All the admiration in the world ......

We have some pretty amazing students here at EtonHouse Wuxi. The swimming program began this week, with yours truly in charge. After a slightly stressful morning (the school is also lucky enough to have an EAL teacher who can't read!! Don't ask), the swimming program turned out to be a great success. Where does the admiration part come in? Well, many Asian children (Japanese excepted generally) don't grow up with the same water safety and swimming culture that many other countries, such as Australia do. So, for many children, Wednesday was their first time in a swimming pool. I can proudly say that there were no tears, no teachers were scratched or bruised and every single child had a huge grin on their face. Two girls in particular are who I am aiming the admiration at. These two girls have just arrived in China from Korea with a handful of English words between them and both had never been swimming. They were the only two kids in the senior swimming group with no experience, so understandably were nervous. Can you imagine being taught something as scary and risky as swimming in a loud environment, in a language that is totally foreign to you? It would be like me doing a sky dive for the first time whilst listening to instructions from a Korean instructor - totally terrifying. So, for these girls to be willing to let me pick them up and dunk them up and down in the water was an incredibly scary thing. Sure, they were scared at first, but within seconds, their faces lit up with pure joy. What an amazing feeling.