5-Step Mohawk & Power-3s

I was tempted to title this entry "I Survived" or some such, but went for the more descriptive title. Anyway, this was my first morning lesson. I got to the rink about 10 minutes before 7 and had just enough time to get my skates on etc. and get on the ice promptly at 7. I felt a bit stiff, and it took me a while to warm up. The nice part was the session was not too crowded, and most of the skaters there were my "classmates", i.e. more of Anna's students. Anna was in a disturbingly cheery mood. I hate mornings :-).

Today's lesson was a lot of fun, though:

• 5-step mohawk -- Anna decided to teach me this Move. It's FI edge, FI Mohawk, step to BO, BO Mohawk (step forward), and slide chassé. As with the Waltz-8 that I learned a week and a half ago, my problem isn't with the turn, it's with the step forward. I guess the good news there is that as that improves I'll fix two different things :-). I'd never done a slide chassé before. They are a bit tricky. As usual for this sort of thing for me the hardest part is just to remember the sequence so that I'm on the correct foot all the time. Anna was pleased (and I was too) with how well I did on this. The first part of it flows pretty nicely. The step forward and slide chassé will take quite a bit more work. And, of course, there's supposed to be some power in this move and that's a long way away at this point.
• Forward power threes -- As long as we were learning Moves Anna decided to show me these as well. They are actually kind of fun! They are done as two lobes; for the test you would do them down the length of the rink on the "pepperoni dots", first on the right foot then the left coming back the other side. The sequence is FO3 (one lobe); wide step to BI, crossover, BI choctaw (step forward) (second lobe); repeat ad nauseum. The FO3 was not a problem, the BI step was a bit tricky but not bad. The BXO not a problem. The BI step forward is a bit of an issue; of course it's the same step forward (with the same problems) as in the alternating 3s. It's also the same step forward as in the spin entrance, although it's more of an angle since in the spin entrance you're only stepping at 90ish degrees and this is more like 160 or 180. We spent almost 10 minutes on this move and it wasn't too bad for a first try. Again, of course, there is supposed to be power at each step and that will take some work.
• spin entrance -- we had about 2 minutes on these, just enough to remind me of what I'm supposed to be doing on them. Not a lot of progress.

All in all I was pleased, I picked up these steps a lot more quickly than I thought. Now, of course, I can spend several months refining them!