Swimming

If you have seen the movie "The Green Hornet", you may remember a scene where
Seth Rogen, as Britt Reid, and Jay Chou, as Kato, fight…the fight ends when they fall into the pool and Kato reveals that he can’t swim. To many people, that would be a “huh?” moment…a martial arts expert can’t swim? Really? But to any who have lived in China, you will know that it is actually extremely common for adults to not know how to swim. It’s becoming more common as a hobby, but many of my friends can’t swim, and their parents never had them take lessons because it was dangerous. If you don’t live around water, I suppose that makes sense, although it seems more dangerous to me that if you potentially ever fell into water you would die.

I have been attempting to teach a friend to swim in the evenings after she finishes work…I’m not gonna lie, it’s a bit humorous to watch her attempts…but she is learning. (a young boy we met last time was not as polite as me and did a rather mean but hilarious imitation of her flailing her
arms in the water). Slowly but surely she is getting to where she can at least sort of keep her head out of the water though, so I am happy that she potentially could survive in water without drowning. We'll keep it up, it's good for me to practice as well! I didn't want to go initially, after all, that pool is not heated and I am a subscriber of the Chinese philosophy "don't get cold, you will die", but I'm glad I have been going.

Another highlight of experiencing swimming as a foreigner is that you get to have the naked in front of a bunch of Chinese people locker room experience, which, surprisingly, I have become completely comfortable with. More on that another time.