Time to Tango

First things first, today was the last lesson in the current set of lessons. My usual coach was back, and has passed me in:

• Two Foot Jump Skating Forward
• One Foot Glide (inside edges).

That means I will now be starting the next lesson set (in two weeks time) on Level 4. I'm really quite chuffed about that!

Today, on the last lesson, it was seriously depleted numbers. I suppose this is natural - lots of people sign up thinking they will be doing axels after the first two lessons, and then find it much harder than expected and lose their enthusiasm. We were also slightly short on coaches, so they put the middle levels together, to start learning the Canasta Tango!

I would really like to do ice dancing, and the little bit that we learnt was fun but hard. Mind you, trying to learn something that included crossovers was particularly tricky, when we haven't even done them yet! My coach told me to do a simplified version of them, just putting the free foot in front, rather than crossing it right over, which was easier. It also included chasses, something where your free leg swings from the back to front (swing roll?) and something where your free leg comes in next to your skating leg, which then extends in front as you transfer the weight onto your free leg (no idea what this is called). It was all quite hard, but it was interesting, not to mention slightly scary, feeling your weight transfer on skating legs, with free legs changing from back to front, to back to front.

Still managing to avoid the flu, even with tending to my sick flatmate, who has normal and gastric flu (luverly!). Mind you, still ingesting the cocktail of vitamins and echinacea every morning as well! I was feeling quite rundown at work today, but then realised I was just tired from having late nights for the last week. Time for bed . . .