were those gunshots?!

Tuesday evening, I was teaching a class and in the middle of the lesson, we heard a few loud popping sounds. I asked the class, "What was that?" And one of the students replied, "Someone killing someone." The tone in which it was told, you could tell they were obviously joking. The lesson continued and nothing else happened.

Fast forward to last night. I got home from a lesson and had to make a pie, so I started making it and realized that I didn't have enough butter to make it, so I had to trek back out to the store. On my way, I saw some teenagers (one of whom I recognized as a student of mine), who were probably actually only 12 or 13-maybe one or two were 14. Anyway, one of them appeared to have a cigarette in his hand, and something else, though I couldn't tell what. He took the other thing and kind of flung it toward the grass. About 30 seconds later, I heard a loud popping sound. I found the source of the "person killing someone"-fire crackers. It scared the tar out of me, no doubt, the first time I heard it. After that, it didn't scare me though.

But this brought me to realizing that my first thought, even in the moment that I knew it was a fire cracker, that it was a gunshot. I am not from Philadelphia, and I didn't live there long enough in a bad enough part of town to be used to hearing this on a regular basis, or to actually build up a reaction to it. But automatically my first thought was that it was a gun, and my instinct really was a "duck and cover" kind of instinct. Thinking about this made me realize that so many people live in neighborhoods where hearing actual gunshots is commonplace. Having at least one, if not more, family members shot and possibly killed by gunshots is normal. 

One more conversation happened today. One of the girls who teaches in Hungary was talking about how people say her city is not safe, but that you totally feel safe there-and I was telling her about how Ostrava is very similar. You mostly feel safe, but people will tell you that it's dangerous. Really, you just have to be careful which part you're in. All of these together, though, made me realize how thankful I am that I live in a safe city (or at least I feel safe there). I am thankful that I don't have to worry about being shot, and it's pretty rare that I would be attacked and other such things. I am so thankful for a safe, beautiful city to live in, where I have fabulous friends and people are wonderful.