It's Thursday night and 7 schools have joined together for a swimming carnival, in a 6 lane pool I will add. Our school has no pool, the only swim team is the squad of students that Kaela trained as part of her IB Community Service, and a group of boys from the middle school. But what we lacked in expertise and experience was made up for in effort, determination and team spirit. Swimming in Viet Nam is not really seen as a sport - it's more something you do when the sun goes down (heaven forbid you get get a tan), therefore schools that have the most Western students have a better swim squad. At AIS there are 4 Western students competing, need I say more. But instead of using the 4 Western Kids to swim everything our school gave everyone a go. Last year we had a squad of 2 (Kaela and Bella) this year we had a squad of 25! and everyone had a few swims. Relays teams did not consist of just the fastest but rather they gave everyone a chance to swim. As a swimming parent (I guess an ex swimming parent as I have little, to no involvement with Zander's swimming except in spirit - and yes you can still get nervous for your swimming child from a distance, which has you waking in the middle of the night to check results) it is a humbling experience. As a parent I am very proud of my children's efforts in the pool but I am more proud that they were part of a team, a real team, a team that for me defined the word - comments from my children such as "we let 'so and so' swim that because they only had one swim" or "we let 'so and so' swim that because they can do 25m" or " we split the good swimmers so we have more relay teams" show me how important team spirit is. We, as Western cultures, prize those who come first but today I saw how helping each other might make you come 6th but everyone wins.
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