TALKING about free time activities
Example
Example 1
Well, I suppose my favourite thing to do in my free time is go swimming. I go swimming almost every day and sometimes I swim 2 or 3 miles a day. I think it's about the best kind of exercise you can do. People say that swimming exercises all the muscles in the body and it’s very good exercise for the lungs and the heart as well. But actually it's kind of funny, because I wasn't always so into swimming. I remember when I was a child, I was really afraid of the water and my mother forced me to go to the swimming pool to take swimming lessons. But, I was so afraid of the water, so every day I pretended to be sick to avoid having to go to these lessons. And so when I was a child, I never actually really learned how to swim even though my mother spent quite a lot of money on these swimming lessons to try to teach me. But then when I was 23 or 24 years old, I suddenly realised that this looked like it was a blast, it looked so nice and peaceful to go for a swim.
And so I just put my mind to it; I went swimming to the pool every day. I mean I was still pretty freaked out, but it was difficult from the beginning, but slowly I worked on it and became quite a good swimmer. I can't say that I'm an expert at swimming now, I mean I'm not a lifeguard or anything, but I swim quite well, I can swim for a long time without stopping. It’s almost like meditation work, it's really relaxing, and you don't have to think too much, so after a hard day’s work, for me, just about the best thing to do is to go for a swim. And after swimming for a couple of years I've even done a few more advanced things, like diving, scuba diving actually. I went to Thailand to do my diving licence. When I was a child, I would have never thought that I would be diving 18 metres under the surface of the water, and swimming around with all of these beautiful, tropical fish, but by working on my swimming and overcoming my fear, diving was very easy. So that's what I like to do in my spare time.