, 3 people at once, more than once, and learning a real word defensive skill.



Every new student of the sword should get to be a zombie at least once.