Week One Term Four

Two weeks of swimming lessons.

 Some kids are already good swimmers, others are in different class levels.

 The beautiful MSAC facility.

Mack Horton, the Olymipian gold medalist and the kids talking to his coach.

Will the real pregnant Danielle please sit down....

October 3-7

Back to work after a glorious holiday and 4 hours of sleep and a total of something like 4,758km.

It was a pretty quiet week at work. The kids have swimming lessons for the afternoon after lunch for the next two weeks. We boarded the bus in the middle of lunch recess and didn't get back until the end of day bell. Swimming is obviously important here in Australia with all the beaches, waves and tides, but I question the loss of twenty hours of teaching time, given that I only have each class for half the year as it is. Besides most of these kids are already taking swimming lessons after school. However, it is an easy gig for me, I just get them there and watch the lessons. The pool facility, MSAC, is incredible. It has a 50 metre pool indoors and another one outside, plus two other 25 metre pools, a wave pool, a full gym attached with spinning bikes, work out rooms, a trampoline area (with amazing athletes bouncing around, and a cafe, a sports shop, and sports medicine treatment facilities. The pools also have large viewing galleries with hundreds of seats. They can also change the depth of a part of the 50 metre indoor pool from 2.1 metres for regular swimming to 1.3 for the kids swimming lessons. How they do that I don't know, but it only takes about 10 minutes.

One day as were getting organized to leave, the kids recognized Mack Horton, an Australian Olympic swimming gold medalist in the 4x100 relay. He was with his coach and a female swimmer and was getting ready to train. The coach was nice enough to answer some questions of the kids. 

One of our teachers is having a baby and the staff threw a baby shower for her. A number of the teachers put balloons up their shirts for fun. The board here dictates that teachers must leave the school five weeks before their due date or have a doctor's note to say they are able to work. She will be missed.