Kiki & Snake were both chosen to represent the school at the league championship swim meet this week. It is the largest meet of the year and because of space issues, each team can only bring a select number of athletes. They felt very honored to be chosen and you get to miss 2 days of school - another bonus!
The meet is held at another American school in the suburbs of London. It is not really easy to get to but Chizz took the day off and we took the train out there. Taking the train means taking the underground to the regular train station and taking another train from their to the station near the school. The train trip itself isn't that long (about 1/2 hour) but the process is longer - about 1 1/2 hours. Once we got to the train station, we took a cab to the school.
Twelve schools are involved and they came from all over. There were the American Schools in London, Paris, Hague, the American schools in the London Suburbs, International schools from Munich, Brussels and Zurich, British Schools from Brussels and the Netherlands and then an American School from Egypt. The Cairo school is holding the championship meet next year and Snake and Kiki are hoping to be able to go to that. The pool is indoors and the noise volume seems higher. In many ways it is a lot like the swim meets we went to in California -there are team cheers, timers and stroke and turn officials, the kids have parkas, flannel shorts (all turned down at the waist to just the correct point on your hip), clerk of the course, overpriced commemorative t-shirts (always sold out of the size you need!) the last minute panic when your cap rips or your goggles break. Some of the differences were the English announcer, the fairly comfy theatre like seating in the stands, and the flags they had posted to represent the different countries represented by these schools both by nationality and location.
Kiki & Snake did well in the meet. Kiki made finals and placed in all of her events. Snake had time improvements and some great races. When we were in California and had to work the meets, Chizz always used to say that the parent work/kid swim ratio was way out of balance. You saw your kids swim for maybe 1 1/2 minutes total and you had to work 4-5 hours. Here we didn't have to work the meets but all total our travel time was probably somewhere over 3 hours and we watched our kids swim for about 3 minutes. I am not sure which is harder. Oh well, it did dawn on me while I was on the train at one point - we don't have many of these swim meets left. I am going to enjoy them while I can, even if it takes me two hours to get there.
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