Ice-skating!

Hey everyone!

I know I haven’t written anything lately, but it’s because I’ve been busy learning French and …. ICE-SKATING! I absolutely love it! On Saturday we went to the one in my little town for the first time mainly because we couldn’t find it and it had been closed the for summer months.

The first time we got there we were a bit too early so went driving for half and hour and then came back. At 13:30 it was time to go. We didn’t really know what to do, since the only time any of us had been ice-skating in France was in Disney Land’s outside ice-rink.

So anyway I went up to the woman behind the counter said “Patinoire?”. She replied “Oui, oui pour deux?”. Once we got our tickets we walked around to the doors, there was one of those twirling barriers that you walk though and it clicks, so like you would Venetia just walked into it… yeah, you actually had to click this button before so it would unlock. Venetia quickly clicked it and off she went. Once we were in we asked the two girls in there what to do, they pointed and we sort of got the jest.

After a while of unstable-ised walking we finally got used to them opened the swinging door and were met by the freezing temperature inside and the empty atmosphere. There was absolutely no-one there yet. This wasn’t a bad thing, it meant that we could skate and get our bearings before anyone else came out. I was actually extremely surprised! The last time I’d been on ice was nine months ago in Ireland, saying good bye to my friends. But I just got on the ice and went.

More people came and by the end of the day there were at least 40 :P. Big difference to the amount of people there would have been in Dun Donald Ice-Bowl. It was the ice-rink in Belfast. Like you’d get there and there’d be literally hundreds of people crowded the rink!

The best part was that at 15:40 there was a LOUD siren and the shutters began to come down over the large windows, then loud “electro” (rave) music began to play and the disco lights came on. Lots of fun! About 20-30 minutes later though, the shutters came up again and the lights switched back to normal. I was like Aww!

It’s okay half an hour or so later it happened again :-D. In Dun Donald it stayed with the lights and the rave music the whole time. We skated for four hours straight, I only fell once :-)! It wasn’t really like falling, Venetia was pushing me from behind then I skidded but quickly lifted myself up again :-P.

Once the session was over, we got off the ice, wobbling because of the numbness and because of how painful our muscles were! We changed back into our shoes, had some difficulty walking, and then went home. It was so nice to sit down! For three whole days I was in severe pain with my legs and arms. Guess I’m not used to doing so much exercise :-P. On the third day I thought it would be so much better but it was worse! I literally just flopped out of bed.

On Tuesday, I was much better and so my mom and I decided to go ice-skating! Wooo! We went to the place, but we were an hour early, so we went shopping, came back and then it was still closed! I looked at the large time-table again and realised I had been looking at the wrong day! The patinoire (ice-rink) was only open three days a week, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday does seem like a pretty random day but in France, schools finish early and primary schools don’t even go on a Wednesday. So we reluctantly went home but decided that we’d come back the next day.

Yes, so yesterday we got there at 13:30, skated for three hours, went shopping and then picked my sister up from work. It was loads of fun, despite the fact that I fell three times. The first time I fell it was because I was trying to show my mom something :-P.

The other two times were near the end and were very painful! I hurt my knee, elbow and my side. I actually grazed my elbow and just sat where I fell and said “… Ow”. Really funny after the pain had gone away….

Last night I couldn’t even sleep on my side! I also fell on my hands, so that was very sore with them being numb from the cold already! Other than that I had an awesome day! My mom’s figure skates were sticking into her toe so we asked if we could change them and the guy said we could use the hockey skates if we wanted. We did! It was so much easier, for the first 10 minutes or so it felt very slippery but I got the hang of them.

I can even do the leg movements like a continuous figure eight, the snake, turn and skate on one foot and do a stop on my right heel whilst gliding on my left foot. So I’ve made up my mind about which ice-skates I want to get, just for recreational “go-around-the-rink” ice-skating. Hockey skates! :-P

Pity Venetia didn’t get to try them out but I’ll just ask if we can use them this Saturday again. Oh! We also found out how to use the lockers! It’s all electronical and the instructions were easy enough to follow except for one that I couldn’t understand. We just got the guy to come and show us :-). So now I know :-P.

Really looking forward to Saturday, Venetia’s going to teach me how to skate backwards and do a T stop :-). So I’ll tell you how that goes and I’ll also try and get some pictures or even recordings for you.

I think that I’ll leave it at that but if anyone has any ice-skating tips please e-mail them to me at kissmyfishy@gmail.com, and I’m still waiting on those photos :-P.

Hope to hear from you all soon!

- Bianca