First Time kind of Day

So, today I went skiing with the student body from ESC-PAU and the International Students for the Snow Cup 2012 and it was a blast!

As the title aludes to today was my first time skiing ever. Let me tell you that I think I could have died several times, literally!!

I don't know what I was thinking but I only used the beginners hill once before I decided to move on to bigger better things. I must note that the main reason I moved on was because of the line for the conveyor belt thing was too long to keep waiting for. So I figured I would take the "t-bar" thing that moves you up the hill faster and higher up. However, rather than me going back down the bigger beginners hill thing. I turned to the other side of the mountain. Mistake!!! I must note here that I wasn't alone, one of the other international students came with me, she is from England.

But, we are looking at the three different slopes on this other side of the mountain and decide that one of the looked easy enough that we could go down this slope with little to no problem. So if you haven't caught on, it was a mistake. We were wrong! I was half was down (and by halfway down I only thought it was halfway down) when I realize I am going too fast for my comfort and probably the safety of everyone else. But, there is a little problem, when I was on the beginners hill I didn't teach myself how to stop or even slow down. Haha Mistake!! At this point I figure before I fly off the mountain the best thing to do is voluntarily fall in a thicker patch of snow. The other international student with me, Jennifer, did the same thing. But, what we then realized is that this slope keep going alot further down than we thought, but it was too steep to try to walk back up. So we were stuck for like 10 minutes trying to figure out what to do as little kids who had to be like 8 or 10 zooming past us like pros. Eventually, we decided to slide all the way down on our skis by just sitting on them, which took another 5 or so minutes. Sounds easier than it was. I fell off at one point and kept going while my skis got stuck. I went on down for several more feet on my stomach before I stopped. A Spanish woman helped me and pushed them down to me. Thank goodness.

So long story we short we get to the bottom. When we are about to take one of the two ski lifts back up  the operator told us that the other chair lift was much easier to use and essentially wouldn't let us use his lift. Which, I must add, sucked because it took us to another part of the mountain in which we would have to ski down a more advanced slope to get back to where we should be. Meanwhile, the lift we wanted to use would have taken us back to where we started.

So we use the chair lift that takes us to this new part of the mountain. But, I am happy to announce we were able to ski down to where we needed to be. The only thing that sucked is as soon as we got back down to the bottom, we had to trek it right back up that same path because lunch was at the top of the mountain. Sucked! Of course we could have skied back down the slope we just fell down and then take the chair lift back up, but that would have been a mistake!

Lastly, while waiting on lunch to be finished I decided to do alittle more skiing on this part of the mountain. Mistake!! I go to a slope, rather short, that didnt look to hard. Mistake! This was the steepest slope ever. I was going so fast down I got that feeling you get going down rollercoaster and when that happened I knew I was in trouble. In order to stop I decided instead of just falling I would go up an upslope, smart huh? Nope! I went up an upslope but fell and slide all the way back down on my back. And this was in front of a line of people waiting to use the ski lift back up the hill. Mistake & Embarrassing!!

After a few more embarrasing falls infront of everyone I decided that after lunch I was going to teach myself how to slow down and stop properly on the beginners slope, exactly where I should have been all day.

Lessons Learned: 1) Check your pride at the door when you try to ski things out of your league and when you are a beginner skier. 2) When you are a beginner doing anything other than a beginner slope is foolish. 3) Learn how to walk (slow down and stop) before you run (intermediate runs).

Just a Thought!

Picture props go to a fellow international student here at ESC-PAU, Reichelle Carlos