Update from Göteborg

Hello everyone! I'm Ashley Tomich, a new DREAMer, and a member of the Synchroettes Junior team.  After a flight departing from Newark, NJ on Wednesday night and a quick layover in Copenhagen, Denmark we safely arrived in Göteborg, Sweden thursday morning. We stopped at our beautiful hotel, the Novotel, to drop all of our luggage change so we could head over to the rink to have our first practice. Although our feet felt a bit swollen from flying, we did lots of skills and a few parts of the program to get used to the ice and get our knees bending.  After practice, we went back to the hotel and had an early dinner and were all very happy to get to bed early as we all felt a little bit of the jet lag.

On our way to our first international competition! Fun fact: My teammate Flora and I also sat together on the flight to our first National Championships 7 years ago in Colorado Springs.

Friday, we woke up and got to enjoy a beautiful breakfast at the hotel and were then off again to the rink.  We watched a bit of Miami's practice in the official competition rink and put on our skates in one of the locker rooms there to then walk across the parking lot to the back rink for our practice. This rink was tiny and cold but it didn't stop us from smiling our way through a strong two hour practice, especially while wearing our Team USA jackets.  As this is the international debut for the Synchroettes, it is a very special experience for all of us and we are extremely proud and honored to be competing here while representing our country!

Synchroettes Junior at their unofficial practice with US team leader Colette and team doctor Tina.

Since our hotel is located along the water, we got a chance to take the ferry into the city of Göteborg.  It was nice to walk around and do some shopping.  We took the ferry back to the hotel in time for dinner, off-ice to watch some video, and then the draw.  The draw was for the junior and senior teams competing and was held in one of the conference rooms here at the hotel. They had tins of swedish candy with a number written on the bottom for the captains of each team to pick to decide the skating order for Saturday. We will be skating third in the short program event. Now we're off to bed as we have an early wake up call tomorrow morning for the official practice, but I know I, and the rest of my team, are excited for the competition to begin and to cheer on our fellow US teams, Miami and Crystallettes!

Three of the five DREAM skaters in Sweden: Ashleigh O., Ashley T., and Ashley M.

Stay tuned for more updates to come from other DREAM skaters here in Sweden. Go USA!

Ashley