First thing, it was the girls turn to exercise, so we went on a run all together: me, Carla and Lucy.
Lucy and I took the kids to the French community pool, which
was an interesting scene. When I arrived
I noticed many notices warning of what was prohibited at the pool. One thing that was prohibited was American
style swim trunks. I couldn’t figure out why, but they let Henry borrow some
tiny hot pant swim trunks. He was
totally embarrassed to put them on but luckily they let him wear his swim
shirt, which completely covered the tiny suit.
We had to pass through this maze of lockers and restrooms and when we
finally figured out how to get to the pool we were also forced to remove our
shoes because they weren’t allowed on the pool deck. We were also forced to walk through little
pools of water to clean our feet every time we entered or exited the immediate
pool area. When we immerged the pool was
completely filled with almost naked kids. I only saw one girl with a one piece
suit on. All the little girls were wearing
tiny bikinis and the boys, of course, were all in the tightest suits and
speedos. They also made me put floaties,
on Clemmie, which are not allowed in American pools and since Clementine is so
comfortable in the water and loves to go underwater, I was hesitant, but they
were pretty insistent so I put them on her.
Lucy saw the most gorgeous tall, dark, and muscly French boy wearing a
speedo and stalked him for a while. She
also ran into him on the street while she was doing laundry, so he must live
close to us. Lol. Having so many young kids and not knowing all
the rules, I felt like we were getting hovered over by the pool police. The most hilarious part of this whole
runaround is that at one point we saw a giant squirt of poo coming out of
Clementine’s diaper that was smeared all over the pool deck. We quickly removed her from the pool and
changed her diaper on the grass. I wiped
what I could off the edge of the pool and the pool deck, but it obviously got
in the pool water. When it was time to
leave, I changed Henry back into his shorts and as soon as they saw him they
rushed over and said he had to put his other suit back on. I told them I was leaving so they were ok
with it. I started to ask them why all
the run around with the cleanliness. No
one spoke English, so I began to leave, but they called after me and had
someone who actually spoke English tell me what all the fuss was about. Apparently they put less than half the amount
of Chlorine into the water so they’re forced to take measures to limit the dirt
and outside grime....and all this to "save the earth from Chlorine". The problem with this is that
unless French babies are different than American ones, poop and pee is going to
get into the pool anyway and how can they limit that? At our pool at home they
make Clementine and Vivi put on two layers of protection, which still doesn’t
keep the poop juice from escaping out of the diaper. When I finally realize that either one has
pooped in their diaper, all the fine poop has mixed with water and escaped
through the permeable swim diaper and all that’s left is large chunks of undigested
food. So, basically there’s almost no
way to avoid poop and pee getting into the pool. After hearing all this and realizing that
Clementine had pooped in their untreated pool, I was happy to swim in the ultra
concentrated chlorine pools of America…and to be leaving.
After the pool, I took the kids to the park and Justin took
Alex and Carla to the bus station where they spent the last couple days of
their trip in Marseille….away from our screaming babies and chaos.
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