Sunday, November 24, 2013

Day 24: new experiences

 I'm thankful that we get to try new things. Life would be pretty boring if we had to choose one thing to do for the rest of our life and we never got to do anything else. I like experiencing new things. When Mckay and I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to learn curling, we were pretty excited.
Yes, Curling. The winter sport you always see on the Olympics but have never actually known how its played. Well, now I know!

Mckay has a Chem.E. friend here at Purdue that curls and was even on his college curling team as an undergrad.
Erik is connected in the Curling community and still plays regularly. There is a Chicago curling club and they often invite new comers in to learn how to curl. So we found some wonderful people to watch our children all day on a Saturday and we drove to Chicago (2.5 hrs away) to go curling.

Curling ice is a little different from ice skating or hockey ice. Right before a game, it's misted with a hose so lots of little drops of water freeze on the ice and make it"bumpy."
 The guy in the middle is spraying the ice. The guy on the right is leveling and evening out all the bumps.

We were brought onto the ice, taught a few basics and then we curled!
 
I felt a little goofy at first, but once I got the hang of it, I felt very graceful gliding across the ice.

After we played a game with the whole group, they let the three of us stay on the ice for a while longer. Mckay and I played a few rounds against each other and Erik helped and directed us.
 We had a lot of fun! It is a really cool sport to learn. Everyone was very nice and accepting of us beginners, even the experts who have been playing for 30+ years.

 There was a little museum in the building where we got so see some really old curling stone and brooms.

Worn out and starving after a hard day of curling, we got some traditional deep dish Chicago pizza.
We had never tried authentic Chicago pizza before and it tasted beyond amazing! The crust, the cheese, the slab of sausage that covered the entire pizza.... all soooo good! It was already night and we still had a long drive ahead of us to get home to our kids, so Mckay snuck in a few bites of pizza while driving.
 Don't worry, Mckay while eating pizza is still safer than most of the Chicago drivers who were texting or looking at their phones while driving.

I'm grateful for new experience and learning new things. I especially love new food experiences. And now I'm really excited to watch the winter Olympics in a few months so I can see more curling.

1 comment:

Katie said...

That's so cool! And that pizza looks amazing!