Swimming

The last two days have happily been filled with swimming of different sorts. First off, the weather has been unusually warm, and we're enjoying every minute of it. So the first sort of swimming (aside from the "swimmingly" wonderful time were having) is swimming after school and/or before or after dinner. There's been lots of that this week. The second sort of swimming is of the kind that the kids do virtually every day at school. Swimming is a big part of life here, so therefore swimming is a big part of school. For that matter, physical activity in general is a big part of school...sadly, unlike in the United States, where all they seem to care about is standardized testing to the detriment of all else....including the care and keeping of the body. As an example, this week, Abby's class spent all day Tuesday participating in a sport festival at Westpac Stadium in Wellington and half the day today in an all senior school (mandatory for all students) swimming competition. Can you imagine a U.S. public school taking 1 1/2 precious days out of "learning" time to actually exercise the vessels in which their minds and emotional well-being reside? Blasphemy!!! And on top of that to require every single student to get in the pool and swim??? There's a lawsuit waiting to happen! Not here. Here are a couple of pictures of Abby as she happily swam her heart out today with all of her classmates.

The other kind of swimming that took place this week was us waking up on Thursday morning to dolphins swimming in the sea down on our beach! So our day began with us running down to the beach in our jammies to look. Here are a few pics.

And now it's bedtime. Life is good.