#showskater

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Manatí

We were busy bees during our last week in Puerto Rico. We spent our day off at Luquillo Beach ...

A few days later had a barbecue at the venue and I played my first game of flip-cup...

and THEN the next day Cale, Madey, Allye, and I went on a trip to El Yunque Rainforest. Allye rented a car and some random guy tried to help us park on the side of the road ... the problem was that the shoulder dipped down too low so we almost got stuck trying to get out. 

... and with that we wrapped things up in Puerto Rico. It was an wonderful preview as to the great fun coming up ahead!

This is Vitaly, my super awesome lifting partner ... too bad he had to go back to his own show!! 

I would never have guessed that I’d come to love them so much! <3 

PS. My name will forever be on a bench outside of our Poncé hotel! LOL (I didn’t do it!)

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Onto Poncé!

Before we left our hotel in San Juan, a bunch of us got together for a relaxing beachside yoga class led by Margot.

We also had a fun night out at the local oceanside bar.

Oh yeah, and by the time we were done in San Juan my legs had been torn apart by the “no-see-ums” aka sand flies. The hotel had warning flyers out, but I guess I decided to learn the hard way. Seriously, like 30 bites ALL OVER my legs that woke me up from the itchiness. If you go to Puerto Rico ... GET BUG SPRAY!

^^UGH SO ITCHY!!

Poncé was felt like the middle of nowhere!

It wasn’t the most glamorous part of town, but the architecture was interesting. There were a lot of old, run-down buildings. But it was still beautiful. Maybe it was the time of day I went, but it was really weirdly empty ... there were hardly any people around. 

Since Alex and I had a poolside room, we hosted the girls’ party ... of course the boys crashed it by the end! 

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The Catamaran Trip

After a week of shows and hard work, it was time to relax and have some fun in the Puerto Rican sun! My first big outing with the group was an awesome catamaran trip (exactly a year after my last catamaran trip with my cruise ship friends). Snorkeling was really cool and we went to an island where a scene of Pirates of the Caribbean IV was filmed. It was so beautiful! (Oh yeah, and we drank the boat out of alcohol HAH!)

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San Juan

Since last year was full of so many fun times, I’m going to parallel it with whatever goes on this year. 

San Juan, Puerto Rico - July 16, 2015 - my very first show with the company and the energy was absolutely electric ... I couldn’t believe I was in front of a crowd of 6,000 people! I’m pretty sure I teared up during finale **is this really happening??** A few of my friends from the cruise ship came to watch the show ... loved seeing them!

After our first week of shows was done, we had the chance to explore beautiful Old San Juan. San Juan was one of the stops we made when I did the cruise ship, so there was definitely some déjà vu going on. It was just as beautiful as I remembered, and even nicer not worrying about what time “all aboard” was!

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Paratendonitis

...is actually really relieving news in regards to the Achilles pain I’ve been feeling! It started pretty suddenly at the end of June while doing shows in South Africa, my skate just started rubbing weirdly against the tendon area. I tried putting sponges in, punching my skate, putting bungas on ... nothing relieved it and I wasn’t about to sit out the shows so I just kept truckin’. I’ve been resting it since getting back almost two weeks ago and yesterday I went in to see an foot-ankle specialist who was absolutely wonderful! He said I have the most textbook case of paratendonitis that he’s seen in all his 25 years of practicing! (Paratendonistis is inflammation of the sheath surrounding the tendon, but not the actual tendon so yay!). There was also a weird “creaky hinge” feeling I had when pointing and flexing my toe, the doctor said that’s called “crepitus.” And the electric shock feeling is coming from the sural nerve that runs right near the Achilles.  So I’m happy that it’s nothing too too serious. I got my skates adjusted right when I got home so after some physical therapy, icing, anti-inflammatories, and a little more break time I should be good as new. 

But about breaktime ... It’s really hard for me not to practice. I still go to the rink to teach, but I just want to skate!! It’s not that I’m bored, I have so much to do ... I JUST WANT TO SKATE. Well, I guess it’s better to be fully healed and ready to be 100% for this upcoming tour so I’ll take it day by day. In the meantime, I’ve decided that I’m going to be a more active blogger. I guess I do some pretty cool things on tour and I’d love to be able to share my experiences more thoroughly than just a post or two on instagram or facebook so I’ll try my best! It’ll also encourage me to work on my videos more because those are surely piling up.

let’s take a moment to appreciate how cute Thunder is in his new sweater (he had it on for a full 5 minutes before running through the trees and poking a hole in it)!