Swimming

The busy weekend made me forget about Beatrice's swimming gala last Friday. It was quite an eye-opener for me to be honest. I had somehow assumed all kids here can swim as at least in her school most probably live on condos with pools. It turned out to be a wrong assumption. The whole year 2 was divided into 3 groups, the first of which swam across the pool in the shallow end with floats and noodles etc. And there were kids in this group who have lived here all their lives! Second group did some more advanced widths partly unaided and only the third group swam whole lengths of the pool showing some great technique and speed. Beatrice was in the third group and all other kids from her class in there are the ones who have regular swimming lessons in addition to school swimming. Beatrice is not keen on lessons although I can clearly see now that having learned most of what she can now by herself she could be a really great swimmer if she had proper training. We keep trying to convince her that she will have to represent Estonia in the Olympics but so far no success. I even dragged her to the pool on Sunday when the coach was here but she just refused to join in, neither bribes nor threats worked. Probably she just doesn't see a point if she is one of the best in class anyway. But what a wasted opportunity as it would be so easy to train here - no need to go anywhere far away, can just go down to the pool every day and even the coach comes here. Who knows if we are ever going to live in a place like that again. And I bet she will want to have lessons if that means driving to a pool half an hour through snowstorms.