Well, as I mentioned, Theo spends most of his time at school or doing school related activities. It is hard core socialization, but I guess that is what he's here for. He doesn't mind it most of the time. School here isn't like school in America, where the focus is almost completely on academics. They do a lot of other things, like cooking, sewing, brushing their teeth, serving lunch, and cleaning the school every day, in general learning how to be good citizens. One of Theo's favorite jobs is scrubbing the toilet. He also likes sweeping the schoolyard (of course there's no grass). Here's Theo in his fancy dress uniform for the first day of school. He doesn't usually wear the jacket.
This is the first day of class. The school year starts in April here, so Theo was there for the first day of the school year. He's now in fifth grade. The teachers don't always dress up, they usually wear sweats, like P.E. teachers. The kids come to school, take off their outside shoes, put on their inside shoes, go to their classrooms, and change into their P.E. clothes and back into their dress clothes as the occasion demands. There is a lot of clothes changing, and the kids do it in the classroom. They also have clothes for serving lunch, and of course swimming clothes.
This is the first day of class. The school year starts in April here, so Theo was there for the first day of the school year. He's now in fifth grade. The teachers don't always dress up, they usually wear sweats, like P.E. teachers. The kids come to school, take off their outside shoes, put on their inside shoes, go to their classrooms, and change into their P.E. clothes and back into their dress clothes as the occasion demands. There is a lot of clothes changing, and the kids do it in the classroom. They also have clothes for serving lunch, and of course swimming clothes.
This was a cooking class, where the kids made salads. They're wearing the chef uniforms that they serve lunch in. School hours are about 8-4, but it varies depending on the day. Then he goes to swimming from 5-7. All the kids walk to school on their own, so I guess it's not a problem with parents picking up their kids. The school has a swimming pool, and swimming is a part of the regular curriculum during school. But in addition to that, kids pick extra curricular activities. Masami and Theo picked swimming, because Theo likes it and it was the least demanding in terms of time. Swimming practice is 6 days a week for 2 hours each, which means 12 hours a week of swimming practice, plus swim meets. I can't even imagine what kind of time demands the other sports must have. In Chico, we had a soccer coach who was doing two hour and a half practices a week, and the parents complained to the league. I always wondered at Masami having reunions with her junior high school basketball teammates, but I can see that they must have spent a lot of time together.
One of the kids' jobs was cleaning the pool. Here are the kids having fun in the muck.
Theo loves to swim, and he is getting much better. Last year he swam like a hysterical octopus. People used to think he was drowning and would try to rescue him. But now he really has great form. He's doing well, although he really can't compete with these kids who have learned swimming in school for four years. Even though he loves swimming, he gets sick of it, and doesn't want to go swimming on weekends. I told him he doesn't have to go to swimming practice every day if he doesn't want to, but he still goes. His friends are all busy with their activities, so there's no one to play with, and he's developing a strong sense of duty.
In addition to all the practices, we also have swim meets. We got up at 7 one Sunday morning (can't sleep past that anyway with the heat and the loudspeaker going off every morning). It's been getting hotter everyday, so I spend a lot of time in our air-conditioned room set at 80.6 F degrees, which seems like heaven. This Sunday was a hot one. We got to the Sangen Yama sports complex on the other side of town at 8 AM and it was already hot. The parents set up tent canopies for some shade, but all that cement around the pool was soaking up the rays and radiating heat with a vengeance. I thought I was going to pass out. I finally put on my swimsuit and shirt and took a shower, soaking myself from head to toe. It helped for a while. Theo was wearing his fancy new $60 swimsuit that Masami had bought for him the day before. It has infrared blocker so that cameras with infrared vision can't see through. I had no idea. The meet kept dragging on and on. We had lunch there, then I took a nap by the creek in the shade for a while. It was much cooler. In Amami, the women all cover up from the sun, with big hats, parasols, and sleeves to cover their arms. Here's Masami sporting the latest style. The female ideal of beauty is pure white here.
All in all, the swim meet lasted 7 hours. Theo swam for three minutes of that. He didn't do as well as he wanted to.
Later that week they had the 5th grade swim meet at school. We had a two hour lunch with the swim parents, then a two hour swim meet, limited by school hours, thank god. Theo did pretty well, coming in third in one race. Anyway, this swimming thing is getting out of hand. It really is a cult.
Last Sunday, we had the class barbecue at the beach. According to Masami, we weren't allowed to go swimming, so we had to wait until most everyone left. The kids did the piñata watermelon thing, mutilating them with bamboo sticks wrapped with tape. the kids from each class had to lead the blindfolded kid to the watermelons by shouting directions. We ate the watermelons afterwards and tried not to think about where those sticks had been. The parents buried treat bags in the sand for kids to find. It was over after only four hours, then, finally, we could swim. I have to tell you, actually swimming is even more fun than watching it.
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