Swimming!

Hello again!  Yeah... still not a post about French school... next week, I promise!  Anyway, while that whole situation is working itself out, I decided to write about another new experience I've had this week: going swimming in France.  All my swim team(s) friends at home will appreciate this one :)

(My local pool)

Anyway, on Friday morning, I packed up my bag with a suit (not my own suit, of course, which was supposed to arrive on Wednesday.  Thanks a lot, postal service...), a towel, and swim cap, and headed off to school like usual.  Then, for gym class, we walked over to the pool (yes, we swim in gym class, and yes, I can walk to the pool.   Just some of the amazing things about this country) and got ready to swim.  Some observations: locker rooms in general seem to be really nice in France; on the other hand, public restrooms aren't really very nice at all...

So, with that out of the way, our gym teacher split the class in half, and paired everybody up, so that one partner was in the water while the other one was on deck.  Then, half the class swam down the pool and back, while their partner watched.  Then, we switched, and the other half of the class swam while the first half watched.  We did that for a good portion of the class, and then worked on things like streamlining off of the wall, and diving.  Interestingly enough, almost every swimming term seems to be a direct translation, including the things that I had imagined wouldn't translate well (like butterfly stroke, flutter kick, dolphin kick, etc.).  The one major exception to this is breaststroke.... which suddenly became arm-stroke.... as if it was the only stroke that involved the use of arms... ?

It turns out that the bac (the big, standardized test that students take when they finish high school) involves a swim test!  This really surprised me, and my classmates couldn't understand why- the bac is meant to test everything they've learned in high school, including, well, swimming.

Well, that's my spiel on French swimming.  Not terribly different from American swimming, except more suited to be a gym class activity.  Oh!  And I should also mention for the sake of my swimmer friends: you know that little I'm-trying-to-change-into-my-swimsuit-in-a-crowded-locker-room-all-while-maintaining-a-relative-level-of-modesty dance we do?  Yeah, that seems to be a pretty universal thing.