Hello everyone!
I am writing you
from my hotel room in Goteborg, Sweden!
After a long flight to Paris, a quick layover and a plane to Goteborg, Miami University Junior has safely arrived in Sweden! We are all incredibly excited to be here and
represent Team USA!! On our first day here, as many other teams do, we tried our
very hardest to keep our eyes open! After many hours of traveling we were
all exhausted, but rallied and were excited and ready to start our first
practice! Before we headed to the rink we got to walk around the area
near our hotel and get ourselves some lunch.
My group and I found an adorable little Italian place right around the
corner from our hotel over looking the water.
It was very cute and all of the staff was so nice and intrigued with why
we all looked the same. We chatted with
some of the waitresses who were very nice, ate our lunch and then headed back
to our hotel to get ready for practice. It was a short but very, very good
practice. It was a great opportunity to
get our feet under us after the trip and get used to this new ice. After our practice we had our first Swedish
meal! I loved it. We got to try some fish that was
caught locally and it was all pretty awesome.
By the time we had finished our dinner we were all practically falling
asleep at the table. After a short team meeting we got to head up to our
beds for a good nights sleep.
The next
day was the most fun of all. After
waking up early and getting in another great practice,
our team was allowed four hours to explore Goteborg. Our whole team took the ferry ride together
from our hotel into the heart of Goteborg and the shopping district. The Ferry ride was very cold but so
beautiful. Luckily there was an indoor
section! Although everything was in Swedish and we almost missed our stop, we
had some help and got off at the right place just in time to meet up with our
parents! Everyone split off into small
groups and headed around the town.
Goteborg is an absolutely beautiful city. Our group started off getting some souvenirs
at a tourist shop. Everyone got gifts
and t-shirts and some of us got some pretty cool looking jerseys!
From there we
stopped at a bakery and coffee shop where we got some delicious croissants and
amazing macaroons! The food was delicious!! I personally had never tried
macaroons before but I loved them! After
our little snack we walked around the streets for a while until we found a very
cool meat and cheese market. We got some
free samples, which were delicious!
After a little more walking around, we stopped was a
very cute chocolate shop. We all bought
some candies to bring home; my favorite was the salted caramel chocolate. It was so good!
Good luck to all teams!
Sennett
Saturday morning the ICE'Kateers woke up early and headed down to the rink for official practice for short program. We focused a great deal on making sure the technical panel could see all of our elements clearly and correctly during the session. We had two solid run-throughs; leaving rink feeling very confident for that evening. Back at the hotel we rested for a short time, but began our hair and make-up preparations early enough so we would be able to get back to the rink in order to watch Miami junior team. The junior team performed wonderfully, and we were so glad we got the chance to watch and cheer them on. Following the junior division, we went to warm up, and then took the ice.
We were pleased with our short program that night; overall it was a fairly strong skate. Although we did have some small mishaps in the routine, the ending product was something we were very much proud of. We left the rink that night looking forward to coming back and competing in the free skate. I think it's also important to mention the support of our fans here in Austria, as well as from the ones back in the U.S.. Their enthusiasm was truly spectacular; we really could not ask for better friends and family to be there for us.