Where on Earth is Imogen? : The pool's now open! (and it's very cold) + more sightseeing

12 June 2013

The pool's now open! (and it's very cold) + more sightseeing

A new activity has been added to our daily routine, we now go swimming straight after school. The communal outdoor pool for the appartment complex, or urbanización, opened on Saturday but over the weekend we experienced some quite British weather here (rain, sun, rain, clouds, rain, sun) so we didn't go until Monday. The opening hours are from 11.30am until 9pm but it closes in the rain, you can only go when there is a lifeguard on duty. I thought they were exaggerating when they told me it would be cold. Here they walk around in jeans and jackets when, if we were fortunate enough to get the same weather in the UK, you'd see men walking around in just shorts. However, they were most definitely telling the truth. When we went down to the pool yesterday after school, the people sitting around outside stared at us in horror "You're going swimming? But it's so cold!".Unphased, we carried on to the empty pool. The lifeguard was sitting there looking bored out of his mind. I gradually went down the steps before taking the plunge and swimming a couple of lengths while the girls splashed around a bit before having enough of the freezing cold water.

Thankfully, since then, we've had some great sunny, hot weather which has begun to heat it up slightly. It's still cold but not as unbearably so. The parents have asked that I give the girls some lessons in July when they don't have school, the pool's warmer and we've got more time. Time to start learning swimming vocab! (as the children could potentially drown, I'm supposed to speak Spanish with them in the pool). The girls seem to enjoy watching me swim more than anything else. Yesterday they threw all of their diving sticks and got me to collect them in one go and today they just wanted to see me do lots and lots of butterfly! The girls themselves don't seem to be able to swim that well so I'm hoping that I can help them in July. Mónica doesn't seem to mind the cold water as much as Carlota so stays in longer but is much happier when in the shallow end. From what I've seen of Carlota's swimming (not much as she doesn't stay in that long), she seems to know some of the basics but there's room for lots of improvement! It's not really surprising though seeing as they only get to go swimming in the summers as they didn't enjoy their swimming lessons.

UPDATE: The pool in the morning before it's open

I've been trying to get out a bit more in the mornings now that I'm more used to everything here so went back to Retiro park Monday morning and went to the rooftop terrace of Circulo de Bellas Artes this morning to get some great views of the city in the sunshine!