Today was our last late morning for the rest of the week. We ate a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and made our way to the barn. Luckily, we now know the way and it takes 15 minutes rather than over an hour! We have discovered that the name of the farm where the show is held is Zilveren Spoor, meaning "silver spur." There are several signs for the show placed around the town of Moorsele but, unfortunately, although they appear to provide helpful guidance, these signs actually contradict one another's directions and have caused us confused Americans to drive in circles more than once. We finally have all this craziness under control but today we faced a new challenge: passing the FEI soundness jog.
After flatting in the morning, we cleaned the horses up and practiced jogging outside the barn at 12:00 pm. All the horses behaved well and looked solid, although they were a bit lazy. We had lunch in the horse show restaurant, a very nice building connected to the indoor arena that puts most American horse show food stands to shame. Turkey schnitzel has become the dish of choice for most of the U.S. team! When 2:00 pm rolled around, we threw on U.S. coolers and headed to the indoor to jog and show our horses' passports to several FEI vets. Taylor got a bit lost along the way and ended up in the pony jogging area after following the advice of some untrustworthy British competitors. Clearly we need to steer clear of these sneaky foreigners in the future! Once the whole team was in order, all the horses jogged successfully and then returned to the barn. Everyone is getting very excited and impatient in anticipation of showing tomorrow.
Once the jog was completed, all the riders and trainers returned to the hotel for a shower before going to the show for the "welcome drink" at 8:00 pm. Upon walking into the hotel, we discovered that a moon bounce had been erected in the courtyard and a huge party was underway in the hotel restaurant. After a bit of online research, Jen discovered that today is Ascension Day (the day Jesus ascended to Heaven), and it is an important holiday in Belgium. Although we were very excited about the moon bounce, Ascension Day proved to be a bit of a kill joy for the Americans because there were no shops open in the city of Kortrijk where our hotel is located.
After a quiet afternoon, everyone met in the hotel lobby to drive out to the show. Taylor took a few minutes to play on the moon bounce with Belgian children and desperately failed at communicating with them in Dutch before leaving the hotel. Along the way, Michael; Jen; Taylor; and Taylor's dad, Jay; took a quick detour to visit a U.S. Airforce war memorial in Moorsele after seeing a sign for the memorial on the side of the road. However, finding the memorial proved to be impossible (getting lost is becoming the team's normal way of life), but the group did manage to find a beautiful cemetery dedicated to the Allied Nations' fallen soldiers of WWI.
Finally, everyone made it to the show and had a good time socializing with riders from Switzerland and Denmark. Tomorrow we plan to make more foreign friends, and the real adventures will start because the riders finally get the chance to compete. Nick, Jen, and Taylor will each ride one horse in the meter 1.30 class at noon and one horse in the meter 1.40 Grand Prix Qualifier at 5:30 pm. Karl and Michael will both ride two horses in the meter 1.40. Wish us luck!
-Jen and Taylor
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