A very cool thing they do across France is teach the kids how to swim, as part of the school curriculum. Apparently one of the requirements to graduate in France is that you know how to swim. In our Region every school gets 4 weeks of swim lessons, which they rotate through at the local (the only indoor) pool, for all children grades 1st and 2nd (although communities that have access to more pool time extend this all the way to 8th grade). Every Tuesday and Wednesday morning for the month of January, they bus the children to the pool, conduct the classes, and then bus them back for lunch. Being a swim family, the girls actually already know how to swim, but I LOVE that they make this a priority for all children. AND a bonus for the girls is that it finally gives them something they can excel at in school!!
Fun obstacles!
Teah showing off her diving skills.
Don't you love how she's rocking the Marlins cap!
(in case you don't know that's her Papa's swim team back in California)
An interesting side note here is that because it's technically part of P.E. the teachers have to teach the swim class. The lifeguards/swim instructors (Maitre Nageur) at the pool help, but generally the pool never provides enough staff to take over the process. This is also different from how they run pools in the U.S. Each pool employs a staff of professional lifeguards that have chosen this as their career. In France it takes about 1000 hours of education to become a lifeguard, compared to about 25 hours in the US. They teach swimming to the local schools in the morning and guard the rest of the day. Some of them also help coach the swim team if they have one at their pool.
After speaking with some of the other parents at the school apparently in the Spring when the weather starts to get nicer again the kids get to walk down to the lake for kayaking for P.E. Seriously!! These kids don't even know how lucky they are.
The other pretty amazing thing the girls are getting to do for the winter is learn how to ski. Throughout this Region of France (Le Chablais) the local government offers a subsidized program for elementary school kids to learn how to ski on Wednesday afternoons. Assuming the snow co-operates the program goes for 12 weeks (January - March). They get out of school at 11:30, we rush home to eat and change, and then drive back to the community center to catch the giant double-decker bus at 12:15, which takes them up to Morzine (~45 minutes away). The bus also picks up the kids from another school along the way. They ski all afternoon and get back to the community center around 6:00pm.
This program, called L'Atel Ski, has been in place for over 50 years! Marc learned to ski with the same organisation....not so long ago. ;-) It costs each child $14 per Wednesday they choose to participate. This covers their transportation and ski lessons. In the Fall, L'Atel Ski also offers used gear for a very low price. We bought their ski boots (which we can sell back at the end of the season if we want) and rented their skis and poles for the season, all for ~$50 per kid. Thankfully the cousins had hand-me-down ski clothes and all we were left to purchase were the helmets; thankfully Santa helped us out with that.
Since the girls had never been on skis before (or let's be honest, even real snow) Papa decided they needed to put all their gear on and cruise around on the snowy grass before their first day.
Totally geared up (literally), name tags on, and ready to board the bus.
Pretty sweet bus, right?!
After 3 Wednesdays of ski school, we can report that Lola is very excited about it; she really loves it. Teah, on the other end is "comme ci comme ca' (so-so). On the plus side, the bus has a TV and they get to watch a movie - nice! - on the minus side, skis and poles are heavy and hard to carry in her little arms, the shoes are super heavy and do not bend like what she is used to. The very first day Teah couldn't keep up with her sister because of the challenge of walking in the shoes and she was separated from her within minutes of arriving. She spent the entire afternoon alone with kids she didn't know and with still only a very basic french. We decided to head up into the mountains again on the weekend to give the girls a little more practice and to see if we couldn't salvage Teah's enthusiasm.
After about an hour of practicing, it was time to play in the amazing soft (seriously, cloud-like) snow. That certainly helped seal the deal for Teah to try it again the next week.
The next time was better. Lola walked slower and stayed with Teah. This time they got to ride up the lift together and actually Teah did so well in her group that she got moved up to Lola's group. Theoretically this was fantastic except now she had to navigate a steeper slope and without having a solid stopping skill yet, kept running into the snow bank. Lots of convincing this weekend to give it another try this week. Let's just say that this little one is having to grow up really fast, but hey, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Or at least that's what we keep telling ourselves.
super cool! hang in there teah!!!
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