Hockey Night In Mexico City

It's 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) outside right now at 10:30 pm but we spent the evening inside an ice rink at less than 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit). Sure, our fingers are feeling a little tingly for the first time in months but we had fun! Our two oldest daughters had their first hockey practise - ever - and it was in Mexico City. The rental skates had hockey skate boots with figure skate blades. It was a new challenge for our long blade speedskating girls but we are confident that after a few practises, they will get the hang of it.

Ice rinks had become our third home (after our own home and the church). It was a nice bit of familiarity after several months literally in the desert! Marcel even got to be a hockey dad and help a bit with putting back a pane of plexiglass that fell out after a light check into the boards. Brittany has five other girls on her midget level team and Petra has three other girls on her peewee level team. We have put our order in for some equipment with a man who drives up to St. Louis, MO ever week as hockey equipment here is extremely expensive and we didn't have any space in our little U-Haul trailer to bring some down with us.

We really wanted to do inline speedskating but the facility is an hour or more from our house, way over by the airport. This ice rink is just 25 minutes away so we're settling for the national Canadian disease and doing the hockey thing. Another lovely difference with playing hockey in Mexico City: practises aren't at ridiculously early hours in the morning!

I (Ingrid) was also noticing the well-heeled hockey moms and wondering which lady or ladies I will be able to get to know as we sit around watching our kids practise. There's a Starbucks about five minutes away - pray for open hearts so that as we get to know these sporty families, we will have opportunities to share Christ over a cup of hot chocolate!