Met a new adult skater

Earlier last month, I noticed a new face at the rink. She had come one day for an introductory lesson, after which her coach said to me, "hey, she's not a beginner!".

I wouldn't be surprised if the rink didn't tell her that their "introductory lessons" was supposed to be an introduction to being on the ice, rather than an introduction to the coach. In either case, it doesn't quite matter to me...

She signed up for lessons and has been coming quite regularly on Sunday afternoons. She is working on double jumps & flying spins, and often a time I felt sorry for her that it was so crowded and there wasn't much space to do anything. Nevertheless, I appreciated her courage and persistence.

I hardly saw her speak to anyone. Not so surprising, as there are no adult figure skaters around at that time, nor are there other skaters at her level. I usually don't like to stay long after coaching on Sundays, so I never spoke to her either... until yesterday.

It must be lonely skating around and practising on your own when there is such a crowd of strangers. So yesterday, I decided it would be nice to be friendly. After all, it was next to impossible to do anything, and I was spending too much time standing around watching which way the crowd was going. I said hi to her and introduced myself.

She moved to Singapore 2 months ago. She has been skating for quite some time before, but hardly has time to skate more than one day a week. That's a shame, 'cos I'm sure she'd be making much faster progress if she skates more. But good for her, she's keeping it up! :-)