Lake Baikal in Southern Siberia is the largest, deepest freshwater lake in the world. Every winter when the lake freezes (冻结) over for half the year, 80-year-old Lyubov Morekhodova straps (用带子系好) on the same ancient skates she's worn since the 1940s and glides (滑行) across the ice wherever she needs to go.
Lyubov has been using the ice to travel around her faraway home for her whole life. As a child, she skated about 2.5 miles each way to school and back. She once fell through the ice and was luckily saved by her classmates.
Now Lyubov lives alone in a small house on the shores of Lake Baikal. Her children and five grandchildren seldom visit her because they live five hours away by car. She has to look on a group of dogs, cows and chickens as her friends. Luckily, she has the ice to help her feel free! "For me, ice means being able to go anywhere and everywhere," the grandmother said.
Every day, she skates half an hour each way to the local village to do her shopping. With temperatures often reaching lows of-40 C, it's hard for an old woman to live a normal life! But Lyubov says that her daily skates are the secret to her long life span (寿命). "People keep telling me I should slow down, but I just can't!" She said with a laugh. "I don't have time to be bored; there's too much work to do."
