As I mentioned before, I recently started swimming lessons. I'm set to go three times a week for a month.
Some people might think... "Ryan, why are you taking swimming lessons? Weren't you a lifeguard at a lake?" Well, yes, I was... and I took the lifeguard training... but it didn't include "proper technique". As long as I could swim strongly, pass the endurance tests, and hold my breath, they didn't care how I did it.
So I decided to learn how to swim the scientific way... since I'd already learned the survival way.
I'll walk you through my first morning of swim class. First you get a locker key from the front desk. Then you walk down to the men's showers. Before you go in, you place your shoes in a small locked cubby. Then you walk in to the lockers where you put the rest of your stuff. After stripping down (naked, good thing I played basketball in the states and experienced the locker room shower, or the nudity might have been a shocker for me), you head into the showers where you rinse yourself off and put on your swimsuit and cap. After walking out to the pool, an instructor leads everyone in warm-up stretches. Then everyone splits up into their different skill levels. I'm with four others. An older guy and two women in their late 20s early 30s.
Once in the pool, we warm up by walking backwards in circles. Then we practice proper breathing, followed by proper kicking. We do a number of drills while holding onto the side of the pool. The instructor sets the speed by counting "hana, duel, hana duel" (one, two, one, two). After practicing each separately, we combine them and practice breathing while kicking. We do several laps around the pool for each skill. The instructor grabs our feet or moves our head if we aren't doing it properly. It's quite a workout. Much of it is simply conditioning so our kicks and breathing get stronger.
Our little group is slowly bonding... we smile at each other and whisper "this is hard" (in Korean of course).
I really appreciate the instructor because she doesn't treat me any differently, even though it's obvious I don't speak Korean and I'm the only white guy in the entire fitness facility. She is patient and does a lot of demonstrations so I can visually see what she's talking about. I also watch the other swimmers for cues when to start or stop.
It's a challenge. And sometimes I say to myself, "What the heck are you doing, Ryan?" But I like it. And I can tell that I'm slowly becoming a better swimmer already.
For the final 5 minutes, we join everyone else in the deep pool (5 feet) for cool down exercises and stretches. During part of it, you had to massage the person in front of you. I heard all this giggling as the girl behind me tried to decide if she would be brave and massage (punch really) the white guy. And when the Korean man in front of me turned around, he exclaimed, "It's a foreigner!" I think he was surprised because I gave him a pretty solid massage.
I think what I experienced was a lot like what a deaf man experiences. I watched out of the corners of my eyes for movement and hand gestures that could provide me with information.
It's an experience that's hard to explain. Something that not many people in the US can understand. Usually, there is at least one person who can speak your language, but in this situation there was no one (and no cell phone to call someone to translate). Maybe it's teaching me empathy... maybe it's teaching me the value of non-verbal language. I'm not certain, but I do know, deep down, I'm learning something... something that will change the way I think and interact with the world (and with water).
Can't wait for the lesson tomorrow.
I took class pictures for a fellow teacher. She's going to print them out and give them to her kids as a graduation good-bye. I included a few here of the teacher and her co-teacher, as well as one student/teacher picture. I still love the extreme contrast look.
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