Sports

After three months I finally started playing tennis again. I had an idea that the quality of the tennis coaching would be better in Australia than in India and this is indeed the case. While I loved my two coaches in Mumbai, Deepakh and Deepakh (no joke), I believe I can make more progress here. The tennis school is very conveniently located between the school of my kids and home. As a real tennis mum I can drop off the kids at school wearing my very cool tennis outfit and then play tennis at 9.30.

Today, I participated in a ladies tennis clinic. There are more tennis mums like me. I counted 10 other courts with small groups playing. After 20 minutes our coach Craig said we had 10 more minutes left. So I guessed the clinic would last for 30 minutes. A bit short. After some confusion on my side, I realized the clinic would last for two hours switching to another court and coach every half hour. Ouch.

I can only conclude that Australia is an extremely sports minded country. The kids don't have two or three hours sports per week. No, one entire day (Friday) is dedicated to sports. Children who play tennis after school are picked up by a bus and brought to the tennis club. Just to make it easy for them and their parents.

Swimming is also very popular with lots of possibilities for swimming lessons. My six year old started lessons last week in the swimming school next to his school. They teach the children in small groups of four kids max. During Sebastiaan's class there were about 10 instructors in the water with other kids. BTW, in Australia, kids are first taught freestyle swimming instead of the breast stroke as they do in Holland. It takes them longer to learn freestyle swimming but once you can do freestyle the breast stroke is a lot easier.

As part of our integration program we try to be more sporty. Last Sunday, Marcel won his first medal participating in the Cole Classic (www.coleclassic.com), a swimming race in the sea. Marcel entered the 1 kilometer race and managed to finish within a reasonable time. Being Dutch he was one of the very few using the breast stroke but as proven by Marcel also with the breast stroke you stay afloat.

I learned something interesting by the way with respect to the spiders (see my previous post). When you get bitten by a spider, you have to dial 000 and then they will come immediately to provide you with an antidote. This information falls into the 'Nice to know' category.