Singapore Swim Meet

The girls and I recently traveled to Singapore for a swim meet. Previously, Tori has been the only family member on the team. This year, Royce was thrilled to join us. On the plane ride there, she wrote cute little notes like “my first international swim meet” and “this is what the Olympics feels like.” Once she got a good look at the long course pool (we typically swim short course, 25 meters instead of 50 meters), her enthusiasm waned but only a little.

Our swim club here is large and our club took over 100 swimmers to the Singapore meet. We coordinated our travel with another good friend and got to Singapore a little early. Our family has been to Singapore before, as has the family we were traveling with. All little girls compared notes on what they remembered and liked. We managed to get them to the well known Night Safari and to swim with the pink dolphins, another well known Singapore attraction. But our favorite was a return visit to trapeze set up on the beach. Years ago, Tori could do a few tricks and now she can do a lot more. And this year, Royce climbed up and swung out on the thirty foot high trapeze without a backwards glance. After all that kid activity (and on a crowded public holiday too), the adults swung by one of their favorites. We visited Borders bookstore and the Gap clothing store, both of which are not in Hong Kong.

The swim meet itself was lots of fun. The girls swam fast and improved their times. Royce swam all 50 meter events and Tori swam 50 and 100 meter events. There was a lot of time to watch other swimmers. We in fact knew swimmers from other teams and had fun catching up with them. During the meet, Tori improved her freestyle event by a substantial amount of time. I asked her how she managed to do that. She said she had watched some of the older kids swim fast and just mimicked their strokes. At least all that poolside sitting time paid off for someone. Royce and I just read Pippi Longstocking one more time and played many many rounds of checkers.

Singapore was a great sporting weekend and we swam at an outdoor pool. Despite being November, it was quite hot and humid there. Apparently, Hong Kong has hotter summers than Singapore but Singapore just stays hot year round. It was nice to come back to Hong Kong and pull on the light cardigans we wear here for winter gear. Adam, left in Hong Kong, got more than mild weather. It rained and rained while we were away. Adam was supposed to be at a boy scout camp out. He went but was turned around before the actually camping due to rain and mud and cold. He was feeling a little sad to miss Singapore until he heard about all the swimming, the early morning warm ups and the late evening relays. Swimming is exciting, particularly when you belong to a club that swims a lot of international meets but you still have to do that swimming part.