Saturday, July 29, 2006

Challenges...

OK: SO....Today was my day off again so im sitting here and its even daylight outuside (which is a rarity for me) AND the internet is working which is also a big bonus. I started my day at 5:30am and got up to go to the recognised horse show in Old Salem. I figured that it was my chance to go to Old Salem (which is an AWESOME barn... eg the actual barn looks nicer than a house.) and to see Marika and one of my campers Sophie (an 11 year old superstar) compete, and because Marika was nervous so i wanted to support her and take pics etc etc... anyways, enough with the excuses, the point was that i got up early to go to the damn thing. So anywho, we got here and bummed around and Arno gave me some money for lunch which was awesome and i wandered around the gigantic facility and parked myself by the jumper ring for the day to watch everyone compete... unfortunately Marika never got to compete in the some 8 classes originally thought because her horse Apollo hit his already sore leg in warm up and became lame and her other horse KC (who is actually her dressage horse) wasnt able to compete because there weren't enough people at the high level she competes, at to go in the class! Sophie however (who by the way is really cool) competed and did really well competing against men and women of all ages and placing reserve champion. I pretty much took pictures all day with Soph's and Marika's cameras and a few with mine which hopefully i will get up on here later on.

My week has been an interesting one to say the least, I went to the water park as a lifeguard again on wednesday which was huge fun... however this session's campers seem to have a common theme running amoungst them... that they all have some sort of learing or social disorder... i have 4 children i am currently working with teaching them the basics of horse riding, all with some sort of learning problem... its a challenge but (this will sound corny) rewarding when you finally get them to do something correctly... i actually prefer it to teaching 'normal' children.... anyways, besides my lesson i have also been teaching water skiing in the afternoon which is also really fun. Ok, im going to go now and post this because in the last ten minutes it has grown dark and there is a big storm looming overhead which may interfere with the internet... so i will leave you with this single picture of me riding KC (marikas horse that i mentioned before) last night, when she was teaching me to jump properly... hope you are all safe and sound... would love to hear from you all.
Catch you soon...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great to hear from you again Dan, you do seem to have been having an interesting as well as fun trip. We loved the pics. Keep them coming. Will email you in a day or so, hope you can get them. Take care, Loved the bear pics. LUL G.ma & G.pa xxxxxxxxxxxxxx