Sultan's Revenge

(Written 10 Dec, posted today!)

It’s been a long time since I logged in… and I think each of the past few posts has been accompanied by some weak promise to try to write more often… maybe I should lower expectations and then surprise when I exceed them! I am writing this offline in the air, flying my way back with my school colleagues from a 4 day conference/teambuilding trip in Istanbul. It would seem as though the Beverly Hills surroundings are not always conducive to working and/or creating that wonderful team spirit. Spirit… I now think I should have had a bit more of the liquid variety on Friday as it might have helped kill whatever nasties there were in the food I ate that night. Instead I spent the next 24 hours feeling extremely ill, unable to get out of bed for more than about 10 minutes without feeling nautious, and went about 36 hours without consuming anything more than two glasses of Sprite and one dry cracker – as you can imagine my memories of Istanbul are somewhat tainted. My quite (un)substantial energy reserves are depleted and I am still eating like a mouse, at least I have 2 weeks to build up before the Christmas extravaganza – my first in Australia for 5 years.
Autumn seems to have flown by very quickly, the dark has descended and the snow has made a couple of fleeting appearances. I was in Jönköping (town about 3 hours south of Stockholm) a few weeks ago for the Swedish Swimming Nationals (shortcourse) watching the swimmers I help coach. They all swam well and our club had an extremely successful meet – in our squad we had 6 Swedish records (all 5 men’s relays and 200 IM), 13 gold and 2 bronze. We now have 3 swimmers about to head to European Shortcourse and already have 4 pre-selected for European Longcourse in March (which will be used as Olympic selection trials). I help out 2-3 times a week most weeks, although take more sessions when Anne (coach of the Elite squad that I help) is away for training camps or comps. It’s been a great way to stay connected to elite swimming without having to do all the training! And I try as much as possible to stay out of the politics in the swimming club – sometimes it seems to be worse the smaller an organisation is?!
Beverly Hills High is going along smoothly, the courses I’ve taught before are feeling good and settled and the new ones a challenge to make sure I don’t get complacent. We have also recently confirmed that the Model European Parliament that I attended in Sofia last April will be hosted in Stockholm next year and I will be in some way involved in the organising. This will of course mean more work, but will (hopefully) be fun and definitely good experience. I will also be going up north in Sweden for 4 days at the end of January to accompany 4 students who were selected to participate in another youth parliament there (the essays they wrote meant that our school was selected) – also linked to European Union issues. And if they do well there they may be selected to travel to an international version in Czech Republic or France next year – with a teacher in tow of course! So as you can understand, teaching the spoilt darlings does have its benefits.
I hope all is well in your part of the world.
Eating slowly,
Rich.