After suffering through a hideously crappy day, I decided at the very last minute to go to a singles activity organized by my church. I found out about it this afternoon, kind of forgot, and then when I got up to my room at 7:30 this evening it sprung back into my mind. I thought that certainly I’d be late already, but when I opened up the announcement email, it said it started at 9:00pm. Perfect! I quickly did my hair, put on my current favorite outfit, threw on some make-up, and out I went.

I actually wasn’t all that interested in the activity itself: the plan was for a big ice skating party, but since I’m horrific at roller-skating and I have awful luck with sports, I thought it would be too much of a temptation of fate to strap blades to my feet. I was more interested in just getting out, interacting with new people, and watching the ensuing carnage from a game of broom-hockey.

Turns out, as I was laughing at the various people waddling around on the ice, chasing three separate balls around the ice, a very nice Hungarian man came up to me. I had met him before, at the New Years Eve dance that I went to way back when, but I hadn’t seen him since. He spotted me when he walked in the room, then came up to talk to me. We stood there for probably a half an hour, talking, and laughing at the people on the ice.

Much to the detriment of my plan to avoid the ice like the plague, the nice Hungarian asked me if I wanted to skate. How could I resist? Ever since I was a little girl I’ve always thought how cute it would be to waddle around on the ice, not knowing what I was doing, being led along by the hand of a nice man with an accent. (Just between you and me, I think that’s exactly why I’ve never taken serious ice skating lessons – would have killed the dream if I already knew how to skate, don’t you think?)

So there I was, facing a nice man with an accent, asking me to go rent myself some skates so he could teach me. He set off for the rink while I found some skates, put them on, and walked out onto the ice. I didn’t like it at first, clinging to that wall, watching the Hungarian speed around the rink even after he had told me that he wasn’t all that good at ice skating. Psh. Apparently he’s a nice man with an accent who’s too modest when it comes to athleticism. He was literally the fastest guy out there, even did cute little spins and things then smiled at me as he passed by. He said I needed to try by myself first, clinging to the wall, and every few feet he’d have made it around the rink again and he’d stop to check up on me. Once I got halfway around the rink by dragging myself along the wall, he came back, grabbed my hands, and dragged me out to the middle.

There followed many trips around the rink, several ridiculous falls, even one where I dragged him down with me. And I swear, I didn’t even do it on purpose! I did as I was told, I kept my feet even, I bent over so I could lower my center of gravity, which led to many people later saying to me, “Oooh, you were the girl out there who skated the whole time bent over, weren’t you?”

I didn’t care, though. 🙂 It was nice to have an accent telling me how great I was doing, even though I looked like an idiot. Again, I didn’t mind one bit. I took a short break because we had both fallen at one point and my calf landed on the top of his shoe, and I could feel a nasty bruise coming on. So I sat and watched him spin around and around, smiling and waving at me and other people there, then eventually I went back out. Second time on the ice, he and I went around the rink two whole times at pretty impressive speeds without falling down once! I was so proud of myself, especially since I almost fell but managed to recover without actually falling down. So hurrah for me! And hurrah for nice men with accents and ice skates!

After the ice skating activity was officially over, a bunch of people from my congregation got together and went out to a local diner to get some ice cream. There were about 20 of us all together, I think. We ended up staying there until around one in the morning. Fun, huh?! It was great! I got a root beer float and ended up sitting next to a very funny young American man, and across from a very kind Greek man.

The Greek and I talked about books, writing, producing, and how he wants me to critique something he’s written. I must say, I’d be more than happy to do that. It’d be nice for a change to read something written by someone over the age of 15. He’s very sweet, smiles a lot, and is still quite funny even when he’s really tired. Eventually, though, he got dragged away to another table.

But I was sitting next to that nice young American man. We started up a conversation and eventually ended up on a topic that we both felt very deeply about: cars. Specifically, sports cars. We got into a BMW vs. Nissan debate – still not sure who won – and then got to talking about upper-echelon sports cars like Ferraris, Aston Martins, and we both agreed that the McLaren F1 was to die for. When he heard that I had a BMW, he was quite impressed and asked all sorts of questions. As other people started to get up to leave, we both stood up and ended up talking to other people. Then, from across the room, he smiled at me and said, “Let’s go see the mini bimmer!” We left the restaurant and stood in the parking lot for a while, talking about cars, my BMW, and black cars in general and how much more fun they are to drive than other colors. It was fun; I like flirting over cars, it’s so… un-girly. 🙂

I finally got home around 1:15 in the morning, now here I am, still glowing from a great night of friends, fun, ice skating, root beer, and international flirting. 🙂 I swear, that’s the best way to turn around any bad day.