Night Swimming

Basically what I look like in a speedo. *I do not wear a speedo to swim!

lugie - 1 definition - a spid wad made by sucking the mucous into the back of your throat and combining it with saliva.


So, I had another hilarious cultural experience last night that is blogworthy. Ash and I went over to the Portman (where the Taylors live) so I could swim some laps and she could do the elliptical. In classic China fashion, what started as an innocent night quickly turned into a debacle!!

Where do we start...well, I went into the locker room to change, and saw a couple men (locals) preparing to swim. By this, I mean they had goggles on their heads and were walking around naked. This is very popular in locker rooms here. I decided to beat them to the pool, since I had noticed on the way in that it was already pretty full.

I got the the pool first, and jumped in immediately. The pool has 1 lane, and then an area that is not laned off (kids usually play here) that is about 3 lanes wide. I was the third in this area, and the lane was taken. I thought, "Suckers", and started swimming my laps...

Well, the two men I saw in the locker room showed up about a minute later, and immediately jumped into my area of the pool. Now there were 5 of us in an area meant for 3, and Asian people are not great with walking or swimming in straight lines, so this was a problem.

We began swimming "Arc" laps, where during each length I would have to swim around at least 1-2 people...which was horrible. Additionally, people here love to swim breaststroke, which is an awful stroke. It takes up the most room and is the slowest stroke in the world. I had an old lady swimming next to me who was basically floating, and riding other people's currents to the other side of the pool and back.

So, with 5 of us in the common area and 4 doing breaststroke, I thought things could get no worse. I was wrong. First, the lady next to me started walking laps in the pool, which made her even slower. She was doing some kind of arm thing that made her 8 feet wide as well. I could not make this stuff up.

At this point, I took a break to gather myself, and consider leaving the pool. One of the locker room boys stopped as well (about 2 feet from me) and hocked a huge lugie (a national pasttime), and then spit it onto the edge of the pool!!!! To be clear, this is one of those edges where the water spills over the side for a couple feet, so he basically spit into the water right next to me...holy moly.

I am a man who does not like sharing ice cream, let alone having people spit in my bath water. This was quickly becoming a horrible situation...I swam a couple more laps and decided to call it quits before I was completely covered in mucous.

On the positive side, I did feel faster in the water when covered with another man's snot.

This is all I can say about this, for I am starting to feel nauseous just thinking about it.