Pine Tree Riding Academy

Chapter 4 First Day Of School

Beeb beeeb beeeeeeeeeeb
I reach round and turn my alarm clock off.
Evie is sitting up in bed rubbing her eyes.
'this is it then the first day' evie says. We get up and get dressed. We go down stairs we're a lot of our dorm are sleepyly getting up too. We walk out the door and to the stable block. I give angle her feed and put on a head collar. I lead her out into the field and muck out her stable. Evie was mucking out next to me. When we were both done we walked down to breakfast. We talked all the way about our clases that day.
We have breakfast and then walk back to the dorm to get ready for school. In my bag I pack 2 notebooks and one folder. Then we walk down to the school. We find our lockers and put our folders in as they are for out equine studies later on. Then I look for my algebra class and evie for her geamotry.  I get there just on time and go in. Really I should have realised this but as I walk into the classroom I stop. There is 6 seats out. And 5 are full. The classroom is very small. I sit down and the teacher begins his lesson.

'I really don't like my algebra teacher' evie days as we grab our stuff for equine studies.
'our chemistry teacher isn't much better either' I say. We walk toward the staircase to go upstairs to our class.
'it's annoying we only get half an hour of this class' evie huffs
We enter the class room and sit down next to each other. The class room slowly fills up with peaple. This is probably the biggest class I have 14 peaple. 7 desks. The whole lesson we are just given stuff for our folder. Then the bell rang.
'those two girls behind us are emilies friends.' I say
, 'yeah but they did not recognise us'
We collect all of our stuff from our lockers and then walk to the dorm. When we get upstairs we leave our bags next to our desks. I plait my hair and get dressed into my best grey breeches and mint base layer. Then we walk down to lunch. We talk the whole way about what we think the lessons are going to be. Two girls join in our conversion and I recognise one from our equine studies class. Lunch is nothing unusual. The bell rings and we all get up and go the stables. When we get to the stables we are to get into the tack room. There we are told what class we are in and where we are to go. I am in the lowest class for everything. Evie is in the highest class for everything but cross country. She is in the lowest for that. We go and tack up. Angle is a bit fidgety and I find it difficult to tighten her girth. I take her off the cross ties and walk over to the side of the stables.  Everyone is standing around waiting for there friends. Evie comes round with her stunning horse but she looks as nervous as all of us.  Suddenly Emily turns up. She stands around and stares at all of us.
'where is my horses' she says
'in your stable'
'why did the grooms not tack her up'
'the school doesn't have grooms'
'what!?'
We all start to walk toward our lesson. My first lesson is in a medium size sand school. SSB. Evie is in the indoor school today. I find my class all ready. No one knows anyone else. 2 other girls have school horses. One of them has midnight. We all line up and mount our horse on the mounting block. Angle moves around while I attempt to mount her. Nudging her forward we walk into the arena. Our instructor comes down.
'right you are all new or not as great as all the other riders' he says 'but not to fear I will have you all in the top set in no time. Warm your horses up. First walk then trot. Later we will do some grid work.'
I walked angle around and then rode a few transition.
Mr Rod (my instructor) was setting up some grid work. It looked very complex. He had two set up along the edge of the fence. One hated then the other.
' I would like you all to line up infront of this one' he said pointing to the 6 red crospoles at about 30cm. ' can you all do it in canter.'  the fisrt rider was a tall girl on a much to small horse. She flatend the whole combination. The next was a girl called Hanna who manged the first one but flattend the rest. I was getting a bit nervous. The next girl Alice could not even get her horse to jump and was thrown off into the combination. Then it wasy turn. I rodé round the corner trying to keepy contact with the saddle. I had my crop on the outside of the jump so that I would not have a run out. Before I knew it me and angle where at the other end of the 6 crosspoles. We were the only peaple who had gone clear.
'very good. Next time rember to put you heels down after each jump it will make you more stable for the next jump.' I was the only person in the group to move onto the second combination wich was 3 crosspoles at 40cm and 4 uprights at 50cm. It took my a bit of time but by the end of the lesson I had even jumped that clear. Then we were to go to our other lessons. I walked angle slowly to the dressage ring. Evie was already there.
'Hi a guy called Mr Rod is teaching us dressage this term'
'he is my general class teacher. Can you imagine that the girls in my class could not complete that combination I said pointing to the arena I was in previously with the jumps still set up.
' really your joking'
'no'
Mr Rod came in and said 'hi and welcome.' 
The lesson was fun. We did a lot of riding perfect circles and a bit on coordination. But then was my favourite class. Showjumping!
' that was a good lesson Mr Rod is good'
'yeah but I have show jumping now' I said. I dismounted and led angle to my class. My teacher was miss Agatha.
'hello there girls right this class is very small it's only 4 of you.' we all stared around this class was class 5. About the middle set. Most kids chose showjumping.
'today we are going to be working on height. Go warm up with the few cross poles I have set out. The cross poles were 40cm hight. Then we did some height. The lesson went. Miss Agatha was very nice and said that I was very good at jumping. She said that prably at the end of the term I will be able to change my dressage class to the cross country if I wanted too. By the end of the class I jumped the highest at 95cm. I was so proud of angle. When I was leading her out I spotted evie walking from the Cross country course crying. I ran up to her almost dragging angle.
'what happend' I say
' capi threw me I hate cross country i don't know why I chose it and I can't change till next term.'
'oh my goddness evie are you sore' I ask shocked.
'no i am not hurt but I am so scared of xcountry.'
' it's fine I am sure you will be fine. Your not like... Afraid of capi now.... Are you?' I ask à bit awkwardly
'no no that not it. Its just cross country I got back on straight away but fell of again that is why I am ahead of everyone else the teacher sent me off early.'
We reached the stable and tied the horses up to the cross ties. I sponged angles off and let her off into the field before we both went to dinner. Before that however we did a quick tidy of our tack lockers while evie told me all the deatiels.

After dinner we did all our homework. It did not take lo g as we did not have much. Then we went down to the stables. I groomed angle and then gave her a massage with the rubber curry comb. She almost fell asleep while I did so. I did as well. I called my parents sitting in her freshly cleaned stable (by me). It was weird being here while they were so far away. But hey that is riding academy life for you.