JGP Courchevel: Bonjour from France!

We are excited to have Team USA ice dancer Kevin Leahy blogging from the Junior Grand Prix event in Courchevel.  This is the JGP debut for Leahy and his partner, Emily Day. 

Bonjour from France! I am so excited to be competing in and blogging for JGP France. First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Kevin Leahy and I skate along side Emily Day. Emily and I are junior ice dancers and we represent team USA. We teamed up in May of 2012 and since then have been sectional, national, and now international competitors.

Day 1 – Travel day.

How can I sum up a travel day? Long. However adventurous. It started with a short flight from Santa Ana to San Francisco international airport. Then, we flew 10 hrs to Frankfurt from San Francisco. The flight was nice, however, my favorite part was probably being able to stand up in the end. In Frankfurt, we were able to meet up with one of our teammates, Chase Belmontes! From there, we had our final flight to Lyon. Finally! We had landed in France! However, we still had a three hour bus ride from Lyon to Courchevel.

Even though I bumped my head numerous times on the ceiling, this bus ride was my favorite part of the trip. It was my favorite because I was able to see all the beauty that Courchevel possesses. The mountains were full of green trees and full of life. It had crystal clear creeks and lakes that seemedto flow joyfully down the side of the mountain. The air wascrisp and clear and it gave a nice cool breeze. It’s quite peaceful up here in Courchevel and I absolutely love it.

Now lets talk about something that wasn’t so fun…but something we will all laugh about eventually. We get in the shuttle heading back to our hotel which is 10 minutes away… 25 minutes later we’re halfway down the mountain and the driver has no idea where we are… We circled the same streets at least twice until finally we find the hotel for one of the officials, who is in our shuttle, only to find out that it was closed. Then we get back into our shuttle and finally after about 40 minutes we arrive at our hotel. There we learned who our roommates were and collected our USA pins and little USA flags. My roommate is Chase Belmontes and I’m excited and happy he is my roommate.

Alright now time to search for wifi… And that just about sums up my first day at JGP Courchevel! Can’t wait to see what tomorrow has in store.

Kevin