louise-owen.com

June, 2008

September, 2008

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Bonjour at last!

9/3/2008 1:12:49 PM

Bonjour Friends,

We are so sorry that we have not been in touch sooner. We have had a very intense couple of months one way or another.

Some of you may be aware that I had been suffering with foot problems before we had our break in June. Unfortunately those problems have continued. We began training again the second week in July and within days of that I had an infection in each foot. I had antibiotics and a very strong will which kept me training. The problems had occurred due to a bad pair of new boots, I threw the boots down and took myself off for a new pair and I was so desperate I would have taken any. I have a much better pair of boots now and I am skating much less like a beginner! My feet have still not quite healed nearly two months later and I am left with scars on both feet where the infections were but I guess its all part of the job but we are back on track now.

The training has been so intense itself. We have been training a 32 hour week and on the go from 6am until 5pm. We have worked with some amazing people dancers and skaters and really feel we have learnt so much in such a short space of time. A highlight for us was working with former World Ice Dance Champion Kristina Regoczy. She was quite technical and had a style similar to that of our previous coach Joan; it was nice to step back to that for a short time.

It certainly has been a challenge from a morale point of view with my feet and training being interrupted for both Owen and I. Owen has been great and very supportive which has helped. We have had a few a rays of sunshine that has kept us going and helped us to remain focussed. You may or may not know that we have been selected for Team GB based on our results last season, we have been selected by the British Olympic Association for BOA passport status as prospective Olympic competitors and we have been selected for two ISU international competitions (we will confirm which at a later date). We are so so proud of these achievements but realise that we now have to work extra hard to maintain this and push ourselves up and up.

We have not been short of visitors either, my uncle and cousin were the first they came bearing gifts of a tool kit, a shelf, a GB road map and a lot of love and best wishes. It was just what we needed – all of it actually!!! After, followed Owen’s mum, she was chief cook, seamstress and agony aunt for the time she came – apparently she came for a holiday, she probably needed one by the time she left! We had a lovely time. Uncle and cousin returned to make sure we had done the jobs we promised we would do and they thought we wouldn’t – we are competitors of course we proved them wrong. Then last but not least my parents, sister and her boyfriend. They came with birthday gifts (thank you for the cards and presents people) and a video camera so we could see what we need to work on. Its great to have everyone visit but saying goodbye is the hard part. We do not have any planned visitors for now as we have so much work on and we will be travelling all over the place.

Speaking of which, 15^th and 16^th of September we will be competing in Sheffield, GB at the National IJS event. It would be lovely to see friendly faces and if you would like to come and watch we would love to have you there (here is the link to the timetable - http://www.iceskating.org.uk/node/1884).

The summer training has now finished and we are having a few days off before the build up to the competitions – it was definitely required, everywhere hurt!!! In true Louise and Owen style – we can’t sit still so on Monday we decided to take a trip somewhere! We picked Valence, slightly south of Lyon and about an hour away on the train. We got up at 6.30 am to catch the early train, arrived at the platform, got on the train and stayed on the train at Lyon station for 2 hours while it was delayed. We should have arrived in Valence at 9.35am and actually arrived closer to 12pm. It was a lovely little place, just a shame everything closes on a Monday so not a lot to see! All was not lost I did manage to find somewhere open and buy some earrings to go with this seasons costumes. We did a lot of walking; there was a nice park and some lovely scenery actually. We had a good laugh and escaped for a day.

When we arrived home it as a bit late to cook so we decided we would go out for dinner to save time (it’s a very rare occasion). It was a lovely clean, modern restaurant. Owen had a starter which was really good, he ordered Chicken with ginger and I ordered Beef Tartare for my main course. I was very stupid as I presumed it would be like a beef pie – oh know it was raw mince meat!!! When I order steak I have to have it very very well cooked I just cannot eat it pink. When my food arrived it was close to saying moo - it was just not cooked at all. I didn’t want to be rude because it was my mistake with the menu so I made myself eat half as the French are very proud of their food. I can’t believe I did it; I put lots of ketchup with it and mixed in the salad. It would have been lovely if you like that sort of thing!!!!!!

We have managed to finish out apartment. It is very nice and feels like home, we have even had a little flat warming party to celebrate. We had a little touching up to do yesterday as we had had candles burning in the lounge, Owen blew them out and went to bed the night before. I went in the lounge yesterday morning to find black soot and burnt walls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It seems we singed our newly painted walls; it was hilarious – at least until the paint rollers had to come out again.

Our French language is improving, we have taken classes throughout the summer and we are trying to put it in to practice where we can. I’m sure you all want to know how Owen’s cooking is doing. Well it seems Owen can actually cook, I forced him to cook a couple of weeks ago and he made a great Spaghetti Bolognese. It seems to be he won’t cook not can’t cook – I am wise to his tactics now. He has taken a liking to baking cakes and again he is very good at this, apart from the two occasions where he has forgotten to use the oven mitts to take the cake tin out of the oven and spilt cake mix all inside and out of the super clean oven!! I loved that one!

News Flash – we are finally allowed to visit the hairdressers. We do not look particularly well groomed at the moment as we were not allowed to cut our hair. Owen has his hair done today and me tomorrow. We are hoping that it turns out ok as our French is not that great to be able to explain well enough what we may want!! We have paper bags and hats at the ready if it is awful.

We still think about you all lots and thank you for sending your wishes when you do.

Love and Best Wishes Always

Louise (& Owen) xxx

1 comments

Update

6/4/2008 2:22:56 AM

Bonjour,

Things still fine here and still enjoying ourselves.

Here is the latest…

Sorry to make you all jealous but the weather is beautiful here, so much so we were out in the park practicing lifts and I got sun burnt. Can you believe it and I’m lobster pink, but not just that I have criss cross strap marks where my sports top was. Very embarrassing!

I also hurt my hip!!! I have actually no idea how I did it. I actually found out it hurt whilst standing still. If you could see the exercises we are expected to attempt on a daily basis, one would expect I had done it then, but no. We went to see our Physical Preparator today; I had to tell him my hip was hurt. I was not allowed to train and much to Owen’s amusement, I had to sit the session out with electrodes attached to my ‘gluteal’ muscles (to ease the pain and heal it). It was rather embarrassing!!! Very funny to the onlooker though – I guess. Woke up the following day absolutely fine and it has not hurt since.

One Tuesday afternoon we had a bombshell dropped on us. It was announced that we had an exhibition to do on Wednesday evening – like the next day. We had one major problem, we had no programme prepared, no costumes, no skating tights/trousers or make up. Unfortunately the coaches saw no problem and made us do our Original Dance of last season, which incidentally the last time we did that was the British Championships 4 months ago. They ‘found’ us some costumes we had two run thoughs and turned up for the show naive of the fact that we were about to perform the biggest exhibition of our careers to date. We stupidly thought that this was a small low profiled evening, how wrong we were. We were promptly ushered into the changing rooms where we met our fellow performers, Fredric Dambier, Julia Obertas and Sergey Slavnov, Rori Flack, Fernand Fedronic and the shows presenter Annick Dumont – French Television correspondent and former skater. It was basically a similar set up to ‘Art on Ice’ with singers, skaters and presenters. We were like the warm up act for the show and just as we were preparing to go on the ice, the runner kindly informed us that the stadium was sold out ie thousands of people. It was hilarious and petrifying all at once. Thankfully we skated very well and received great applause. It was an amazing experience for us and eventually, after the event we were very pleased to have been made to skate!!! As it was pointed out to us, if you can deal with events like this your competition becomes easier, we hope. We got over the excitement pretty quickly when we were up early morning to make training again!!!

I had a rather amusing and sad morning Friday, I wanted to eat an apple. I removed the sticker and it fell off my finger. Owen happened to be bent down picking something up off the floor, the sticker dropped in his hair. Neither one of us realised until mid afternoon when Lloyd commented ‘Dude, your cheveux’ and started laughing. We both had no idea what he was talking about, Owen rubbed his hair to find he had been labelled ‘Pink Lady Apple’ for most of the day including skating, numerous tram journeys etc. We laughed a lot. Lloyd and I did and Owen just a little. He he.

I have to say it is very nice having Lloyd Jones (a British Skater and friend) here as well. We are all in the same changing room and he has a great sense of humour. You wouldn’t think putting your skates on could be so entertaining but between Lloyd and Owen it’s a giggle.

Speaking of which it seems Muriel has not realised that Lloyd and Owen are different people. She calls them both by the same name. She shouts ‘Owen, Owen’ Owen goes to see her and she says she didn’t want him she wanted the other one. None of us can work out how she can get them mixed us as they don’t look anything like each other. The really strange thing is Joan used to do exactly the same thing!!!

Oh and BIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG news. We have started French lessons. We had one lesson and Owen thought he was fluent!!!! It made me chuckle. Its quite strange being back at school.

Anyway I’m hoping everything is going well at home. Just short time until I’m home.

Lots of Love

Louise

xxx

P.S. Even bigger news - we have an apartment. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

0 comments

Lyon

6/4/2008 2:16:07 AM

Bonjour Bonjour,

Ca va?

I must apologise for not doing this sooner. I totally presumed that our life line would be the internet, however typically where we are staying has no access, the library where I can get access will not let you access personal sites ie emails, so I am left with buying food for the sake of it at an internet café, with pathetic signal which lets me send about one email every four hours……………..hence my delay.

Apart from my frustration of no communication lines with the rest of the world, I absolutely love it here. My body hurts from head to toe, I am black and blue with bruises, my brain is overloaded with information but... I do love it!

We have got our Freedance music and have begun our choreography. It is very different from what we have done before. We have not totally decided on Original Dance music yet, we are still working on that.

We have had a fun couple of weeks one way or another. Within the first couple of days we were on TV with a famous skating star called Phillipe Candeloro, which was hilarious, particularly as we couldn’t understand what on earth was being said!!! Last week we were guests at the French team show – Stars sur Glace. The show tours round France at the end of their competitive season.

It seems Owen and I now have to change our exhibition programme though, as Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schonfelder (the world ice dance champions) use the same music and unfortunately at the moment, they do a far better job of it than we do!!! Gutting!

Can you believe it we still have no home either!!! Well we have a temporary home but not our own place yet. We have seen many. We have visited one with a triangular bedroom you can’t get a bed in, one with no doors on the bedrooms, one at the top a huge building with no lift and over 5 flights of stairs, one with the toilet about half a mile away and one (much to Owen’s amusement) next to a club where men visit and lady’s dance ;-). We have narrowed the search slightly and hope to have something sorted soon. Keep your fingers crossed.

Oh and Owen is learning to cook, he can chop vegetables and we have had a cake which was like an inch thick cookie, very strange, not what he intended but surprisingly tasty and his speciality burnt pasta. You should be very impressed he is making vast progress.

I have to say the highlight of last weekend was definitely without question was finding where we could buy British Salt and Vinegar crisps from. You may think that sounds completely ridiculas but I tell you, after no Walkers for two weeks, they were the best thing we have ever tasted!! (Very sad I know).

Anyway you will be pleased to know that we have booked our flights home. It is unlikely that I will be in to teach but I will be in to see you all. We are home for a month but I am away on holiday with my family for two weeks. Within the time we are home we have brand spanking new boots and blades to break in, so you will all be able to look, laugh and wonder why on earth we moved to France when we look like we can’t skate anymore!!! It will be sore feet – honest.

Despite loving it here, we think about you all a lot and we are striving to make you all proud. Thank you very much for all the gift, card and wishes once again. We have only been here two weeks and we will have occasions when I’m quiet certain we will wish we were back home, when times get hard the tokens and message you all send will remind us why we are here.

All my love and best wishes

Louise (& Owen)

P.S. My French is improving. I can now say hello, goodbye, ok, my head hurts, I have hot feet, it doesn’t matter, its funny, I am tired!!! None of which makes a conversation and in most situations is completely useless!!!

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