Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Japanese Flipper: It's Swimming Time


Today I swam for an hour in our school pool. Every day for the last few weeks, since the pool opened I noticed that no one was using after school. So I decided one day last week to break that trend, dawn my trunks and hop in.

I loved every minute. There I was in this Olympic-sized school pool swimming my heart out in Japan. I never dreamed that I would have a job where I would get paid to swim around in a pool, but that is just what I did. And so, on Monday and Tuesday of this week, I did it again. In the afternoon, I got my gear ready, grabbed the pool house key, and ran for it.

I enjoyed it so much, that I decided to try to invite other teachers to join me. I asked the science teacher, the special education teacher, the math teacher, and several others in the ichinensei grade level (7th grade), but none of them were brave enough to do go with me.

So I decided to ask the Kyoto-sensei (vice principal) if he'd like to go. He laughed and told me to run a long and have fun. And so I did. I spent a full 1.5 hours swimming away, back strokes, butterfly strokes, underwater swimming, you name it, I tried it.

And the whole while students were doing their bukatsu (club activities). Several boys from the Yakyubu (baseball club) hollered over to me. And I hollered back. Some of them I could tell wanted to jump in, because the temperature was near 30, and the water was great. But I am not their club advisor so I couldn't give them permission to jump in.

I love swimming at school. I'll probably do it again tomorrow as well, if the weather permits!

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