Marco Polo .... oh no.

I have many fantastic pictures to post from the time I got to spend with my brother while he was on leave and able to come home. I will tell you that I woke up one day with a hurting face because I laughed so hard the night (and into the morning) before.

But I will leave you with a quick story from this evening before I go to bed:

It started simply.

My cousin Jacob started college a couple of weeks ago at Eastern Kentucky University. An avid swimmer, Jacob thought about swimming in college, but decided to go to EKU for their interesting major (Homeland Security) and to do Air Force ROTC.

He is considering joining the club swim team.

(Side note: Universities often have three tiers of sports -- their "varsity sports," which are the people on ESPN who get paid to go to school and who are usually amazing at their sport, "club sports," which are often filled by people who played before and try out to get on the team and the teams often compete against other universities, and "intermurals," which anyone can participate in...in case you needed to know)

Well, my school also has a club swim team. This club team does not have try-outs and you can compete or not compete. I jokingly told Jacob that I would join the IU team and swim against him. We would compete in the two events he did not ever compete in in high school -- the butterfly and backstroke. The race was going to be approximately 5 yards of Fly (I can only do four strokes of fly before I get tired) and the other 45 of backstroke.

So tonight I went to my first swim team practice. I loved swimming laps in college and I looked forward to having someone tell me what to swim.

Tonight was the last practice of the week and in celebration the team decided to play water polo.
In eight feet of water.

I must have looked terrified.

The very nice girl (who had emailed me assuring me that they do accept all skill levels on the team) asked if I wanted to play.

I said, "I'm not sure I'm adept enough for water polo quite yet." I further told her that I didn't want to be "that girl" who makes everyone on her team mad because she is too focused on not drowning to play well (I spend a lot of my life trying not to be "that girl").

She was very nice about it and allowed me to swim in the remaining reserved lane.

I swam a mile, albeit very slowly, while the water polo game raged next to me. (I think I made the right decision -- it looked exhausting.)

At one point in time, I was kick boarding and I noticed that the lifeguard, situated conveniently at one end of my lane, was joined by two other young ladies. I paused at the end of the lane:

"Hey," I said. "I am so out of shape that you had to call in reinforcements?"

The three girls chuckled and the lifeguard assured me, "Oh no, these girls are terrible, they wouldn't be able to catch you."

I went on my merry way. I swam 1650 meters tonight, although about half was on the kick board. My arms already hurt.

I am glad I went, although I'm not sure what lies in store for this particular adventure -- I might not be quite up to team level.

However, just by going to the work out facility tonight I got a free T-shirt celebrating the first week of the semester.

And we all know how I feel about T-shirts.

So I'd say it was entirely worth it.