My first time Ice skating in Norway.

When I was a child, I loved ice skating. We don’t have snow and ice in Brazil, but on Summer holidays, our biggest shopping center had an ice rink at the parking lot. I was there every year. First, I needed to hold the bars that surrounded the rink. After a few minutes I managed to ice skate without help. I learned to fall down and withdraw my hands immediately so that nobody could run over my fingers accidentally. My cousin went ice skating with me once. We skated together and it was like a dream to me.

Cut to a few decades later. Newly married, we had just moved to Norway and the Winter was sunny and cold. The lake was frozen and people could ice skate there. Yey!! Awesome!! Thought I.
However, when I reached the ice, I realized that it wasn’t the same as in Brazil. It wasn’t easy at all.
The ice was much more slippery than I remembered. I was so afraid to fall. I could barely drag myself. I wasn’t sliding, just kind of walking.
Oh no.
Everybody else was ice skating so well, enjoying themselves in that beautiful sunny day. I was just trying to keep calm and not fall down on the hard ice and brake the coccyx.

Few years after that episode, an ice rink was opening in Stavanger. I wanted to give it a try. I heard they had penguins you could hold and drag with you. For kids. Perfect for me! Ice rink, here I come.

The deal with this penguin is that it is heavy, so I had to lean forward in order to push it. This way I learned again that you should put your weight on the front, not back. After 15 minutes, I managed to leave the penguin and go ice skating all by myself. It felt great!

I can’t ice skate year round like I go to the gym. Living in Norway, you have to get used to seasons. The ice rink works only in the Winter. So I had to wait another eight months to try it again.

I thought that every year, when Winter began, I would have to start from scratch again and again. However, to my surprise, this Winter, I caught myself starting to ice skate without needing to hold the penguin. And even more shocking: I managed to hold my daughter and not let her fall, while I was wearing my ice skating boots. On the ice rink.
So that’s what I’ve learned from my ice skating experience: Never give up. Our bodies somehow adapt to the new environment. I’m not aiming to join the Olympic Games. My goal is to have a good time ice skating without falling.
Do what makes you happy. Don’t give up.