Today I got to swim with a masters team here in Wellington. I expected the pool to be meters, but I expected it to be 25 meters in length. Instead, this pool was 33.3 meters (but not all pools here are this length, another pool in Christchurch was 25 meters)
Another difference was how folks circle swim. Back in the US, it’s standard to go counterclockwise (up on the right, down on the left) in a lane, but here they swim the opposite.
And another difference has been the clocks. Back home, pace clocks have one hand usually, but here in both pools I’ve visited, the clocks had two hands, a red seconds hand and a white seconds hand (see picture above). The coaches seem to switch whichever hand they reference based on if it’s closer to the top, which was easy for me to forget.