Olmstead at home competing on Taiwan national swim team

Marina Olmstead is a long way from home, but she feels right at home.

After signing with the University of Alabama swim team out of high school in 2019, Olmstead, who is from Chunky, entered the transfer portal during Thanksgiving week and visited Taiwan over Christmas to see if she could join the Taiwanese national swim team. After selecting her for the team, the coaches asked her to do an in-person evaluation of sorts at the end of February.

"We showed them my short-course times," Olmstead said. "My long-course times aren't that good, but he liked my short-course times. They wanted me to do a meet to see what I could do, and it went OK."

Olmstead trains every day while she and her mother, Anthia Olmstead, live in the Taiwanese city of Taichung. Though Olmstead is half Taiwanese, she didn't know how to speak the Chinese language when she arrived, but that didn't stop her from fitting in almost right away. Now, Taiwan has become a second home despite Marina not having lived there for even half a year yet.

"I like it a lot," Marina said. "It's different, but it's a good different. The kids are nice, and the coaching is good. I'm really comfortable here. I'm comfortable with the coaches and the swimmers."

Having her mother living with her helps, as Anthia is Taiwanese and can help translate the language. Marina is also slowly learning Chinese, though she admitted she's still shy about speaking it.

"Maybe in a couple of months," Marina joked. "My mom's here to help, and some of the things are just numbers, and I do know the numbers, so that's pretty good, and there are kids here that can speak English enough to where I understand them and we can have a conversation. Also, the coach uses hand gestures when he talks so I get the gist of things."

The language isn't the only adjustment Marina has had to make as certain little things about swimming are different than what she's used to in America. For instance, Olmstead said swimmers are allowed to dive into the pool for warmup in Taiwan, unlike in the U.S., and the Taiwanese "ready, set, go" count before a swim is faster than the American one. One thing she appreciates is how dedicated the coaches and swimmers are and the fact that they value her opinion.

"One thing they talked with me about during the first week is communicating back, so if they make a stroke change or alter something, they ask what I think," Marina said. "In America, they don't really do that. It's unusual to me, but I think it's really important. If you have an injury or something feels wrong, you can say something without the coach getting mad or thinking that you're faking an injury."

A sprinter, Marina swims the backstroke, freestyle and butterfly. Though endurance swimming isn't a focal point for sprinters, Marina said she's still working on that part of her game.

"We're pretty far out from a swim meet, so we'll change more to sprint-based (training) when we get closer, but we still do some sprinting," she said. "I'm working on my backstroke kick specifically."

Her next meet is supposed to take place in June, though with the coronavirus pandemic underway, meets are getting canceled and postponed. People are taking precautions such as wearing face masks, and some stores check temperatures before allowing people to enter and also offer customers hand sanitizer. Less than 500 COVID-19 cases were reported as of Thursday in Taiwan.

Anthia said only people with a Taiwanese passport are allowed in the country, and anyone coming in has to self-quarantine for two weeks — and the government uses the GPS locator on people's phones to make sure they follow the quarantine order. Still, Anthia said things are calm for the most part.

"People wear face masks a lot anyway," Anthia said. "They used to wear face masks for pollution, and a lot of people wear them when they ride scooters. Twenty years ago when (my husband) Bryan and I were here, we joked about how the scooter was the Taiwanese station wagon, because one-third of traffic is from scooters."

While Marina does miss her father and sister, Maya, she's able to FaceTime them and also FaceTime her friends back in the U.S. Other than that, she's strongly considering making Taiwan a permanent place of residence at some point, though she still plans to finish college in the U.S.

"After college I could definitely see myself coming back," Marina said.

Road to SEA Games 2019: Swimming [feat. Jonathan Tan, Ashley Lim]