2014 JGP Tallinn Blog: Our first interview!

U.S. ice dancer Christina Carreira is blogging for Ice-dance.com from the Junior Grand Prix event in Tallinn, Estonia. 

Hi!  I’m Christina Carreira writing to you from Tallinn, Estonia as Anthony and I are about to begin our second Junior Grand Prix.

Day One – Travel day

We might say that the trip here was full of excitement.  Driving from Novi to Detroit airport with Anthony and our training mate Daniel Klaber was quite entertaining. The flight to Frankfurt is ranking #1 on my worse flight list and we were happy to arrive there.   Since we were in Frankfurt only two weeks ago, we still remembered all the bakeries full of nice pastries, so we had a nice breakfast with Holly (Moore) and Daniel. Anthony was in charge of the entertainment, Daniel in charge of sarcasm and Holly and I were just laughing.  We had a good time! We spent the rest of our 3 hour layover just hanging around and relaxing.

Once in Tallinn and after everyone had their luggage, the ride to the hotel was fast and we got to see a little of old Tallinn.  It seems so beautiful and I can’t wait to go visit! As we arrived to our hotel, our team leader, Jennifer Hartley, was their waiting for us so all of Team USA went for accreditation, got our rooms and that was it.  In less than 30 minutes, we were all set up!

I went to my room, took a nice and well deserve shower and met Anthony for the team meeting. The meeting was fun.  We got to know all of the Team USA members.  The judges were there and also our doctor, Tina Cervieri.  After the meeting, I went straight to bed and that was it for day one.

Day Two – Practice day

After 11.5 hours of sleep, I got up, called Anthony and we both went down for breakfast.  One of the most important things when you are away at competitions is finding a grocery store, so that was our first mission here in Tallinn.  The best part was that we got to see the city and the people that live here, then it was back to the hotel and getting ready to go for the short dance draw and our first practice.

We did a good job at the draw and we will be skating second of the second warm up.

The rink is brand new, it is amazing I will send picture tomorrow…. But it is freezing and I’m not sure that this word can describe how cold it is… I thought my brain was freezing!

Both practices were good with the second one being better than the first one. After our practice, we had an interview with Debbie Wilkes. We were excited and nervous about it.  Jennifer, our Team Leader, and our coach, Greg Zuerlein were there to guide us. Then, Anthony decided to show Jennifer some of his moves. That is when Jennifer started getting nervous as Anthony and I were getting more and more excited about it. The interview was fun to do.  It was a nice experience and Anthony kept his hands behind his back, didn’t do any wiggle and everything went ok.

So that pretty much wraps it up for our first two days here!!

Good night!
Christina