Skating in Finland

I used to live in Finland when I was little. Finland is located in the Northern Europe, so it was really cold and dark in winter. Winter in Finland starts from November and ends in April. Every year, people sprinkle water on fields to make skating rinks and enjoy cold winters.

              One day, I and my mom went to the nearest park to skate. It was still November, so it was bright and sunny. I came to Finland a year ago, and I just learned how to skate, so I was looking forward to it. When I was tying my skating shoes, I saw something shiny on the ice. I almost put my face on the ice to see it. It was my mom’s car key.

“Mom, you dropped your key!” I screamed and showed it to her.

“What?” she said. She was skating already. She put her hands in her pocket and noticed that the bottom of it was ripped open.

I saw her hand coming out from the bottom of it. I was so glad that I found it before anyone else. My mom looked still worried and confused.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

 “I can’t find our other key. I think I dropped it,” she said.

I went pale. I just realized that my dad went back to Japan on business, and he is not coming back until next weekend. We took off our skating shoes without saying anything, and ran back to the car. We had parked our car close to the skating rink, so we only had to walk for a minute, but we looked for it carefully so that it took us 20 minutes to get there. Our eyes were glued to the ground, so we bumped into many people, but we found nothing. We had no idea where it had gone. It was snowing, and everything was white. People started to leave, and no one was skating anymore. It was almost impossible to find it. After looking for our key for three hours, we found an old lady walking down the street. She was wearing a black jacket, and a black hat.

We ran to her and asked, “Have you seen a key?”

“A key! Is this yours?” she showed a key to us.

“That’s our key!!” we said at the same time.

“Oh that’s good! I was going to take this to the lost and found office,” she replied.

I looked at my watch, and it was almost 7 o’clock p.m., so I said in a small voice, “we didn’t get to skate today. Today was going to be my first day of skating for this year”

My mom was thanking her, so I thought they didn’t hear me. The old lady looked at me, and smiled at me, then she handed me the key. Then she said, “Have a nice day”

We just left the park and went home. I went into the car, and I almost cried because I had been waiting for this day, but I ended up with not skating. I sat in the back seat, and my mom turned on the radio. They were playing classical music which made me sleepy. I closed my eyes and listened to it.

              Finally, we got back home. My mom took out the key we lost from her bag, and opened the door. I felt cold. I was sure that I closed the window when I left my room, but I surely felt cold wind coming from my room. It was actually little colder than outside. We turned on the lights. I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was a big chunk of ice in the middle of the living room. It looked like a skating rink, but it looked nothing like our house. We just stood there silently. I was confused. I didn’t get what was going on, but I put my skating shoes on, and just started skating without thinking deeply. I went to my room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, but everything was frozen.

I also found out that this skating rink was special. Even though I just started skating from last year, I was skating like a pro skater. I couldn’t believe it! It was like a magic skating rink. After I enjoyed skating for few hours, I suddenly felt dizzy, and I fell.

“Wake up!!” I heard someone shouting.

I opened my eyes slowly and I noticed that I was still in the car. It took me a while to realize that it was just a dream. When we went home, everything was fine. Although she opened the door with the key we had lost, everything was exactly the same. Nothing has changed. I didn’t feel disappointed at all. Since we found our keys and I was able to skate on a magic skating rink, it was a really lucky day for me!