Freitag und Samstag

Yesterday was normal except for two things. One, I got horses ready for Marion. Two, after work I went to a party with all of the girls from the barn. We went to one of their houses. Of course, they spoke exclusively in German, but I still was able to catch a drift every once in a while about what they were talking about. The food was quiche...with pork in it. And some sort of potato cake...with bacon in it. *sigh* So I was served streusel. And to drink? Wine and shots. Lol. I didn't have any, nor do I ever want to. The party was still fun though and I got to know some of the people I see on a daily basis better.
This morning I did my normal morning routine. Peggy has the weekend off so I volunteered to muck out mine and her barn, which is eight stalls. I thought maybe good karma would come around...
Turns out I was right! I tacked up Angelina and entered the arena, where Marion was riding. As I warmed up, all of a sudden a voice, in English, came across the arena, yelling at me to make my hands vertical. Little did I know it was the start of my first lesson. It turned out to be mostly on my equitation, which is good, because I admittedly do have poor equitation at times. Some things I need to work on include keeping my hands vertical, my legs underneath me, half halting with my seat more, and looking in between the horse's ears and not down to the inside. Marion was hard on me, but that's good. Those are all things that need to be fixed quickly.
We did lots of transitions. This place is obsessed with them. Why? Because not only does it keep your horse light on your aids, it shifts their weight onto their hindquarters and builds their abs. A horses abs are what make a horse lift their back. All good things. We never went around the arena once without doing some sort of transition, whether it was in-gait, trot to walk and back up, or a lateral movement. It kept Angelina thinking and building muscles. By the end of the lesson, she was rounder in her back and fluid and my eq improved. Hooray!
Then I did some other silly things, like mess around with enormous bags of carrots. Did I mention that they feed a bucketful of carrots as a meal?! Yeah. Pretty weird. It makes me giggle every time I think about it. :) Also, since we're on the subject, they normally feel hay once a day, but some horses are exceptions, and the grain looks like a mixture of cereal, some sort of mash, oats, and pelleted feed.
Afterwords I went for lunch where I ate more soup. I'm eating a crapload of soup lately. At least it's all yummy soup. And German bread is super yummy. You can buy fresh breads at the grocery store. They make it right there. So I ate all of that, sat there and felt awesome, and had a long lunch since it's Saturday. Wootage.
Then the rest of the day was pretty normal. But it was awesome. :)